Metro Committee Agenda
RESCUE MUNI - METRO COMMITTEE
Wednesday, July 12, 2000, 6:00 PM
at SPUR, 312 Sutter, Fifth Floor
Agenda
6:00 Introductions, Agenda additions and Approval, Minutes Approval,
Announcements
6:10 Status of previous resolutions and clean up of open issues (M and
N Lines)
6:40 Geary Study
7:20 Select future items for discussion.
7:30 Adjournment, Next Metro Committee meeting Wed Aug 9, 2000
Metro Committee Minutes, June 2000
Present: Eric Carlson, David Vartarnoff and Rosie West.
1. WE suport expansion of POP and recommend use of more police officers
rather than more drivers on multicar trains. David is drafting a letter.
2. We resolved that the escalator maintenance at Muni Metro stations is
unacceptable. (to wit: 4 escalators out of service at Embarcadero
station)
in tunnel, safety. already sent for review, editing.
3. Metro Committee plans to avail itself of Mr. Burns' public meeting
opportunities by reserving one of the timeslots for the committee
Proposed Geary Study -3 - a work in progress for the Metro Committee
because a busway is suggested in lieu of an expensive LRV. Implementing
all of the im-provements suggested should allow bus running times that
are only a few minutes slower than an LRV running in a subway at a
savings of over Two Billion Dollars. This study doesn‚t consider any
route changes.
The Geary is one of the largest transit bus lines in the world handling
over 50,000 riders each day. The Geary moves rather well west of Van
Ness but there are delays due to double parking, signal lights, right
turning cars and buses catch up to each other. The Geary is thor-oughly
bogged down in auto and truck traffic east of Van Ness when it gets close
to downtown. Prop ŚE‚ requires that this be greatly improved. Ridership
will probably increase with improvements in speed and reliability. This
can be handled at little increase in cost by route time reductions and
not having all buses go to the end of the end line (not considered). It
is past time that every tool used to speed increased levels of auto
traffic be used to move transit. In addition bus bulbs and signal
priorities must be used to speed transit. Every tool that is sug-gested
to improve Geary speed has already been imple-mented somewhere in San
Francisco to improve transit and/or auto movement. In addition serious
attention must be given to the delivery of goods. We will deal with
areas of worst traffic first after general signal pri-orities.
1) Signal Priorities: A) Every Geary line should have absolute priority
24/7 at all signal lights West of Gough that are not a transfer point. B)
Every Geary line should also have limited priority 24/7 at signal lights
east of Gough that are not a transfer point. C) Every Geary line should
also have limited priority at every transfer point and Franklin and Gough
off peak except Mission. Lim-ited priority means if a priority is
implemented in one signal sequence (red-green-yellow in each direction)
than a priority may not be implemented in the next sequence. This kind
of controls should be available for signals at moderate cost. Some
more thinking and engineering will be necessary to get transit across
Geary when priorities are in effect. We are not ready at this time to
provide better priorities over peak auto cross traffic. D) Priorities
should reduce running time by two minutes. E) Muni should consider the
relative benefits of priorities of stop location to choose between near
side or far side stops for Local and Limited service.
2) General: A) All bus stops should include adjacent ticket machines to
allow for proof-of-payment and use of all doors. This should reduce
running time by one min-ute. B) Limiteds and Expresses will be able to
pass a Lo-cal bus in a stop by momentarily moving into the mixed flow
lane. C) All bus designations should be clear and normally not changed
mid run. D) Bus schedules should mounted at all stops. E) Locals should
use the same stop as Limiteds. F) The ideal bus would be low floor to
speed boarding. G) All design changes should consider the possibility
for future electrification.
3) East of Leavenworth: A) Run buses in 24/7 diamond lane adjacent to the
curb (similar to Third, Fourth, Jeffer-son and Park Presidio). B) Allow
only commercial deliv-ery parking on this side of the street only during
limited hours of the night. C) Allow only commercial parking on most of
the opposite side of the street for most of the rest of the day. Permit
some auto parking only well after the peak. D) If necessary for auto
traffic do not allow any parking on the opposite side of the street
during peak hours and direction (similar to countless streets). E) Do not
allow right turns in front of nearside Limited stops (similar to Lombard
and Nineteenth which have no lefts). F) Locate Locals stops with some
space for a right turn stacking lane (similar to Third). G) This should
reduce running time in this section by at least two minutes (similar to
what Muni claims for bus bulbs on Stockton).
4) Gough to Leavenworth: A) Run buses in 24/7 dia-mond lane the same as
3) above or adjacent to the curb parking lane (similar to Mission). B)
Allow sufficient commercial delivery parking on both sides of the street
for limited times. C) Limited stops should be double length bus zones,
with bus bulbs if necessary. D) Do not allow right turns in front of
nearside Limited stops (similar to Lombard with no lefts). E) Locate
Locals stops with some space for a right turn stacking lane. This should
reduce running time in this section by a minute.
5) Center Bus Way (BW): A) 24/7 diamond lanes should start west of
Twenty-fifth. And run to Gough except for the underpasses at Masonic and
Fillmore (similar to the ŚF‚ tracks on the Embarcadero). The BW should
be ad-jacent to the median, which should mostly remain for aesthetics,
traffic calming and pedestrian safety. For bus stops the median would
be cut away similar to left turn lanes and a pedestrian boarding island
(BI) would be lo-cated in what was the BW . B) BIs should be wide and
double length at Limited stops from Park Presidio to Gough. C) This
leaves no room for left turn lanes (similar to Nineteenth and Lombard and
part of Geary). D - preferred) Ramps and steps should be provided for
the Limited stops at Fillmore and Presidio in the auto tunnel. D-alt)
These Limited stops can be located at the current location to reduce
capital costs. This will require that parking not be allowed along these
curbs per 3) above because lots of through auto traffic may use Anza
instead outer Geary but may return again at Masonic. F) Running time
should be reduced by a minute a mile for four minutes or three minutes
with the alternate. G) If necessary for auto traffic, do not allow curb
parking during peak hours and direction between Masonic and Gough,. This
section is mostly institutional and open space with very little
commercial and residential.
6) Pedestrian Safety: Outer Geary is so wide that it will probably not be
possible for slow walkers to cross from curb to curb without overly
impacting transit, even if auto traffic was: diminished or disregarded.
Adequate properly designed safety medians must be provided at both sides
of every intersection with walk to center signs and count down timers,
for either lane design. Signal controls must include provisions to
minimize the time people must remain in a safety medians with minimum
impact on transit. The existing medians are mostly wide enough but
should be extended to help protect pedestri-ans in the crosswalk. The
BIs can also work as safety medians. The sidewalks on O‚Farrell and
Geary should be widened to allow rapid curb side bus service.
7) Running Time: Currently the Time Table shows the Geary Limited with a
running time of 25 minutes from Twenty-fifth to Market for a 4.7 mile
route. The running time for an LRV in the subway from West Portal to
Em-barcadero, a 5.4 mile route is 16 minutes. Ideally the improvements
will reduce the running time by nine min-utes, say more practically by
seven minutes. This re-duces the running time to Market to 18 minutes
versus about 14 minutes with a full length subway. Four min-utes is not
worth an extra Two Billion Dollars even for say an increased ridership to
70,000. But saving seven minutes for even as much as 20 million dollars
without electrification and the Presidio and Fillmore ramps is a good
deal because it will produce most of the additional readers.
Future Items: 4. Increasing Scheduled switchbacks - locations and
frequency 8. Phones/Lights in stations 10. Embarcadero
dispatching/line delays 2. LRV avail-ability a) Review success of MMX and
ATCS. c) Fol-low up on Maps e) Review and comment on Third Street LRV
EIR f) Expand Proof of Payment g) Printing/ posting of schedules
h) Investigate where Muni is vis a vis construction of further Metro
lines/LRV's k) Fare Gates to Accept other passes.
Metro Committee Minutes, June 2000
Minutes: Meeting, 6-14-00, 312 Sutter Street
Present: Ms West, Mr. Vartanoff, Mr. Carlson
1. Mr. Vartanoff's resolution re POP, number of drivers on multicar trains
in tunnel, safety. already sent for review, editing.
2. We resolved that the escalator maintenance at Muni Metro stations is
unacceptable. (to wit: 4 escalators out of service at Embarcadero station)
3. Topics for July 12, 2000 meeting:
> A. Review of all pending and answered letters., prepare follow-up as needed.
> B. Status of recommendations on M line.
> C. Status of recommendations on N line.
D. Metro Committee plans to avail itself of Mr. Burns' public meeting opportunities
by reserving one of the timeslots for the committee.
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