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Why bus rapid transit has stalled in Bay Area

Mia Salter, left, and Kevin Newton, 16, right, ride the AC Transit 1R bus line home from school in Oakland, Calif. on Thursday, May 1, 2014. The 1R, which stands for rapid, is the predecessor to the bus rapid transit system that is slated to be built along International Boulevard. The BRT system will run more like a subway and will have dedicated lanes or stations. The new system has stalled due to public resistance to taking away a lane or two of traffic and eliminating parking. Salter said since the bus runs through a high crime area, the bus often has to take detours. "It gets so backed up sometimes, it's ridiculous." Salter said. less

Mia Salter, left, and Kevin Newton, 16, right, ride the AC Transit 1R bus line home from school in Oakland, Calif. on Thursday, May 1, 2014. The 1R, which stands for rapid, is the predecessor to the bus rapid . more

Amian Brewer, 14, holds her nephew Zah'phir Roberts, 8 months, on the AC Transit 1R bus line toward Oakland, Calif. on Thursday, May 1, 2014. The 1R, which stands for rapid, is the predecessor to the bus rapid transit system that is slated to be built along International Boulevard. The BRT system will run more like a subway and will have dedicated lanes or stations. The new system has stalled due to public resistance to taking away a lane or two of traffic and eliminating parking. less

Amian Brewer, 14, holds her nephew Zah'phir Roberts, 8 months, on the AC Transit 1R bus line toward Oakland, Calif. on Thursday, May 1, 2014. The 1R, which stands for rapid, is the predecessor to the bus rapid . more

(05 09) 11:20 PDT SAN FRANCISCO Bus rapid transit was supposed to be the future of public transportation.

A technology combining more efficient buses and relatively simple improvements to streets, BRT, as it's known, has been heralded as a fairly cheap high capacity transit system a subway on tires that can be put on the streets quickly.

But in the Knockoff hermes bag price list Bay Area, the introduction of bus rapid transit is advancing at a pace akin to that of a Muni bus stuck in rush hour traffic. More than a dozen years after the region started talking about the speedy buses, the Bay Area is still waiting for its first one.

Bus rapid transit projects in faux mens gold bracelet San Francisco, the East Bay and the South Bay are still in the works, but they have stalled after running into community skepticism and opposition to the removal of traffic lanes and parking spaces. The opposition from merchants and residents has caused some cities, even progressive bastions like Berkeley, to refuse to allow transit only lanes or to drop out of BRT projects altogether.

"It's been a big challenge," said , spokesman for the , the Bay Area's regional transportation planning and financing agency. "We think of the Bay Area as a world class area, but we are really a group of 100 plus cities all with different concerns and ambitions. That makes it really hard to get BRT projects done."

Bus rapid transit uses long buses with low floors and extra doors. They stop at evenly spaced stations that are bigger and fancier than bus stops. The buses sneak through stoplights using onboard technology that gives them priority. The most efficient BRT systems use exclusive lanes at least on congested stretches.

The Bay Area's first BRT line to start construction and the one likely to be the first to carry passengers is the 's route from Santa Clara to San Jose's Alum Rock neighborhood. Construction of the 7.2 mile line started in March, and the first bus is expected to roll in fall 2015 about 11 years after the idea was conceived.

Compared with the proposal to put a BRT line on Avenue in San Francisco, that's speedy. The notion of taking a lane of traffic in each direction and transforming it into a dedicated lane for fast buses was first discussed in the late 1990s, with planners taking a look in 2001.

Since then, it has languished in a lengthy planning, review and public participation process that has looked at everything from the loss of parking to the preservation of allegedly historic streetlights. San Francisco's first rapid bus isn't scheduled to cruise down Van Ness until early 2018.

"It is certainly longer than anyone would like," said , a planner working on the project. "We would have liked for it to have been done five years ago."

's efforts to bring BRT to the East Bay originally from San Leandro to Berkeley have been equally lengthy and perhaps even more hard fought. The transit agency began planning the route in 2001 but encountered a lot of opposition, especially along Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, where merchants and neighbors attacked the plan to eliminate parking and a lane of traffic with the kind of fervor once reserved for opposing the Vietnam War.

The voted to drop out of the bus rapid transit plan in 2011, shortening faux gold and enamel jewelry the 16.9 mile project to a 9.5 mile route from the to 20th Street in downtown Oakland. The line will take away 237 parking spaces along the stretch and claim a lane of traffic in each direction, mostly along International Boulevard through East Oakland.

New outcry

Even though the project is about 65 percent designed and scheduled to break ground early in 2015, a new outbreak of community opposition is threatening to delay the scheduled 2017 opening. Last week, a group of merchants hired tow trucks to block the two center lanes of traffic on International Boulevard to demonstrate the effect of dedicating lanes to BRT service. For safety reasons, Oakland police blocked the other two lanes, forcing drivers to detour but failing to create gridlock.

Merchants in the area complained that their businesses, many dealing in furniture, automotive parts or services, and items sold in bulk, would suffer if customers couldn't park in front of their stores. And removing a lane of traffic, they said, would create congestion and drive away business.

Worried about access

"I've been here over 36 years," said , who owns an artistic glass studio on the boulevard. "I rely on parking very much for my business. BRT would eliminate my business; trucks have to come to drop off glass, pick up glass."

AC Transit officials say they're working with merchants all along the BRT route to come up with plans for replacement parking and to cope with the change from a street centered on cars to one focused more on transit and pedestrians.

In the South Bay, VTA officials are also having trouble selling that vision. While the Alum Rock BRT project is under construction, plans to build a similar line along El Camino Real the fake white enamel jewelry transit system's busiest corridor have lagged in the face of opposition to about 10 miles of transit only lanes from Santa Clara to Mountain View.

VTA officials still hope to convince them of the merits of a full fledged BRT system with dedicated lanes, but the debate has slowed the project, and the outcome is uncertain.

"We need to meet the demand for what's going to happen in that corridor," said Brandi Childress, a VTA spokeswoman. "But people love their cars, and El Camino has been a commute corridor for decades. It's a back door whenever 101 backs up."

Creating a bus rapid transit system doesn't have to be agonizingly slow. A group of San Francisco politicians and planners learned that last year when they visited Mexico City on a tour hosted by a transportation think tank that promotes BRT. Mexico City's first BRT line took just three years to move from idea to running buses.

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