By Thomas K. Pendergast

A San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) plan to convert angled parking spaces along Geary Boulevard between 15th and 29th avenues into parallel parking, as part of a “quick build” project, could be going to the agency’s board of directors as early as June 30 for approval.

Merchants along that commercial corridor, however, are saying not-so-quick there; why rush this through?

Quick build is part of a larger plan called the Geary Boulevard Improvement Project, much of which is actually not set to begin until the latter part of 2026 at the earliest and will follow at least two and a half years of construction, as the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) replaces sewer lines, water mains and other infrastructure along the roadway.

Business owners along Geary wonder if they can survive these changes during the transition, as they are still recovering from the effects of the pandemic.

District 1 Supervisor Connie Chan echoed the concerns of the merchants.

“(The plan) would result in more than 33 parking spaces lost between Park Presidio Boulevard and 28th Avenue on Geary Boulevard alone and will negatively impact our local small businesses,” she said. “Our merchants are struggling to recover from the pandemic, and this is not the time to add to their struggles.”

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

Whatever is the true number, any loss of angled parking spaces troubles many in that area. Since the SFPUC’s project won’t start until 2025, they think it is premature either way.

“What’s the urgency?” asked former District 1 Supervisor Sandra Lee Fewer. “Geary Boulevard, that section, was hard hit during the pandemic. Many of the businesses have not recovered and it has been plagued by empty storefronts. We’re just beginning to see some new businesses come in and it’s very promising for the Geary corridor there.

“So, we want to also be able to give those businesses a chance to set a foundation, to actually start a clientele and build up their businesses before the sewer project,” Fewer said.

One of those new businesses is Que Chulada, a Mexican restaurant run by a couple. It has been open for about a year.

“I hope it doesn’t affect our business because we’re just starting,” co-owner Maritza Castillo said. “I think it will affect our business because people already complain about parking spots, especially down Geary. Especially on the weekends, there’s never any parking. People don’t want to come into a business if there’s no parking. Where are they going to park?

“A lot of people come in that are tourists,” she said. “They don’t want to deal with that. That’s where most of my customers come in from and they have cars. So that’s where we’re losing money because tourists come in and say, ‘Hey, there’s no parking. I’m not parking here.’”

“Locals can come in and walk. Tourists can’t, so I’m losing money on the weekends,” Castillo said.

The agency cites safety concerns as the reason why this needs to be done as soon as possible, describing it as a high-injury corridor and claiming that an average of one pedestrian each month is injured in a traffic collision in this area.

As for why the angled parking must be converted to parallel parking in the first place, the agency’s Project Manager Liz Brisson said the coming sewer replacement project makes it necessary to convert the parking before that starts.

“When you do construction, you need to close a lane to have a work zone but then you need to keep two lanes open for travel,” Brisson said. “Right now, in that segment of the corridor there is currently travel lanes plus angled parking. If we hadn’t converted the angled parking to parallel, there’d be times when we’d need to remove all of the parking on that block for the work zone or to have turned that into one of the two travel lanes that can move forward.

“If we convert the angled parking to parallel parking, then we’ve created three travel lanes, so we can work around the parking loss. We actually are able to mitigate parking loss during construction by doing it first,” Brisson explained.

Kevin Chu of Dragon Bo restaurant is also concerned about the parking issue, especially because a lot of his business is delivery, which means drivers need to find parking quickly.

“We do a lot of takeout orders,” Chu said. “Uber drivers, they need parking. Doordash drivers, they need parking. Everybody needs parking. All the drivers need to look for parking.

“Whenever they need to pick up the orders, they can’t just drive around. They pick up the order really late. They send to the customer really late. Then who else will be ordering from the Richmond?”

But it’s not just restaurants and other businesses that may be affected. Victor Collaco of the Russian Orthodox church Holy Virgin Cathedral said that because it is the western American diocese headquarters, people from all over the Bay Area come there, mostly by driving.

“We draw (parishioners) from all nine Bay Area counties. People come here because it is the center where our bishop resides,” Collaco said. “We feel that our parishioners are not going to come to church and that’s a loss. That’s a huge loss, so the impact of all that is a potential loss in terms of attendance, and obviously donations to the church.”

Critics also note that since the pandemic, ridership on Muni’s 38-Geary and 38-Rapid buses is down from 56,000 passengers per day to 36,000 now, which the agency admits.

But this could also be seen as another reason to improve bus travel times and hopefully boost those numbers.

“We need to improve the performance of the 38 and 38-Rapid bus,” Brisson said. “(This section of Geary) is the portion where there’s a gap in bus lanes and it is not an uncommon occurrence for the bus to get stuck behind cars in that segment of the line. That means the bus travels more slowly and also can just end up with what we call a gap in service where there’s going to be a longer gap between two buses.”

Although there has been an overall drop in ridership to the downtown area, she emphasizes that this is a “workhorse” bus line that serves other areas as well.

“Over half the trips right now are traveling between two destinations outside of downtown,” she said. “There are numerous medical centers, there are grocery stores; there are different neighborhoods. It’s really a line that’s still seeing a lot of use. Some people continue to commute downtown, even though it’s less. But all of that together means it’s still a very important line for us to improve.”

Brisson also said the new bus lanes would be for Muni and taxis only, not for private buses.

Yet another option is also on the table.

“In response to merchant concerns about parking, we will also present a Delayed Transit Lane Option to the SFMTA Board, which would direct staff to delay implementation of some transit lanes until the start of SFPUC water and sewer construction in 2025,” Brisson said. “This would retain about 18 parking spots for about a year and a half. Note that only about 30% of the total project parking loss is due to the new transit lanes; another 30% would be to lengthen substandard bus stops and 40% for safety improvements.”

But at least one merchant, Sean Kim of Joe’s Ice Cream, wants them to wait until after the SFPUC is completely finished before converting the angled parking to parallel, if they must do that.

“They’re going to remove parking first, even though there’s no benefit,” he said. “And with the sewer project, it’s a total of four years we have to suffer those negative things. It doesn’t make sense and we cannot survive.”

After publication of this story, Shephen Chun of the SFMTA emailed that this project would not come up before the Board of Directors until July 18 or sometime thereafter.