If you've ever ridden the 1 California from the Richmond to downtown, you know the drill: the bus crawls down California Street, stopping every three blocks, hitting every red light, and by the time it reaches Chinatown it's packed so tight you're getting intimately familiar with a stranger's backpack. It's one of Muni's busiest lines, and it moves like one of Muni's slowest.

Now SFMTA has a project in the works to upgrade the 1 California corridor from 33rd Avenue to Steiner Street. Details are still emerging, but any improvement to this line is long overdue — and the real question is whether the agency will make changes that actually matter or just slap some fresh paint on bus stops and call it a win.

Riders know exactly what needs to happen. As one SF resident put it bluntly: "The bus stops every three blocks, too frequent given the length of each block. There is a stop sign or stop light on what feels like over 50% of the streets along the route." Another local echoed the sentiment: "First, eliminate some stops — they're too close together and can definitely speed up the bus."

This isn't complicated urban planning theory. It's common sense. Stop consolidation and transit signal priority are proven, relatively inexpensive tools that cities around the world use to speed up bus service. San Francisco even had a partial answer once — the 1X express — which one rider fondly called "such a luxurious ride" on the rare occasions they could catch it.

Here's what concerns us: SFMTA has a habit of turning straightforward improvements into multi-year, multi-million-dollar planning exercises that deliver modest results. The agency loves studies, community engagement phases, and pilot programs that pilot forever. Meanwhile, riders just want to get across town without losing 45 minutes of their life.

The 1 California serves tens of thousands of daily riders connecting the Richmond, Nob Hill, Chinatown, and the Financial District. Making it faster and more reliable isn't just a nice-to-have — it's the kind of basic government competence that justifies the billions we pour into transit every year.

So here's our ask, SFMTA: consolidate stops, add signal priority, bring back express service, and do it before we all retire. The riders have already told you what's wrong. Now fix it.