An Assessment of Bus Rapid Transit Opportunities in the San Francisco Bay Area

This report documents a continuing assessment of bus rapid transit opportunities in the San Francisco Bay Area. In this study we are focusing on bus transit routes that partially travel on California state routes, whether arterial roadways or freeways. A primary component of this project is to consider the inter-connectivity and regional aspects of bus rapid transit systems deployment in the San Francisco Bay Area region. Considering state routes will help identify more regional opportunities for innovative types of partnerships to help address unmet public transit service needs across jurisdictional boundary lines. We initially identified nearly 200 bus transit routes in the Bay Area that travel on state routes. Next we embarked on a multi-step process to reduce the field of bus routes to a select few with a high likelihood of being upgraded to bus rapid transit systems. We looked at the length of the bus transit routes that travel on state routes, service characteristics related to schedule and route structures based on passenger demand level, external factors, bus routes that function essentially as one service, and level of passenger demand. We selected the following five bus routes for further consideration, the first four of which are already under investigation to be upgraded to bus rapid transit. AC Transit Routes 72-72M-72R on SR 123 AC Transit Routes 82-82L along Telegraph Avenue/International Boulevard/14 th Street corridor SamTrans Routes 390/391 on SR 82 (El Camino Real) Santa Clara VTA Route 22 on SR 82 (El Camino Real) San Francisco Muni? route 9X in San Bruno