Jake.mcgoldrick@sfgov.org Jose_luis_moscovich@sfcta.org Pooja_jhunjhunwala@sfcta.org Dear Commissioner McGoldrick: The San Francisco Green Party supports good local transit as an essential element of a safe, healthy, attractive, and livable city. The Green Party also believes that enhancing current public transit service will provide San Franciscans with a positive alternative to driving and help fulfill our charter description as being a “transit first” city. In particular, the San Francisco Green Party supports the current San Francisco County Transportation Authority plans for Bus Rapid Transit along the Geary and Van Ness corridors. Part B. 1. of the SFGP Transportation Plank calls for the “creation of a citywide bus rapid transit (BRT) network to ensure that people can reliably travel between most neighborhoods in half an hour or less. This would entail the development of a system of dedicated bus lanes and traffic lights controlled by Muni operators along major transit corridors.” While we are sympathetic to the concerns of businesspeople along the Geary Corridor who fear the loss of business due to the loss of parking and disruptions during construction, we think looming energy shortages and global warming compel San Franciscans to adopt means of transportation that are less energy intensive and less damaging to the immediate and global environment than personal cars. According to the Executive Summary of a 2005 report prepared for the United States Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory by Robert L. Hirsch, “The peaking of world oil production presents the U.S. and the world with an unprecedented risk management problem. As peaking is approached, liquid fuel prices and price volatility will increase dramatically, and, without timely mitigation, the economic, social, and political costs will be unprecedented. Viable options exist on both the supply and demand sides, but to have substantial impact, they must be initiated more than a decade in advance of peaking.” Furthermore, the summary states, “Oil peaking will create a severe liquid fuels problem for the transportation sector, not an “energy crisis’ in the usual sense that the term has been used.” In addition, as reported in the San Francisco Chronicle on March 24, 2006, “Scientists have been warning for decades that greenhouse gases from autos and industry are warming the planet and raising the seas, but the studies appearing today in the journal Science are the first to suggest that sea levels could climb as high as 20 feet as a result of global warming.” The economic consequences for parts of the world at or near sea level – including large swaths of San Francisco – will be profound if Americans do not take steps now to begin to reduce their disproportionate contribution to climate change. We favor designs with center lanes, which most effectively separate bus lanes from car lanes, and side or center boarding platforms. We also favor keeping the BRT lanes above ground wherever the San Francisco County Transportation Authority is now considering putting them below ground – for example, at the intersection of Geary and Masonic and at the intersection of Geary and Fillmore. Aboveground transit is more accessible – and thus more attractive - to transit riders who might otherwise drive. Sincerely, Sue Vaughan and John-Marc Chandonia Co-chairs, Transportation Working Group of the San Francisco Green Party