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BRT Along Geary in San Francisco

AC Transit has embarked on a program to construct Bus Rapid Transit in Berkeley, Oakland, San Leandro and the East Bay.

Bus Rapid Transit is best described as combining the "dedicated lane" advantages of light rail systems with the cheaper equipment purchase and maintenance costs of buses to have a new kind of urban transit system.

Bus Rapid Transit has become "the thing" Worldwide; there are scores of examples of successful programs and systems.

While AC Transit has worked for four years to advance Bus Rapid Transit, the latest round of voting by elected officials in Berkeley proves that more education is required. In Berkeley, the City Council was under the impression Bus Rapid Transit would harm deliveries to businesses along Shattuck Avenue.

In the last blog post this blogger presented a photo where a Bus Rapid Transit system was in the middle of Shattuck Avenue and asked how such a configuration would harm businesses? But a better example is video, and the video below, while not of BRT along Shattuck Avenue, does have it along several familiar streets in San Francisco: Market, Geary, and Van Ness.

Here's the video by the San Francisco County Transportation Authority:



What BRT would look like and how it would mix with traffic along Van Ness is shown at the 23 second mark. What's important to note is the configuration does not block intersections and does not harm or block vehicle access to businesses, because it's in the middle of the street.

Aside from the access issue, the video provides an excellent animated example of how BRT fits in the fabric of San Francisco's pedestrian and vehicle traffic and its urban design.

Again, I see no example where businesses would be harmed in any way. Indeed, considering Bus traffic congestion along Telegraph Avenue and Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley, BRT's the perfect solution to improve public transit performance.

Stay tuned.