The extra-wide sidewalks and corner bulb-outs are great for walkers, but unfortunately, it appears the new scheme will make it worse for bicyclists.

Hopefully, I’ll be proved wrong.

Neighborhood deliveries, even by Bakfiets, would be great. It comes down to cost, though, and SF has lost *a lot* of warehouse space. All that’s left is the Bayshore infill, which already is in use, and is not suitable for at least half the city.

Every restaurant getting heavy truck deliveries 6/day is ridiculous, especially if those trucks are running mostly empty. The milkrun in non-commuting hours can work for many (not all)…especially if deliveries can be shared among competitors.

Perhaps we are not quite ready to remove car parking to this degree but it would be quite nice.

With strict controls on times of day, it should be fairly simple to have a designated loading zone with on- and off-ramps onto a hardened concrete platform that serves as a pedestrian pavement (or cafe seating) the rest of the day. If that’s not particularly aesthetic, add your own patterns to the surface, but have clear signage, different colors, and strict enforcement.

That way heavier delivery vehicles can complete their runs during specific business hours that won’t interfere with the customer hours.

Otherwise, for the specifics of Valencia, there’s already limited loading zone parking at some spots, including for the funeral home near Albion. That should be matter for DPT and closing the budget gap.

You can put in all the mid-block yellow zones you want, but currently it seems like most delivery truck drivers won’t parallel park. If they can’t just drive or back in, they’ll double park. Fortunately if there’s any enforcement at all they’ll get caught and stop — driving around all day really increases your chance of catching a ticket.

I’m not entirely sure what Tom’s saying about bulb-outs — is the DPW’s idea that delivery trucks should be parking in loading zones along the numbered streets instead of along Valencia, so they need to keep those zones clear of bulb-outs?

Of course, these hipster bars and restaurants have displaced much community serving retail and most light industry, gaining much of their revenue from the Bridge and Tunnel crowds on weekend evenings, driving rents up and spaces for live music out.

I’m sure that the quo pro for this quid is going to be the Planning Department squeezing heights up to 85′ along Valencia as it rushes that project to completion.

What we’re going to see on Valencia blocking bike lanes during the day with the removal of the median is what we see blocking Muni on Haight Street, delivery trucks that can no longer park in the median.

Valencia is a good street to drive on so long as you drive at the speed limit or slower, we get our CarShare from the Hoff lot and use Valencia often.

-marc

@Ryan – I’ll double-down on what SFResident said. Guerrero and Dolores are better for cars, MUNI train users have Church, and BART and bus-riders have Mission. Valencia is ripe for conversion to less-car use. It seems any decent commercial district in nightlife SF needs twice the sidewalk space that it currently has at present.

@SFResident – I don’t think there’s a significant difference between Divisadero and Valencia demographics apart from about 5-10 years difference in development. Both share a lot in common, including gentrification tensions. I hope more is done to bring these communities together (e.g. Divisadero Art Walk, Dia De Los Muertos, Sunday Streets).

I’m glad that the project on Valencia is going forward, but it’s both sad and typical that this kind of thing isn’t happening on Divisadero – I wonder how much the demographics of local residents along the respective corridors factored into funding allotments?

No you don’t

But seriously, just making it harder to drive will improve Muni. Also, this plan doesn’t make it any harder to drive, it just makes it easier to walk and bike down Valencia.

DPW is planning to widen and plant Divisadero’s median. Livable City argued for a road diet (removing a lane in each direction, and adding a turn lane) which would have allowed wider sidewalks, bike lanes, or both. We argued that the draft Better Streets Plan calls for sidewalks of at least 12 feet, and Divisadero’s are clearly deficient, and that investments in greening and street trees are of greater value when they are along the sidewalks, rather than in the median.

DPW made the argument that there was not enough money to make Valencia-style improvements for the length of their project area, which would also involve replacing Divisadero’s highway-style streetlights. They opted to widen the medians and make no improvements to the sidewalks for 8 or so blocks, rather than widen sidewalks and replace the lights on a smaller number of blocks.

We are concerned that DPW’s investment in the medians will make it harder to do a road diet in the future.

Divisadero is a useful, if sad, illustration of how far we have to go to make this a city of great streets.

Any chance we could get some of this streetscape love over on Divisadero?

This really marks the final chapter in converting an ugly street without character into a fantastic neighborhood. These things are *related*.

Well done, San Francisco!