Business owners outraged by SF plan to take away parking spaces

A plan to eliminate parking lots and add bus-only lanes along San Francisco’s main commercial corridor has angered mom-and-pop shop owners who say it will put them out of business.

A total of 70 parking spaces will be removed from Geary Boulevard, 22 new spaces will be created on nearby streets, resulting in a net loss of 48 spaces, according to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, which is behind the plan.

In addition to adding bus-only lanes on Geary Boulevard from Stanyan Street to 34th Avenue, the Geary Bus Rapid Transit plan will extend parking meter hours and convert angled parking on Geary Boulevard between 15th and 26th streets to parallel parking. New parallel parking lots include commercial loading zones where parking is restricted for a limited time.

The plan also includes pedestrian safety improvements such as widening the road for easier bus boarding, adding no-parking zones near intersections, and extending bus stops for longer buses to improve visibility.

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SFMTA said an earlier project that added transit-only routes on the Geary stretch between Stanyan and Market streets made the 38-geary bus service 18% faster.

But business owners are furious at the plan, saying the loss of parking will hurt their livelihoods.

“We’re fighting to survive,” said David Heller, president of the Greater Geary Boulevard Merchants and Property Owners Association and owner of Beauty Network, a salon in central Richmond.

“Angle parking is the lifeblood of small businesses here,” said Shawn Kim, owner of Joe’s Ice Cream. “There are a lot of young children and elderly people in Richmond. They need cars.

Kim said the city lost four parking spaces on the block for a week while they removed the damaged Alexandria Theater sign and lost a significant amount of business.

“We lost 16% of our revenue that week,” Kim said.

The business owners have also complained about the new business loading zones, which trucks can take up more time.

“Customers are going to go around the block, and they’re going to have nowhere to park,” said Boris Foodim, owner of New World Market Grocery. “So they don’t come to my business.”

Fudim said the plan would eliminate five parking spaces in front of the store for most of the day. He said delivery trucks come three times a day for 90 minutes each, which closes many parking lots for more than four hours a day.

“It’s not just one box they have to unload,” Fudim said.

The Fudim block has corner slots marked for commercial cargo, which are longer than the parallel slots, so trucks can fit without taking up too much space.

“We’re not asking the city to fix anything,” Fudi said. We ask them not to interfere.

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Heller said people in Richmond depend on cars and questioned the city’s move to take up road space to increase the speed of the 38 bus route that takes people downtown, an area where the epidemic is declining the most and remains the slowest downtown. North America to recover.

“People don’t take the bus; that’s the problem,” Heller said. “The buses are not in good condition. When I see the bus in front of my store, it’s empty.”

Muni ridership this year was only 57.5% of March 2019, with 404,460 people riding buses, cable cars and light rail in March.

Robin Burke, assistant to area supervisor Connie Chan, said at least 11 businessmen on Geary Boulevard have reached out to Chan with concerns about the plan.

“We’ve been in contact with them for a long time,” Burke said.

Chan wrote in the Richmond Review, the neighborhood’s monthly newspaper, that she supports the plan to move from the central bus line to side-by-side bus-only routes because it’s cheaper and the buses run faster.

After negotiations, Chan said the transport agency would maintain the 6pm parking meter cut-off on weekends.

According to the agency, 38 Giri bus route carries 36,000 passengers per day. SFMTA spokesman Stephen Chun said the bus will take local commuters downtown and bring people downtown to the shops of the Geary commercial corridor.

SFMTA says bus-only routes are necessary because buses get stuck behind cars, reducing service.

“The loss of parking is a trade-off for better bus service and safer streets for pedestrians,” Chun said.

The crosswalk alone was scheduled to be completed by the end of 2023, and permanent pedestrian safety improvements would be added between 2026 and 2027, according to SFMTA.

A public meeting between Chan and local businesses will be held Thursday at 4 p.m. at Joe’s Ice Cream on Geary Boulevard near 19th Avenue.

The SFMTA has yet to make a final decision on the plans.