By Thomas K. Pendergast

Responding to merchant backlash against a plan for replacing angled parking with parallel parking along Geary Boulevard, the City will create 17 more spaces by relocating three bike-share stations and adding angled parking on a nearby street. 

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) plans to convert the parking for its quick-build project, part of a larger effort dubbed the Geary Boulevard Improvement Project, much of which will not begin until the latter part of 2026 at the earliest and will follow at least two and a half years of construction when the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) replaces sewer lines, water mains and other infrastructure along that roadway.

Business owners along Geary, however, wonder if they can survive these changes during the transition, while they continue to struggle to recover from the aftermath of the pandemic. 

The original plan would have resulted in the loss of 70 parking spaces, but pressure from the merchants and other factors has motivated the agency to scale it back dramatically. Including the 17 recently added, they estimate there will now be a total loss of 31 spaces going west from Jordan Avenue, with 16 of those lost between Park Presidio Boulevard and 25th Avenue.

There is some dispute about how many parking spaces would actually be lost, because even though angled parking provides more slots and uses less space than parallel parking, the agency is also counting new loading zones as parking. 

The agency says safety concerns are the reason for doing the quick -build project as soon as possible, claiming that it is a high-injury corridor where an average of one pedestrian each month is injured because of traffic. 

As for converting angled to parallel parking, the agency says the upcoming SFPUC’s sewer replacement work makes it necessary before that starts. 

Agency officials say they will need to close a lane to create a work zone, while keeping two lanes open for traffic. Unless they convert angled parking to parallel, then there will be times when removing all the parking on a given block along that segment of roadway will be necessary. 

The latest new parking spaces will be made primarily by relocating the bike-share stations adjacent to Geary at 14th, 21st and 28th avenues, along with replacing parallel parking with angled parking on 26th Avenue. 

Other cross streets where additional parking is already planned for include 23rd, 24th and 29th avenues north of Geary, plus 17th and 19th avenues south of the boulevard, according to the agency. 

This is just the latest in a long series of changes to the transit revamp plan for Geary. 

The first iteration, originally called the Geary-BRT plan, would have eliminated the center traffic islands and ripped out all the trees along them, then run Muni buses down the new lanes created, with the long-term goal of making space for a light-rail train to eventually roll down the boulevard.

That plan, however, was derailed in favor of buses and taxis running down the outside lanes on both sides of the roadway, after the agency projected that the original plan would have cost more than five times as much as the current plan, now estimated at $49 million. 

The agency has now also committed to help Geary merchants with “project-funded business support during both quick build and the full project construction,” including covering the costs to “rebuild directly impacted parklets.”

There is yet another option on the table, which would delay the implementation of some transit lanes until the start of the SFPUC water and sewer construction. 

The agency’s Project Manager, Liz Brisson, said this would temporarily retain about 18 parking spots for about a year and a half.

According to agency documents, while delaying the implementation of some transit lanes until 2025 would save the 18 parking spaces until then, the agency claims it would also result in an additional 600 hours of staff work and cost an extra $200,000, plus the need to rebuild the affected Shared Spaces twice. 

Brisson also said that about 30% of the total project parking loss is due to the proposed new transit lanes, while another 30% would be lost from lengthening bus stops and the remaining 40% would be lost to safety improvements. 

District 1 Supervisor Connie Chan has been involved in this issue, advocating for the merchants by pushing back against the agency’s plan to eliminate so many parking spaces. 

“Thanks to the advocacy of our merchants and our community, we are finally heading in the right direction on the Geary BRT project,” Chan said.  “SFMTA is coming to the table with an improved design that incorporates community feedback and increases parking availability. We can continue working together to reach an agreement that supports the merchants and community by making sure the implementation plan is well thought out and includes neighborhood mitigation and consideration of impact on our small businesses.”

The agency’s Board of Directors is tentatively expected to consider these options sometime in August.