3 ms·

Toronto's transit definitely needs improvement. But how does SF even figure into the equation? I thought all the west-coast cities were car-centric.

fennecfoxen 10y ago
San Francisco isn't, not really anyway. Actually, to be honest, it's kinda just crappy to get around no matter how you want to do it... but as far as cars are concerned, since the earthquake felled the Embarcadero Freeway the freeways are only on one side of the city, and even the fastest routes through town have a bunch of stoplights, and traffic is bad and slow. But it does have transit! Mostly, it has Caltrain and BART, which are essentially commuter rail systems that drop people downtown where they actually want to work. They have some issues but they fundamentally work. San Francisco also has MUNI, the Municipal Railway, which runs the streetcars (and also runs the buses) and, for the US, it's pretty good transit. But that's mostly just low expectations: there's one downtown tunnel (which shares half its route with BART) and then the rest is mostly interlined with the aforementioned traffic, and it is slow, and notoriously unreliable (even besies traffic, SFMTA has well-known issues with its relationship to its labor union which contribute substantially to no-show drivers, and in the absence of driverless buses that's a bit of a monkey wrench in normal operation.) And very few of the buses have dedicated bus lanes (although the Geary corridor might be getting some in the future as part of a bus rapid transit system some day soon). There is an ongoing project to connect Caltrain to Market Street and Chinatown and Fisherman's Wharf with a new streetcar line. We'll see how well it works out... there's already been drama and delays about moving the alignment from 3rd St to 4th St...

3 ms·

Toronto's transit definitely needs improvement. But how does SF even figure into the equation? I thought all the west-coast cities were car-centric.

by stuxnet79 10y ago

fennecfoxen 10y ago
San Francisco isn't, not really anyway. Actually, to be honest, it's kinda just crappy to get around no matter how you want to do it... but as far as cars are concerned, since the earthquake felled the Embarcadero Freeway the freeways are only on one side of the city, and even the fastest routes through town have a bunch of stoplights, and traffic is bad and slow. But it does have transit! Mostly, it has Caltrain and BART, which are essentially commuter rail systems that drop people downtown where they actually want to work. They have some issues but they fundamentally work. San Francisco also has MUNI, the Municipal Railway, which runs the streetcars (and also runs the buses) and, for the US, it's pretty good transit. But that's mostly just low expectations: there's one downtown tunnel (which shares half its route with BART) and then the rest is mostly interlined with the aforementioned traffic, and it is slow, and notoriously unreliable (even besies traffic, SFMTA has well-known issues with its relationship to its labor union which contribute substantially to no-show drivers, and in the absence of driverless buses that's a bit of a monkey wrench in normal operation.) And very few of the buses have dedicated bus lanes (although the Geary corridor might be getting some in the future as part of a bus rapid transit system some day soon). There is an ongoing project to connect Caltrain to Market Street and Chinatown and Fisherman's Wharf with a new streetcar line. We'll see how well it works out... there's already been drama and delays about moving the alignment from 3rd St to 4th St...