Geary rail has been studied for decades. The SFCTA just voted 8-0 to study it some more.

I recently read a study proposing a Geary rail line that made several compelling points about transit in the Richmond District.

No, I am not referring to the 2026 Geary/19th Avenue Subway and Regional Connections Study, which the SFCTA voted 8-0 to adopt today. It was in a May 1936 report titled Rapid Transit for San Francisco. Thanks to the Internet Archive, you can read the full report yourself:

The 1936 study found that “the distance to the outer end of the Richmond District is so great as to require fast transportation.” It also noted that “Geary Boulevard is approximately in the center of the Richmond District and its width and character of occupancy make it the most ideal route for the future rapid transit service north of Golden Gate Park.”

Sound familiar? That’s because every study since has reached similar conclusions. Yet nothing ever gets built.

I am writing this post from City Hall, 90 years later. Due to some recent movement on the Geary Subway study, I decided to attend the SFCTA Board Meeting in person. On May 27, the SFCTA Community Advisory Committee voted 6-1 to recommend the Board adopt the Geary/19th Avenue Subway and Regional Connections Study.

Today the SFCTA Board (which has the same members as the Board of Supervisors) voted 8-0 to adopt the Final Report. Exciting, right? Unfortunately, these votes don’t commit the city to building anything. They simply authorize the next round of studying.

I am car-free and live in the Richmond District, a couple blocks off Geary. I rely on the bus to get to places like The Fillmore, Japantown, Kaiser, downtown, and even to City Hall for this meeting. I would love to do all of this faster and more efficiently. So when I read there was recent momentum on a Geary subway, I was excited.

But as I started researching the history of Geary rail proposals, I realized I was a bit naive. It seems getting excited about something like this is just a rite of passage for anyone who cares about transit.

In 1989, voters approved Prop B, San Francisco’s first half-cent transportation sales tax. It created the SFCTA to administer the sales tax and named Geary as a priority transit corridor. To borrow a quote from Bane: the SFCTA didn't merely adopt another Geary study this month. The SFCTA was born in a Geary study, molded by it.

After six years, it produced the 1995 Four Corridor Plan, which recommended a Geary rail line. Unfortunately it didn’t get built, and you can’t commute to work on a study or a recommendation.

In 2003, voters approved Prop K, funding bus rapid transit (BRT) on Geary "designed and built to rail-ready standards," plus a separate $55 million Geary Light Rail line item designated as Priority 3.

BRT Phase 1 opened in 2021. Near Geary and Divisadero, you can see it is essentially a red painted lane.

Rail-ready was supposed to mean doing the expensive underground work once. This includes heavy road work and the center-running alignment a future light rail line would need, so the city wouldn't have to tear up Geary twice.

BRT Phase 2 was downgraded from center-running to side-running in late 2021. The center-running alignment is what a future light rail line would have used. The "rail-ready" mandate is no longer in Prop L, the 2022 sales-tax renewal.

Even the side-running bus was controversial. Richmond merchants protested the parking it would remove. District 1 Supervisor Connie Chan, who represents the Richmond portion of Geary, sided with the merchants and put out a press release. The Geary BRT, she said, “promises to bring much needed reliable transit to the Richmond District, but we can do this without taking away from our small businesses.”

The current proposal is a little over four years old. In December 2021, the SFCTA, SFMTA, and SF Planning jointly published the multi-agency ConnectSF Transit Strategy. In April of 2022, Supervisor Myrna Melgar (D7) requested a Strategic Case for the subway. The SFCTA Board approved $802K in Prop K funds to scope the project with an expected mid-2023 delivery.

Today the final report was presented to the SFCTA, about three years late. This time the project is much larger in scale and is focused on regional rail, with an L-shaped configuration down Geary and 19th Avenue. This would eventually be tied into Link21, the planned second Transbay crossing. The study estimates the project will cost $20 to $30 billion, and revenue service wouldn’t be until sometime in the 2040s.

I am skeptical that any of this will ever happen. If we couldn’t deliver a center-running bus lane, I have a hard time believing we will be successful on a $20 to $30 billion regional line that needs BART, the state, the federal government, and a dozen agencies to coordinate for twenty years.

After the presentation, Myrna Melgar expressed some enthusiasm about the project. She mentioned 19th Avenue’s congestion and the thousands of homes coming to Stonestown. She also mentioned supporting Golden Gate Park and institutions like SF State. However, she tempered expectations when she mentioned the next extension of the Central Subway will break ground “before we ever break ground on anything like this.”

The 8-0 vote authorized the next round of planning, which will use $1.5 million already set aside in the voter-approved Prop L sales tax, plus another $1.5 million the agency will seek in regional grants this summer. Of course the vote was unanimous. Voting yes on a study costs nothing and builds nothing, but it lets them tell voters, the next time they run, that they supported public transit on San Francisco’s west side. Whether it ever gets built is a future board's problem.

Back in 1936, transit consultants thought Geary's width and centrality made it an "ideal route" for rail, just like they have every generation since. For $3 million, we'll find out if the next study agrees in a few more years.