Jasper Lee has spent more minutes riding up and down the T-Third, a long stretch of the Muni line spanning from Chinatown to the far southeast of San Francisco in Sunnydale, than he can count.
The same goes for the time he’s spent standing on Third Street, watching as the bus whizzes by — and crawls to a standstill.
Lee, 29, is the lead engineer behind the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s T-Third improvement project, a multi-year plan to fast-track the often delayed T-line. This winter, the project will reach its final phase: Implementing Lee’s meticulously planned modifications in the Bayview.
For years, riders of the T-Third have experienced long, excruciating wait times. One rider told Lee that they often show up five minutes after the train is scheduled to arrive, expecting it to be late.
But this summer, after many minutes of watching the T-line pass by and carefully studying where it stalled, Lee helped shave off approximately seven minutes of travel time.
Still, he says, there’s many more minutes left to go.
“I’d like to shave off as many as I can,” Lee said enthusiastically as he balanced, hands-free, on the speeding T-Third with the balance and poise of a well-versed commuter.
The trick to saving commuters a few precious minutes of travel time, said Lee, lies in a decades-old technology called “transit-signal priority.” Essentially, it’s a kind of communication between the traffic lights, the trains, and the surrounding traffic that adjusts the time it takes for a light to change by just a few seconds.
“It’s kind of like they’re talking to each other,” said Lee, hopping off of the T-Third and pointing to an intersection at Channel and Third Streets.
At the large, weaving crossroads, the T-line has a narrow window of time to make it through the green light, make a sharp left turn onto Channel Street and across the Fourth Street Bridge before the next light changes.
Before last year, the T-Third didn’t make it. But this year, after weeks of staring at the intersection and going back to his desk, Lee figured out that if he held the green light just 10 seconds longer, the T could make it through, saving precious seconds.
“I’m pretty proud of that,” Lee bashfully admitted.
This winter, Lee, who has already helped improve wait times in SOMA and the Dogpatch, hopes to do the same thing in Bayview-Hunters Point.
The T-Third opened in Bayview in 2007, replacing a bus line that connected the isolated southeast neighborhood to the city’s downtown.
The SFMTA estimates that 20,000 commuters ride the T-Third every day. In Bayview, a lack of services, including a pharmacy and a large, name-brand grocery store, has forced many residents to travel great distances to access everyday needs.
But, just 14 years after the T-Third came on the scene, residents lobbied to bring back the bus line it replaced: The 15 Bayview-Hunters Point Express. The next year, the T-Third was extended to Chinatown with the opening of the Central Subway.
The dozens of stops along Third Street and additional stops at nearly every red light have left many discouraged that the T-Third will ever run on time.
But Lee says he’s committed to one day, bringing the T-Third up to speed.
A self-described transit enthusiast, Lee moved to the Bay Area from Taiwan when he was young. When he would go back to visit Taiwan in the summers with his family, Lee remembered being surprised to learn that other kids didn’t ride public transit for fun.
“Every time we visit Taiwan, I would ask if I could ride the train,” said Lee.
Inspired by his favorite character on the sitcom “Parks and Recreation,” Lee said he aspired to be a city planner, much like the brooding city planner of Pawnee, Indiana, Mark Brendanawicz. But when his mother objected, insisting that he instead become an engineer, he found the perfect compromise: A transport engineer.
When Muni hired Lee in 2023 to work on the T-line, it felt like a dream job.
“I was really excited when I got assigned to this,” said Lee.
Two years ago, when he first started the project, Lee brought his dad along with him on the T-Third to get to what many first-time riders take the T-Third for: The Chase Center Station.
“I’m a big fan of the Chase Center, and I asked my dad if we could go to a game on the T,” said Lee. Per usual, “it stopped at nearly every stop light,” Lee recalled.
Since then, Lee has watched patiently as the line begins to pick up speed and the minutes slowly shave off.
In the meantime, until the T-Third gets as fast as he likes, he hopes to gain the trust of the commuters who take it every day.
“I hope people believe in us,” said Lee. “I care a lot.”