The issue was that in this case they couldn’t — a lot of the BRT benefits came from creating a center lane, and that center lane was infeasible unless they did the utility project first.
I'm not an expert but have served on BRT CAC for Geary. They could have done side running and defer utilities to another agency at a later date, after which point move to center running. Or any other of the plethora of options that didn't involve a transit agency running a utility project.
