Geary Bus Rapid Transit

Geary Bus Rapid Transit
Red transit-only lane on Geary near Masonic Av, October 2018
Overview
Owner	San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency
Locale	San Francisco, California, United States
Stations	26
Service
Type	Bus rapid transit
System	San Francisco Municipal Railway
Services	Muni: 38, 38R, 38AX, 38BX
History
Opened	February 2021 (2021-02)
Route diagram Legend Salesforce Transit Center Fremont Street Mission Street 1st Street/Battery Street 2nd Street Montgomery Street Market Street Kearny Street Stockton Street Powell Street Leavenworth Street Van Ness BRT Van Ness Avenue O'Farrell Street Laguna Street Fillmore Street Divisadero Street Masonic Avenue Arguello Boulevard 6th Avenue Park Presidio Boulevard 20th Avenue 25th Avenue 33rd Avenue dedicated lanes street running 36th Avenue 39th Avenue Point Lobos Avenue 42nd Avenue 44th Avenue 45th Avenue 46th Avenue 48th Avenue This diagram: view talk edit

The Geary Bus Rapid Transit project added bus rapid transit features to San Francisco Municipal Railway bus lines along Geary Boulevard. The corridor serves routes 38, 38R, 38AX, 38BX which combined to serve 52,900 daily riders in 2019, the most of any corridor in the city. The project added transit-only lanes, painted red, along many sections of Geary between the Salesforce Transit Center and 33rd Avenue. After the project’s completion, over 75% of Geary corridor now has transit lanes.^[1]

The original plan called for consolidating some stops in a center-running configuration, as was done for the Van Ness Bus Rapid Transit project, but in early 2021, as part of emergency changes related to the COVID-19 pandemic, SFMTA added side-running bus lanes along Geary. Based on the success of these "temporary emergency transit lanes" in increasing bus speeds with minimal impacts to car traffic, SFMTA made the side-running bus lanes permanent. Side-running transit lanes are less efficient than center-running configurations, and so this decision has been criticized as a downgrade from the original plan.^[2][3][4]