Comment by nhf
6 years ago
He's rightfully dunking on the Van Ness bus line for some reasons, but it's basically a major utilities infrastructure project disguised as a bus lane. They're overhead power and reconfiguring the street, but they're also replacing ~4 miles of 1800s water main, putting in a new earthquake-resistant sewer system, and redoing the fire hydrant water feeds.
I feel like it's more of a branding failure honestly. People would be much more understanding - if you heard "we're replacing 1800s utilities with 21st century tech built for the earthquake zone in SF and you get better transit along with that", I think the conversation would be much different than "it's taken a decade to build a new lane".
That reminds me a bit of the California High Speed rail project. A bunch of the work in the central valley is grade separation for existing freight rail lines.
But then we'd wonder why the transit needs to be conditioned on the utilities. This is political malpractice undermining support for bus lanes citywide.
News article says [T]he $189 million project, which is part of a larger complimentary (sic) sewer and street light replacement project totalled at $316 million.[0]
[0] https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/two-mile-long-van-ness-bus-l...