> capital expense and engineering are minimal

San Francisco voters passed Proposition K, mandating a BRT line on the heavily-used Geary corridor in 2003. Yes, 2003!

It's 2021 and the furthest they've gotten is upgrading some signals and painting some side lanes. They haven't even begun construction of the dedicated inner lanes, which won't even run the full length of the corridor, anyhow. In fact, last I heard there are plans to scale things back even further.

Our inability to build transit isn't an engineering problem. It's not even really a capital expense problem, though don't underestimate the expense of building out dedicated lanes at-grade. It's a political and governance problem.

Last time I looked at the project details, IIRC about half of the $60 million budget was simply going toward repaving Geary Blvd, a benefit inuring almost entirely to cars. (They've postponed repavement so it could be rolled into, and hidden, by the BRT project budget.) If the BRT-specific changes were left out, the project would have been approved, finalized, contracted out, built, and finished a decade ago. The only reason it's taken so long is because of all the infighting that occurs for any infrastructure project beyond building roads.

I agree that it requires political will and good governance. Bus lanes aren’t easy most places. However, I don’t think one should ever generalize about municipalities from examples set by San Francisco.

Or even separated bus-only roads. Pittsburgh does this under the name Bus Rapid Transit.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_rapid_transit

Edit: BRT seems to more generally refer the systems you propose!

BRT is often a higher class of service. It’s great! But there’s a lot to be said for taking a two lane street in a city and giving one of the lanes to the bus route that goes down it.

I just spent a week in Chicago - and the lack of a bus lane made buses our last choice. Traffic is terrible so bus travel is egregiously slow compared to the metro or trains. I'm used to Budapest where a bus is a great way to beat traffic.

A lot of US mass transit systems have developed existential problems due to decades of poor maintenance and under-investment. As a result they’ll take years and billions to get into a state of good repair. Bus lanes are a great way to expand capacity while that happens.

Most cities are not dense enough to support commuter trains or subways. Building them where they are not appropriate will ensure citizens will have to pay decades bailouts to keep them running.

Dedicated bus lanes in downtown areas and variable-rate tolls on highways. The tolls would probably pay for the entire build-out in a couple of years.

It may not be sexy, but it works! I love simple solutions like this when they're actually practical. Even at partial capacity it's still a way lower carbon footprint than any normal sized personal car.