Marin Transit wants to streamline its travel times.

The agency unveiled some of its “transit priority projects” at its board meeting Monday. Transit priority includes physical or policy changes to roadway design, operation, and traffic control that help reduce delays.

Areas of focus include high-passenger bus corridors in San Rafael and Novato, and changes that could reduce travel times and limit buses getting stuck in traffic jams.

Robert Betts, director of operations for the agency, said it was awarded a $2 million grant in 2022 to study three corridors: Fourth Street in San Rafael, Lincoln Avenue in San Rafael and South Novato Boulevard in Novato.

“Not only are these corridors high ridership corridors and they have a good density of service, but we also felt there was real opportunity there to not only improve travel times but to improve service reliability on these corridors,” Betts said.

He said the agency wants to make improvements to popular bus stops.

“The goal is to keep transit vehicles free of congestion and to have them spend less time at red lights and just have them move predictably along the roads,” said Britt Tanner, a traffic engineer at the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.

Tanner said some common tools include having dedicated bus-only lanes or high-occupancy lanes with hours that correspond to rush hour; transit signal priority, a technique where transmitters on a bus communicate with traffic signals to turn the light green earlier; queue-jumping lanes that allow buses to pass other cars at traffic lights; stop improvements such as “bus lights” that extend the sidewalk into the parking lane so the bus does not have to pull in and out of the stop; strategically placed stop signs; as well as adjustments in traffic and parking regulations.

“When you see transit priority, you might think of really big capital projects,” Tanner said. “It doesn’t have to be like that. You can have smaller, cheaper changes that you can instill on the street.”

Eliminating delays can reduce rider travel time and improve reliability, and can also lower annual operating costs due to shorter travel times. For example, Tanner said, a bus that takes 74 minutes to complete its route costs $5 million a year to run, assuming the bus costs $200 an hour to run. With a route of one hour, the cost is about 4 million dollars.

Betts said the agency hopes to make improvements to the bus stop by improving passenger amenities and reducing the time it takes buses to pull into and out of stops.

He said some work on prioritizing transit signals has already happened, and the Marin Transit board approved the onboarding hardware needed for the technology earlier this year. He said the priority transit signal technology should be operational in San Rafael by mid-to-late 2025.

Betts said the agency hopes to have planning for all three areas completed by early 2025, which he believed $2 million will cover. But, he said, the agency will need to apply for funding to design and implement the plans, with construction between 2026 and 2027.

Marin County Supervisor Mary Sackett, a member of the Marin Transit board, asked how these improvements would be implemented in areas where the agency does not have jurisdiction.

Tanner said regionally, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission is building a transit prioritization policy that will help with coordination. It may be adopted early next year.

Betts said staff will update the board over the winter.