Comments on: Van Ness BRT: Why We Need It

By: jack barry

jack barry — Thu, 07 May 2009 02:54:25 +0000

The now current plan cuts an allegede 15 minutes off an alleged one hour trip to downtonw in the rush hour… Rather a token improvment.

PRT (Oersonal Rapid Transti) (google to that) is the better way… It could pay for itself, if done right.. It would cut 45 minutes out of the curretn 60 minute trip

jack barry in the Sunset.

By: Eric

Eric — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 17:11:18 +0000

That's certainly a possibility, kfarr, but we simply can't afford subways on every corridor where they might be justified, and we need to do some improvement. BRT allows us to do that relatively quickly and at low cost. Hopefully we can take lessons from the T-Third as to how to carry out surface separated-guideway transit well. There were also some difficult points and engineering issues with the T-Third which would not be problematic on Van Ness.

By: kfarr

kfarr — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 16:48:52 +0000

Surface LRT is a lot more expensive (double or more) than BRT. Well executed BRT will attract as many commuters as Light Rail.

But, the sad reality is that MUNI will not implement BRT effectively and this will most likely end up being nothing more than a bus lane. Their failure with the 3rd street line should be warning enough.

By: Eric

Eric — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 15:59:24 +0000

It’s a good point, but the reason why I didn’t bring up the surface LRT issue here is that at this point, it’s not really even on the table; in fact, design specifications for Van Ness BRT aren’t even rail-ready. In this case, BRT’s flexibility is a selling point: Van Ness is only a portion of each of the 47 and 49 bus lines, so dedicated lanes would at least make this portion of those trips faster. As long as we’re talking rail, though, a subway would probably make more sense for Van Ness in any case. My hope is that BRT will provide substantial relief quickly, and perhaps the rail option could be investigated down the road as a future expansion.

By: M1EK

M1EK — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 15:28:44 +0000

Surface LRT would and could work here. Not as expensive as subway; only a bit more expensive in capital costs than center-running “BRT”; lower operating costs; and much higher chance of attracting actual choice commuters.