Neighbor Todd Campbell says that as of August 14th, 2021, our 36 Teresita bus is back to its normal 30-minute schedule (after the Covid pandemic re-routing earlier).
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Tag: 36 Teresita
Forest Knolls Keeps Its Bus!
I just got an email from the SFMTA with updates to proposed route changes. “Your participation has made a difference!” it said. It continued with an explanation of the changes proposed by the Policy and Governance Committee (PAG).
Among them: “36 Teresita: The PAG supports maintaining the entirety of the existing 36 alignment.”
Thanks, everyone who spoke up, commented, and wrote in against the original plan and particularly to those who spearheaded this effort. Clearly, our voices were heard.
[Special thanks also to our District 7 Supervisor, Norman Yee, for his assistance.]
Here’s the text of the whole message, in case you’re interested in other routes. There’ll be a meeting on March 28th, 8 a.m. at City Hall during which the final decision will be made. It’s expected to be in line with the recommendations.
Your participation has made a difference!
The service change proposals of the Transit Effectiveness Project, an ongoing project to make Muni more reliable for its customers, were reviewed by the SFMTA Policy and Governance Committee (PAG) on Friday, March 21. Based on their input, staff is recommending the following proposal modifications outlined below. Staff will present the following recommendations to the SFMTA Board on Friday, March 28. These modifications aim to retain the benefits of the initial proposals, while addressing key community concerns.
Here’s what we proposed, what we modified based on what we heard, and what we will be recommending to the SFMTA Board:
2 Clement: The PAG supports the recommended proposal of using existing overhead wires to implement 2 Clement trolley service on the entire Sutter/Post Street corridor, adding service on the Sutter Street route segment, and realigning the 2 line to operate on California Street to Eighth Avenue, on Eighth Avenue south to Clement Street, on Clement Street between Eighth and Sixth Avenues, and to California via Sixth Avenue. Service will be discontinued on Clement Street; between Arguello Boulevard and 6th Avenue, and 8th and 15th Avenues.
3 Jackson: The PAG supports maintaining service on the 3 Jackson with reduced frequency to better match customer demand.
6 Parnassus: The PAG supported maintaining the 6 Parnassus in the line’s current alignment through Ashbury Heights to UCSF and Golden Gate Heights and to reduce the frequency of the line to better match customer demand west of Masonic Avenue. Service will be further increased on the 71L Haight/Noriega Limited.
8X Bayshore Express: The PAG supports the continuation of 8X service north of Broadway for every other trip.
10 Townsend: The PAG supports the current 10 Townsend (Sansome) proposal to reroute through Mission Bay.
17 Parkmerced: The PAG supports the revised 17 realignment proposal, which shifts service to portions of Lake Merced Boulevard and Brotherhood Way to access the Daly City BART Station.
22 Fillmore and 33 Stanyan: The PAG supports the original realignment proposals for these routes, which include realigning the 22 along 16th Street to provide a direct transit connection to Mission Bay and realigning the 33 Stanyan off of Potrero Avenue and along the former 22 Fillmore alignment into the Dogpatch neighborhood. The PAG also supports increasing 33 service from 15 minute service to 12 minute service all day.
27 Bryant: The PAG supports maintaining the entirety of the existing 27 alignment.
28/28L 19th Avenue: The PAG supports the revised proposal for the 28 and 28L, which calls for the termination of the 28L in the Richmond District to Park Presidio and California Street and extension to the Balboa Park BART Station and the Mission corridor, as well as the continuation of the 28 to the Marina District via the Golden Gate Bridge to a new terminal at Van Ness Avenue and North Point Street.
35 Eureka: The PAG supports the revised proposal for the 35, which includes the continuation of service on Moffitt, Farnum, Addison, and Bemis Streets, and the extension of service to the Glen Park BART Station via Miguel and Chenery Streets.
36 Teresita: The PAG supports maintaining the entirety of the existing 36 alignment.
43 Masonic: The PAG supports connecting the route with the Presidio Transit Center while maintaining the existing route segment on Letterman Drive and Lombard Street.
47 Van Ness: The PAG supports maintaining 47 line service on 11th Street between Mission and Bryant Streets, rather than on 13th Street as originally proposed.
48 Quintara/24th Street: The PAG supports the original 48 service change proposal to remove service in the vicinity of Hoffman and Grandview Streets and instead straighten service along Clipper and Douglass Streets. However, the PAG supports maintaining the 48’s current alignment until the new 58 24th Street route is introduced, which is proposed to serve the former 48 alignment along Douglass Street, 21st Street, and Grandview Avenue.
56 Rutland: The PAG supports maintaining the entirety of the existing 56 alignment.
What’s next? See your input in action!
Proposed service and route changes to be reviewed by SFMTA Board of Directors at the following upcoming public hearings at City Hall Room 400, 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlet Place
Friday March 28, 2014 at 8am
TEP Service change recommendations will be presented. (SFMTA board will make decisions at this meeting)
Help Save our 36 Teresita Bus Route!
A few weeks ago, I wrote about SF MTA’s plans to leave our steep and hilly area without public transportation by dropping the Forest Knolls loop of the 36-Teresita bus. (And this is after the previous battle to save this line, which ended with frequency being reduced from 20 minutes to 30.) Neighbors have been fighting this plan. The Forest Knolls Neighborhood Organization has joined the battle to save the bus route, and has some great suggestions about how you can help. Here’s their flyer:
FOREST KNOLLS NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION
MUNI plans to eliminate the Forest Knolls loop of our 36 Teresita bus.
Proposed service and route changes will be reviewed by SFMTA Board of Directors at a public hearing this Friday March 14, 2014 at 9am in City Hall, room 400.
TEP Informational Hearing – staff will present proposals from feedback gathered at recently held community meetings. The SFMTA Board will then take additional testimony from the public on proposed route changes.
It is important that Forest Knolls residents appear at this hearing to make known their strong objection to the proposed elimination of MUNI service to our Forest Knolls neighborhood.
Please plan to attend the meeting this Friday March 14 at 9 am in City Hall, room 400.
The SFMTA Board responds to community participation – we must be present in large numbers to voice our objections. Plan to attend this important hearing if at all possible.
E-mail your opposition to http://www.tellmuni.com and tweet SFMTA (@sfmta_muni) to make your opposition known. Also e-mail your opposition to the Planning Manager of MTA’s “Transit Effectiveness Project” Sean Kennedy: sean.kennedy@sfmta.com and call our supervisor (Norman Yee) at 415-554-6516 to seek his assistance.
Meanwhile, neighbors have been talking to the SF MTA – which seemed responsive, but has not published any planned changes (which it has made to its plans for other routes). Here’s what Joe Humphreys wrote to update us:
The SFMTA had a public meeting on February 25th at San Francisco State. Forest Knolls was well represented with a number of neighborhood residents raising substantial protest to rerouting the 36 line to no longer include Warren Drive. It appeared at the meeting that the SFMTA staff understood and were sympathetic to the concerns raised. However, they announced today a number of changes that they had made to the staff’s proposed “Transit Effectiveness Plan” Apparently, however, what they are recommending does not include keeping bus service in Forest Knolls as the 36 line is not one of those where they indicated some accommodation to public concerns. This announcment is here : http://sfmta.com/news/project-updates/tep-service-change-proposals-revised-based-community-feedback .
The West of Twin Peaks Central Council – which is a “Council of councils” comprising twenty different neighborhood organizations, passed a Resolution in Support of the 36-Teresita.
A Resolution in Support of the 36-Teresita
By: The West of Twin Peaks Central CouncilPASSED UNOPPOSED
WHEREAS, It is clear that the San Francisco Muni is looking to cut or severely curtail service on the 36-Teresita Bus line in their upcoming budget meeting: and
WHEREAS, there have 6 independent West of Twin Peaks Central Council Member Neighborhoods [The Woods, Galewood Circle, Forest Knolls, Midtown Terrace, Mount Sutro Woods and Sherwood Forest] on steep hillsides that depend exclusively on the 36-Teresita as the only Muni connection to the rest of the city and the Bay Area: and
WHEREAS, these neighborhoods are filling up with new families with children that need the 36-Teresita to get them to and from school: and
WHEREAS, the elderly residents of these neighborhood depend on the home health care workers that come to them via the 36-Teresita Bus to make it possible for them to stay in their homes for as long as is possible:
Now, therefore,
BE IT RESOLVED: that the West of Twin Peaks Central Council assembled this 24th
day of February, 2014, in the City of San Francisco, California, urges the Muni to see the immense value that the 36-Teresita Muni bus line contributes to the residents, visitors, commerce, and children of the above mentioned neighborhoods and the city as a whole: and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Muni should keep the current 36-Teresita service available to these taxpayers who crowd this line at commute times and depend on it as a lifeline in this increasing congested city.
We hope that SFMTA is listening. Please attend the meeting if you can, and also send in your comments to tellmuni.com, to sean.kennedy@sfmta.com, and to our District 7 Supervisor Norman Yee.
Forest Knolls to Lose its Bus?
About a year ago, Joe Humphrys warned us that the SFMTA was planning to abandon the Forest Knolls section of the 36 Teresita bus service. I wrote about that HERE, and Joe contributed a post HERE.
So, it’s happening, unless the neighborhood manages to get SFMTA to re-think this. The public hearing is on Feb 25th, 2014. (I got another message from Joe, with a link to the public hearing notice.)
Date: Feb 25th,
Time: 6 p.m.
Where: San Francisco State University,
Seven Hills Conference Center,
800 Font Blvd., San Francisco, CA 94132
And then Sara Lu wrote a note. This is important, because clearly if anything is going to change, it will need to come from neighborhood pressure. Otherwise, our bus is gone. Here’s her note (with minor edits and added emphasis):
Dear Web Master,
The posted route 36 notice at the bus stop caught my attention; and I looked into the details. Here is what I found: http://www.sfmta.com/sites/default/files/projects/rte_036_BW.pdf
[Webmaster: This is similar to the map at the top of this post, available as a PDF here: rte_036_BW]
Muni proposed to change route 36 by eliminating stops include Clarendon Avenue between Panorama and Oak Park drives, Oak Park and Warren drives, Lawton and Seventh avenues to Clarendon Avenue. This means no bus will come through Forest Knoll at all, which is completely unacceptable.
I sent in my objections on Muni’s website (http://tellmuni.com); but a singular post is not going to make the difference – we will need as much neighborhood support as possible. I strongly recommend posting the subject on the Forest Knoll website and throughout the neighborhood, encouraging as many residents to attend the public hiring on Feb 25 (6pm) and post on tellmuni feed back as possible.
(public hearing details: http://www.sfmta.com/zh-hant/calendar/meetings/community-meeting-proposed-service-changes-routes-17-18-28-28l-36-and-43)
I am a daily rider on the 36 bus from Devonshire and Warren drive. Route 36 is the only form of public transit through the Forest Knoll neighborhood. For daily commuters like myself and the many elderly residents in the neighborhood, it is the only form of connection to Forest Hill Muni station. A 30-minute bus frequency is already inconvenient enough; eliminating the route through Forest Knoll is completely unacceptable. It will leave the entire community stranded, without any feasible form of public transportation.
The proposed alternative is not at all realistic. Walking to 7th and Lawton or Clarendon may not seem terribly far on flat map; but anyone who knows the area topography would know, the Forest Knoll neighborhood is on a very steep hill. In fact, it is one of the highest points in San Francisco. It is impossible for any elderly resident to talk from the proposed alternative stops (20-30 minutes straight uphill); and completely impractical for daily rider like myself. I, as well as most residents, cannot afford to drive and park in downtown San Francisco, and have no intention to add to the congestion on the road.
I am trained as an urban planning, and fully support public transportation. Leaving a whole neighborhood/community without any form of accessible public transportation is not acceptable.
What would you propose we can do to make sure our neighborhood is not overlooked?
The only way to stop this is to protest. As Sara Lu points out, a few posts will not make a difference, but a whole lot will.
- Please go to tellmuni.com and explain that there’s a lot of difference between a healthy young person strolling on a level street, and forcing elderly people to climb 30 minutes up one of the steepest slopes in San Francisco.
- Please attend the hearing if you can and make your voices heard.
Proposed Curtailment of 36 Teresita Service, by Joe Humphreys
This article about the proposed curtailment of the 36 Teresita bus service was written by Joe Humphreys for the Midtown Terrace website. It is re-published here with permission and added emphasis. (Thanks, Joe!) The map of proposed changes that we published here recently is appended for ready reference.
The San Francisco Planning Department and the San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency have issued an “Initial Study” for the “Transit Effectiveness Project”. The study is, apparently, the first step towards numerous changes in San Francisco’s public transit system. Most of this 381-page document is consumed with arguments as to why the many changes will result in “improvements” to that system. Somewhat buried in that document and its two appendixes, however, are recommended changes to the 36 Teresita service that provides public transportation to the residents of Midtown Terrace and Forest Knolls.
The changes are generally similar to changes that were proposed and defeated a couple of years ago. They eliminate part of the existing route and would use vans instead of Muni buses to provide service on the remaining route. Under the previous proposal, service would have been eliminated on some of the steeper streets of Midtown Terrace and in all of Forest Knolls. The current proposal would not make route changes in Midtown Terrace but would eliminate service in Forest Knolls. (Perhaps, the planners feel it would be easier to pick off one community at a time.)
The proposed change from bus to van service does not give any indication of the nature of the vans but simply says “Recommended for van service, but the timeline for van procurement is uncertain.” It also does not say whether or not the van service would run at the same frequency as the existing service.
The Midtown Terrace and Forest Knolls communities already suffered a degradation of bus service in the last round of changes when the frequency during the day was reduced from 20 minutes to a half hour. The areas served by this bus are very steep and further curtailment of service would work a hardship on residents who depend on this line and a particular hardship on the increasing numbers of elderly residents who have limited or no ability to drive. (And, for all residents it goes against the general public policy of encouraging use of public transit as an alternative to driving.)
The substitution of van service for bus service requires careful study. Many older residents use the bus for shopping. Would vans accommodate their shopping bags as well as the buses do? The 36 is also used as transportation to the Glen Park Bart station which provides service t0 the San Francisco and Oakland Airports. Would the proposed vans provide reasonable space for a suitcase? Would vans be of sufficient size to accommodate all of those in these neighborhoods who use the service during commute hours to connect with other routes?
The SFMTA “Initial Study” is apparently a lead up to the development of an environmental impact report. Comments on the proposals and issues that should be considered in that report can be made by writing to
San Francisco Planning Department
Attention: TEP
1650 Mission Street, Suite 400
San Francisco, CA 94103
or email to debra.dwyer@sfgov.org
URGENT: The period for making comments closes on February 22, 2013
Will the 36 Teresita drop Forest Knolls?
Someone drew my attention to the new SF MTA study released January 23rd. Though the 36 Teresita bus (the only one that comes through our neighborhood) is not mentioned in the actual report, it shows up in the maps. It looks like the plan is to discontinue service to Forest Knolls, and maybe at some point replace it with a van service. The map below is taken from that report. (The whole report is available as a PDF HERE.)
FOREST KNOLLS NEIGHBORHOOD 