Oh, and Marcos–with your gratuitous name-calling I’m now going to ask you to stop addressing me personally on this site. I’ve got no time for your constant hyper-negativity about absolutely everything and everyone.

My worry, as a property tax payer. is that poor design will expose the City to litigation having been informed that they’ve created a dangerous condition should something go wrong.

Who cares about the flesh and blood of individuals who must contend with ill-conceived bicycle and ped movements if we can have a sliver space for a few months and offload the responsibility for bad design onto property owners.

City staffers admitted to me on opening day that the design could use some work as respects bikes and peds. Sycophants like @greasybear would make suggestions to the contrary only at the risk fo diminishing their credibility.

-marc

Either this pilot project ignored the bike network or it did not.

Either the impacts of ignoring the bike network were anticipated or not.

If those impacts were anticipated, either they were studied or not.

Imagine if the City tried to close 16th and Mission with barriers to create a public space and took no steps to analyze the impacts on the 22, 33 and 53 Muni lines.

-marc

2. We have no compelling argument showing any significant disruption to area cyclists, let alone a “disaster” to cyclists citywide.

3. We don’t even know for certain how many cyclists ever used this dead-end, track-laden “route” in the first place–so the plaza works no obvious loss of any kind except on paper.

4. Nobody is required to defend an imaginary and impractical line on paper for its own sake.

5. It is not obviously harmful or bad to officially re-route that line on paper around the popular new plaza.

These discussions were had a decade ago, and these very questions of 16th/17th/18th were wrestled with. The worst possible path forward would be to say hey, we’ve got a pilot project, so let’s reconfigure the bike route network to accommodate it.

Again, one organization has established itself as the stewards of bicycle lanes, all bike lanes, all the time for the past decade. Either they were not consulted by the City as to impacts of this pilot project on the bicycle network or they were consulted and they were as effective in representing the interests of bicyclists in this instance as they have been in getting bike lanes built for the past 5 years.

The best way to shut me up is for things to get done correctly.

-marc

Even as an eastbound bike route, 17th at Castro is–at best–a wash. Cyclists access it either by climbing a hill northbound on Castro from 18th, or have to dismount and use the crosswalk to access it from southbound Castro. Once cyclists have gone to all that trouble, they are treated to the only east-west sidestreet in the area lined with trolley tracks and idling streetcars. Hardly an indispensable part of the network, the Castro end of 17th isn’t even that desirable as a cycling route.

Congestion and confusion at that point due to poor design impacts pedestrians, cyclists and possibly the 24 Muni line. If we’re trying to improve Muni flow, we don’t need to be putting elements of “congestion by design” in their paths.

We also just went through the ordeal of fighting for a bike plan that included the bicycle network that is 12 years old. Either we spend the resources to come up with and pass a plan and we use it to inform subsequent projects, or we just go off willy nilly and allow new projects to screw existing efforts.

Some of us have been calling on a new bike plan process which would allow for review of the existing plan and the development of a sustainable bike facility review and implementation schedule. The folks who get paid to do this sort of thing appear to have been collecting paychecks for watching the paint dry on the 2002 bike plan update rather than thinking a few steps in advance. This is what i mean when I say that the relevant parties took the 1997 bike route network, engraved it into a granite monument, polished it up and put a nice cloth over it, and have nothing else to do until that laundry list is exhausted.

The choices are all bad at 17th, these discussions went down ten years ago. 16th and 18th have Muni lines, Noe and 17th have streetcar tracks. That’s what happens when you have incongruent street grids coming together. Why anyone would forget the bad choices and make things worse like this is beyond me.

@thegreasybear, the design is dangerous in two ways. It causes congestion as above, forcing cyclists onto a narrow sidewalk with pedestrians or, to avoid that, would incline cyclists to avoid that without much of a plan.

The other issue has to do with the right turn onto Market. Used to be that a cyclist could come up the Castro hill and turn right on red through the pocket turn by the F line terminal. This was not precisely legal, but in the absence of a street car turning, was perfectly safe as the turn ended up in the Market Street bike lane.

Now, with the plaza blocking off that pocket turn, cyclists are forced to take a hairpin turn, going further into Market Street, in order to get to the bike lane. This exposes cyclists to the possibility of being hit by a turning streetcar as visibility is impinged by the planters and the turn can be blind to the rear. Should I look at signage, my wheels and the streetcar tracks, traffic starting east on Market or the streetcar? The original design had a safer angle of attack to cross the streetcar tracks, the hairpin turn requires a sharp left in order to cross the tracks safely.

The existing legal bicycle movement right on 17th was removed as indicated on the official map, with no signage to indicate how to safely compensate.

The bicycle network is supposed to be the safe place to bike. This adds new unsafe features to the bicycle network. But your friends support it, the notion of reclaiming streets from autos is ‘hip’ and ‘cool,’ so please, jump on the group think wagon and enjoy the ride.

-marc

And can we not save “the network” from disruption by re-routing bikes around the plaza?

I question why “the network” even contained 17th to start with. Take a look at the bike map excerpt Marcos linked to and you’ll see the eastbound route is traveling down the Hill on Market until Castro, where it gets diverted onto 17th instead for two block and then makes a left turn at Sanchez for a couple blocks back instead of just continuing straight along Market in the first place.

Why doesn’t the bike route go directly down Market (which has bike lanes) to begin with? Probably because people used to come speeding down the hill and left onto 17th at Castro and across the path on any cyclists going straight. Closing 17th at Market prevents cars from making that slight left and crossing the path of a cyclist.

Westbound, the map seems to show the bike route following 17th across Market, but since the streets don’t connect and traffic is forced right at Market anyway. Also anyone heading westbound up 17th would be using the same lane the tracks are in, up a steeper hill than Market and would have to cross Market and then cross Castro to continue along 17th instead of just using Market to begin with.

Does anyone know the background of this? Looking at the bike map again, that two block diversion onto 17th looks like it might have been a compromise. Maybe if we go back to the original reasoning for that route, maybe the closure of 17th eliminates a problem that lead to the design and can now be fixed.

Nor is the temporary plaza obviously “dangerous.” Cyclists who refuse to use the Market Street bicycle lane a mere handful of feet to the north and insist on barging through the plaza can still do so safely, by dismounting and walking their bikes for half a block before resuming their journey without incident.

As for the supposed disruption this plaza causes “the network,” how so? How many “network” users rolled between the jaywalkers, renegade motorists and trolley-tracks at 17th and Castro before the plaza, anyway? Have any such riders been forced to abort their journeys at 17th Street in total confusion because of the plaza? And can we not save “the network” from disruption by re-routing bikes around the plaza?

-marc

I saw more community and “sense of place” at the bear Starbucks on 18th than I did at the sliver space.

You should have been there Saturday, a concert was held in the plaza for the Fourth of July.

We’ve got to keep in mind that most public policy, no matter how well intentioned, has unintended negative consequences. Either we anticipate that and have processes to incorporate what we’ve learned post-deployment into on-the-ground solutions, as one would hope would come as standard equipment with a pilot project, or we or we ignore it and hope for the best.

Good intentions do not trump responsibility.

@Jamison Wieser, just noticed that. [Superlative] [Infrastructure] projects come and go in San Francisco, kind of the way that [Colored] [Noun] dot.coms did a decade ago. Let’s hope that The Great Streets Project does without SPUR’s developer lobbyism and hostility to neighborhoods and the SFBC’s “compromise to please” and Ahab proclivities. I’m leery of the extent to which “place making” can be done using a SIM City cookie cutter wielded by technocrats, as there are case studies in sterility abound, Mint Plaza, YBC, 3d/King, for instance.

But I’d like to see streetscape reclaimed from autos for a variety of purposes, but want to see equity amongst modalities as well as the sizable expense of DPW crews waking up in those six sleepers to move concrete and bollards balanced against other commitments such as keeping Muni fares low and striping bike lanes. Communities need to be given the tools with which to chart their own courses rather than these projects being rained down from upon high as political chits absent any pretense of equity. See the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods matching funds program. [1]

Imagine getting neighbors involved in creating a space on their terms, a space that might actually serve as a center of community. I saw more community and “sense of place” at the bear Starbucks on 18th than I did at the sliver space.

Places worth being at are not made by developer lobbyists, advocacy groups and city staff, they arise organically, by accretion, as a palimpsest, constant writing and erasures. You really can’t bottle this stuff nor can you zone for it, current economics don’t give a rat’s ass about place, hence my concern with SPUR as a creature of those economics. Much conduct conducive to successful place making is prohibited by the SFPD in these newly made, often privatized, places as well.

-marc
[1] http://www.seattle.gov/neighborhoods/nmf/

thanks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink

Groupthink is a type of thought exhibited by group members who try to minimize conflict and reach consensus without critically testing, analyzing, and evaluating ideas. Individual creativity, uniqueness, and independent thinking are lost in the pursuit of group cohesiveness, as are the advantages of reasonable balance in choice and thought that might normally be obtained by making decisions as a group. During groupthink, members of the group avoid promoting viewpoints outside the comfort zone of consensus thinking. A variety of motives for this may exist such as a desire to avoid being seen as foolish, or a desire to avoid embarrassing or angering other members of the group. Groupthink may cause groups to make hasty, irrational decisions, where individual doubts are set aside, for fear of upsetting the group’s balance. The term is frequently used pejoratively, with hindsight.

-marc

http://cybre.net/pub/castro.jpg

“Towards Noe” means to points east, not “to Noe.”

17th Street is the signed segment of the bicycle network which connects Castro and Market to the Mission. Market is the signed segment of the bicycle network which connects Castro and Civic Center to downtown and the Financial District. Maybe once we get through with this program of bike lane consolidation (bike a bit further for a nicer, faster bike lane?) we can only have one bike lane that gets us everywhere so there is no need for signage, reductio ad absurdum.

The predicate for removing auto lanes for other uses is to create a transit-first environment in their place and must prioritize non-motorized movement first.

How can this happen if the City is “blowing through” its bicycle network plan, and in so doing, creating dangerous conditions? Maybe I was being over sensitive when I brought this problem up to MTA staff when they dedicated the project, however sitting by on Sunday and watching others mungle through the setup provided independent verification for my hunch that this setup is problematic and ill-thought out from an engineering standpoint.

The problem here is that the pilot project carved out a mere sliver of space with no margin for error or iterative improvement. Restore 17th Street for bicycle traffic? No can do, because there is only sufficient space for one row of tables on 17th. This design says that table sitters are more important than bicyclists on this street, that if there is insufficient space, cyclists lose. So in this case, the balance of safety was given to pedestrians and table sitters carved out at the expense of cyclists and to a lesser degree the peds who have to negotiate an ill-planned intersection with them.

Yes, engineering moderately complicated systems is “hard,” but that’s what we’re paying city staff to do, to think this stuff out beforehand and to anticipate and reconcile any problems so identified. In this case, the group think culture of our intrepid urban pioneers and livable streets vanguard was so convinced of its own correctness that there was no need for in depth contemplation, JUST DO IT!

But when we try to take shortcuts, like was done in the bike plan, we end up “doing harm.” I’m not suggesting that we adopt some sort of absolute Hippocratic oath for transportation engineers or worship at the temple of planning things to death, but let’s at least disclose to the decision makers who’s taking the hit from our spiffy new pilot project and at least have an analytical toolkit at the ready to evaluate the pilot project. But this notion that because our motives and goals are pure (as we and our friends deem them), any nasty side effects from our tactics are tolerable (often by others) must be dismissed.

Has anyone seen the evaluation toolkit for this pilot project that will forward lessons learned to the next go-round to prevent making the same mistakes next time?

-marc