Sam Spade's San Francisco

The growing trend in mass transit is to create special closed-in corridors along major streets for transit buses to travel faster and free of other vehicular traffic.

Creating these special restricted guided busways would be the first step in implementing the bus rapid transit system, or BRT, as the system is commonly known.

Today's San Francisco Chronicle offers an excellent story on the prospect of creating BRT corridors along Geary Boulevard, which, by the way, is a great idea.

(An aside: Geary Boulveard is pronounced "Geer-ee". It is named after John Geary, our first mayor.)

If you're thinking that we already have some lanes in the City designated as "Bus Only", there are some real differences between Bus Only lanes (that are just designated lanes and very difficult to keep others drivers out of) and transit corridors (that are sealed by curbs and barriers to keep other vehicles locked out).

Convincing the Board of Supervisors to support the concept will be more difficult that one might think. If we are going to convince the people of San Francisco that they must keep their cars at home and ride MUNI, we must not only provide flawless service, we must also assure the public that our Board of Supervisors and other City Hall Big Shots will set an example by using MUNI to come and go from City Hall.

Perhaps we can take the lead from Scotland. Senior politicians and top civil servants will be forced out of their government-owned cars and into public transportation under a Scottish Labour Party proposal.

In an attempt to address Scotland's growing pollution and traffic problems, the party wants to crack down on the use of chauffeured vehicles and taxis by ministers and officials for trips, some of which could be walked in minutes. They plan to take the cars away and make their officials ride the bus.

Putting our Board of Supervisors into MUNI buses and forcing many of our city workers who currently drive City-owned cars (or claim car expenses if they drive their own) to give them up and start using Fast Passes is not going to be an easy task. An amazing number of the City's employees would suddenly claim back problems.

Civil servants the world over are remarkable for their abilities to take as much as they can from the public and do as little in return as possible. They want the paychecks, the cars, the perks and all the rest. They only part they don't like is taking orders and doing work.

There would be some exceptions to the rule, of course. The mayor, by virtue of his responsibilities as our chief executive officer, needs a set of chauffeured wheels at his disposal 24-7. So do most department chiefs, but that's where the free rides end. Everybody else can be issued a MUNI Fast-Pass.

Yes, I know ... there are some employees who will still need City-owned vehicles to do their work ... but not nearly as many as we now have. City-owned cars and other vehicles are as common today as pigeons. They are everywhere.

If San Francisco is serious about becoming a truly Green City, then we need to teach by example, and that means putting Board members and senior staff in MUNI seats ... right along with the rest of us.

Story tools:
San Francisco Chronicle - SF Gate story
Scotland's transit plan - The Scotsman
BRT article in Wikipedia
Bus Rapid Transit Policy Center
MUNI web site
Metropolitan Transportation Commission