A definite great read..

The street served little purpose. The gas station that these frumpy conservatives are complaining about is neither dirty nor even directly that close to the street; there is a mini garden on the corner of the lot anyway. I'm most impressed that a pedestrian area and streetcar could share the same area (as they do all over European cities) in America without people freaking out about how terribly dangerous this is. What's dangerous is that as a street, this serves as an offramp to the freeway of fast moving traffic barreling down Market street from Twin Peaks. I've seen plenty of huge pickups fly through this crosswalk at asinine speeds as they enter what is a sleepy residential neighborhood.

Congratulations on SF doing something smart. It's hard to fathom that Muni was involved in this somehow without burning the project down.

So yeah, like I wonder how many peds have been injured at that silly, confusing intersection -- as well as the one just one block away at 16th and Noe (that's another deathtrap disaster zone, IMHO) -- while the supes (?) and (that too often snippy) Merchant$ of Upper Market clan debated for 10 (!!) years about "gee, what ever to do!". Sigh. Hope this is the "seed" for many such (even minor) car-free initiatives all along Market -- down thru Church -- and connecting to Hayes V? Gawd, and if 5th/sixth/7th @ mkt would ever get even a modicom of real attention -- ?? Nah, I'm a dreamer! ;-$
Cheers SF! Prenzlauerberg, Berlin and the Old City area of Krakow, Poland salute these baby-step efforts!

-dk

My only reservation is about the homeless population taking over the plaza. The police need to make sure this area doesn't become a complete mess (or a larger version of the stretch of 16th street between Market and Pond streets).

Sprocket&Axel

I have purchased gas at that Chevron, and frankly this change will not impede getting in and out of that station very much because most cars don't take the sharp right from Castro in front of Orphan Andy's and make a left into the Chevron from 17th. They will take the soft left onto Market and use the entrance off Market which isn't blocked by the new plaza.

For many warm, sunny days during most of the year in Castro, this is going to be fantastic. (Not that I live in SF anymore, but I had to read this article because it was so close to my old place.)

I wonder why it's part of the Bike Plan Update in the first place since it doesn't go through and there are better, safer and flatter alternative routes already being used all around it?

At this morning's Planning Commission hearing on transportation and land use, I brought up the notion of a one-stop shopping portal for residents that shows all planning studies going on in an area irrespective of which alphabet soup agency is conducting it, and that was well received by the commissioners.

If those of us who are plugged in are blindsided by these projects that appear to spring out of nowhere, imagine how accessible these myriad processes are for those not so well connected.

-marc

Closing 17th at Market and Castro has been discussed for years and the Upper Market charrette was one of Bevan Dufty's re-election campaign promises. It got delayed for a year or so, but the first community meeting was held in september 2007 (as I remember, there were concerns about traffic but pretty much everyone had the attitude of wanting them addressed so that it could happen) but I really just expected it to sit on a shelf after it was approved by the Board of Supervisors last October. Sure, it didn't take a decade to happen, but it's had support from all sides so why'd you want to hold it up? Just for the sake of added government bureaucracy? I say, since we're all in favor of it here in the neighborhood, go for it and hopefully this will be a success story we leverage to push similar projects like the North Beach plaza by Caffe Trieste.

Check out the Upper Market Community Plan for all the background and details, there are more ambitious projects in the plan that won't happen for years, if ever.

About Duboce & Church...

That page at the SFMTA site is out of date, the project has been put on hold (don't grown yet) in order to co-ordinate with a traffic calming project the Duboce Triangle Neighborhood association has been pushing for. Had the MTA gone ahead with the re-railing, the traffic calming project might never have happened or would have driven up costs to reconfigure the area right after it was dug up for the track project. On a related side note, I'm hoping with delay to get MTA to reconsider adding an outbound turn from Market onto Church (there's only one going inbound) while they're replacing the rail. M hope is to someday have low-floor surface streetcar service on the J-Line to free up capacity in the tunnel.

As for community vetting, I think Joe answered that. Both the months-long Upper Market Workshop by the SF Planning Department and the months-long Streetscape Plan workshops by the Castro CBD addressed not only this type of proposal, but others as well. Both workshops were advertised, promoted, and well attended.

The comments about Harvey Milk Plaza are actually right on point. The Castro CBD is currently searching for resources to transform the Plaza into what it naturally is... a community meeting place. As we saw depicted in MILK recently, the Plaza has been a political meeting place for decades. It would be nice to recognize that and stop trying to force crowds of folks into what is basically a transit stop. We're working on it...