The Van Ness Improvement Project represents a multimodal and multiagency effort to improve transit, traffic and pedestrian safety and modernize utilities along the Van Ness Avenue corridor between Lombard and Mission Streets.
Project work began with utility relocation and reconstruction in October 2016, which was completed in 2021. Between 2021 and 2022, Van Ness Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) improvements were constructed and installed, and the Van Ness BRT busway opened for service on April 1, 2022.
This project evaluation covers several objectives centered around transit performance and traffic safety. Key results include:
- Transit travel time decreased by up to 36% in the project area after project implementation.
- There was up to a 45% improvement in travel time variability, which means less time spent waiting at a bus stop and less time stuck on slow-moving buses.
- Ridership on the Van Ness BRT corridor has reached 103% of pre-pandemic levels, even when accounting for the removal of the 47 Van Ness route.
- Traffic collisions decreased by 50% when looking at data from one year before project construction compared to one year after the project opened. Looking at a longer “before” and “after” period, collisions were still reduced by 33%.
- Transit-involved collisions decreased by 82%.
- Over 86% of Muni riders on the corridor say their travel time improved, and over 83% are supportive of the project.
- Before the project, nearly all roadway space was dedicated to private vehicles. Now, the share of the roadway dedicated to transit is about one-third, which matches its mode share.
- While there’s no room to expand automobile capacity, the BRT busway has room to expand frequency and capacity by as much as 500% if needed in the future.
- Van Ness BRT is one of just four projects in the United States designated as BRT Silver by the Institute for Transportation & Development Policy, which maintains the globally recognized BRT Standard for assessing BRTs.
More information is available at SFMTA.com/VanNess. Information about transit priority improvements across the Muni system is available at SFMTA.com/MuniForward.