Title: Operations Implementation 
Phase: Startup
Category: Management
Date: June 2023

1. Background

Description of The Van Ness Bus Rapid Transit Project – The Van Ness Bus Rapid Transit (VNBRT) project was a civic improvement project that featured San Francisco’s first BRT system, intended to provide a solution for improving transit service and to perform extensive utility relocations. The project also included utility maintenance, civic improvements, and safety enhancements to revitalize this historic corridor. VNBRT, prioritizes service frequency and reliability for customers and features nine boarding islands along the red, center-running transit lanes served by Muni’s 49 Van Ness/Mission, 90 San Bruno Owl, and Golden Gate Transit buses. The VNBRT service has stops at Union, Vallejo, Jackson, Sacramento, Sutter, Geary/O'Farrell, Eddy, McAllister, and Market streets.

Key features of the VNBRT include:

• Dedicated bus transit lanes that are physically separated from the other traffic lanes.
• Enhanced traffic signals optimized for north-south travel through the use of Transit Signal Priority.
• Low-floor vehicles and all-door boarding for quicker and easier passenger boarding.
• Safety enhancements for pedestrians that include median refuges, high visibility crosswalks, and audible countdown signals.
• Fully furnished boarding platforms that include shelters, seating, and vehicle arrival displays at key transfer points.
• Reduced travel times for Golden Gate Transit and Muni buses.

The Van Ness Avenue corridor serves as a vital connector of neighborhoods and a regional link for travel between Marin, San Francisco, and San Mateo counties. Van Ness Avenue is one of the busiest north-south streets in the city, serving more than 16,000 Muni customers daily on the 49 Mission/Van Ness and 90 San Bruno Owl bus routes, as well as Golden Gate Transit customers. It is part of the California State Highway System and US Route 101, a primary artery that connects Interstate Highways 280 and 80 with the Golden Gate Bridge. Since the early 1990s, transportation plans prepared by the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Authority (SFMTA) recognized the need to establish rapid transit service on Van Ness Avenue. In 2003, 75 percent of voters approved a sales tax plan to fund rapid transit service on Van Ness Avenue. In October 2016, construction of the VNBRT project began. Revenue service commenced in April 2022.

2. Lessons Learned

New transit systems are best served by pragmatic planning that occurs well in advance of revenue operations. Federal Transit Administration (FTA) Oversight Procedure (OP) 54 can serve as an effective roadmap for the Project Sponsor to implement safe and secure transit service for its customers. Proper documentation is required to demonstrate safety and security, operations planning, emergency response, threat vulnerability mitigation, hazard mitigation, operator training, and other key elements for BRT service. Even when the Project Sponsor has significant experience with more traditional bus operations, it still must demonstrate and document prudent planning, coordination, training, and compliance with federal regulations. Critical lessons for the proper planning and documentation required to commence BRT operations are as follows:

• The Project Sponsor should develop service planning documents approximately one year (or as agreed to by FTA) before revenue service, in accordance with FTA OP 54 and other prudent industry practices. 
• The Project Sponsor should allocate sufficient, experienced staff to coordinate OP 54 requirements among the capital construction team, transit operators, transit safety teams, and FTA.
• The Project Sponsor should collaborate with FTA and the Project Management Oversight Contractor clearly and comprehensively document the sponsor’s readiness to provide safe and efficient transit services.

The project team should maintain an OP 54 deliverables tracking matrix that is inclusive of each operations readiness component, provides realistic submittal dates for each, assigns specific accountability for timely and high-quality readiness deliverables and includes the status of safety certifiable items.

3. Applicability

This lesson is applicable to transit projects of all sizes.

4. Contact

• David Evans and Associates, Inc., Project Management Oversight Contractor
  Pete Hankovszky – Task Order Manager