Streetsblog San Francisco

Photos: Aaron Bialick

The demand for car-free streets in San Francisco is easy to see at the Sunday Streets events around the city. If there’s no Sunday Street in your neighborhood, though, not to worry: You can bring a car-free event right to your doorstep.

With a little outreach to your neighbors, a permit application, and a fee, it may be easier than you think.

My block in the Inner Sunset did it this Sunday for the tenth year in a row for its annual block party, bringing neighbors together for a potluck, games, and conversation.

Organizer Walter Van Riel said once he put the vehicle barriers in place, the street was transformed in an instant. “Not more than five minutes later, I heard the sound of kids playing in the street,” he said.

Going car-free relieves streets of the noise and danger normally present, which can prevent kids from playing outside and inhibit relationships between neighbors. Mary Deely, who has lived on the block since 1970, said without the block party, she wouldn’t know her neighbors as well. “I wave to people, but I don’t really talk to them until the block party,” she said.

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The 10/9/11 CicLAvia route. For a poster size version of the route, click on the picture.

By the early afternoon of April 10, it was clear that CicLAvia had outgrown its original seven-and-a-half mile route. In the urban core of Downtown Los Angeles, bikes were packed so thick on the road that entire groups wouldn’t make it through traffic signals and other road users were intimidated from using the street. Something had to change for the amazing car-free party to continue to attract new riders.

CicLAvia staff got to work and announced earlier today that the October 9th 2011 CicLAvia will have an expanded ten and a half mile route with more open streets in the Downtown snaking North and South for a much larger car-free party.

“We’re excited about the three new miles, and we’re looking forward to expanding more,” writes Joe Linton, one of the organizers of CicLAvia. “Bogota started in the 1970s with only 7 miles and now they do 80 miles – every Sunday!”

The CicLAvia Blog shares the details of the expanded routes:

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A rare sight in the Tenderloin: children playing ball in the streets. Photos by Bryan Goebel.

Mary San George was sitting outside her neighborhood flower store yesterday, facing the historic residential high-rise building on O’Farrell Street where she has lived for 27 years, and was marveling at something she very rarely gets to experience in her Tenderloin neighborhood: a street full of people instead of cars.

“People use this street like a raceway,” said the 75-year-old San George, who was anxious to point out the everyday dangers of a neighborhood where streets prioritize auto throughput. “We have signs in different areas that say this is a drug-free zone, but I think we should have a no-speed zone, and make it very expensive for drivers.”

For its 25th event, Sunday Streets, now a San Francisco institution, brought car-free zones filled with healthy activities to the Tenderloin, one of the densest neighborhoods on the West Coast, where most residents don’t own automobiles. Last year’s Tenderloin event was rained out, but this year, under beautiful blue skies, between 5,000 and 7,000 people turned out to play in the streets.

While the event didn’t attract the huge crowds that the Mission’s Sunday Streets draws — there was a little music festival competing — it was nevertheless an exciting day, and an important moment for the Tenderloin and the livable streets movement.

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SF Bike Coalition Policy Director Andy Thornley on the Great Highway. Photo: Bryan Goebel

Sunday Streets returns to Golden Gate Park and the Great Highway this Sunday, extending the park’s regular weekend street openings all the way to the beach and beyond. Thousands of San Franciscans of all ages are expected to pedal, play and relax along the car-free route running all the way from the Panhandle along John F. Kennedy Drive to the windmill and down the Great Highway along Ocean Beach with lots of fun activites along the way.

There will be free performances from some talented groups throughout the route, including the San Francisco Symphony and Circus Bella in the park as well as two shows from local musical child prodigies. Of course, there will also be lots of family-friendly activities to participate in like skate rentals and dancing, RollerSoccer demonstrations, a Climate Change Education Mobile Climate Science Lab, free bike rentals, and the SF Bike Coalition’s Freedom From Training Wheels program.

Get out and make the most of the beautiful weather forecast and a car-free Golden Gate Park!

Flickr photo: geekstinkbreath

Thousands of people took to the car-free streets of the Bayview, Dogpatch and Potrero Hill yesterday for a sunny Sunday Streets.  Did you go? Please share your stories in the comments section, and see more photos below the break. The next Sunday Streets is July 12th on the Great Highway.

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Flickr photo: sfbike

Many a cycling tot will get another chance to graduate from training wheels this Sunday on safe, car-free streets by the Bay. Sunday Streets returns to Bayview with a tweaked route this year to include the Lower Potero Hill and Dogpatch neighborhoods in the plethora of family-friendly activities.

The list of activities this month is so long, in fact, that when organizer Susan King submitted it the San Francisco Examiner for publication, “the copy editors came back to me and said, ‘cut this down by a third’.”

“This is certainly one of the most robust program lists we’ve had,” said King.

The route will run along Third Street from Mendell Plaza to 22nd Street, where it will zig zag west by Espirit Park to the Jackson Playground at 17th and Wisconsin Streets. It was modified to accommodate vehicle traffic needs for a Giants game at the ballpark, but it will also bring the street opening to new doorsteps.

“It gives us a chance to really explore those two neighborhoods that we haven’t done before,” said King. “In Dogpatch, we’re going through the emerging merchant corridor on 22nd Street and tying it to Espirit park, which is a beautiful little park hidden behind the freeway.”

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One proposal for re-purposing Mason Street as a park between the new North Beach Branch Public Library and Joe DiMaggio Playground. Courtesy Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects

Nearly two years after San Francisco reclaimed a short block of Mason Street in North Beach as a trial plaza, the SF Board of Supervisors yesterday approved the environmental impact report for the planned expansion of the North Beach Public Library.

The unanimous vote came as a relief to the majority of neighbors and some city supervisors who were eager to see the project come to fruition after being stalled by a handful of opponents.

“The tortured path of this project is in many ways symbolic of the dysfunctionality in land use in San Francisco,” said Supervisor Scott Wiener. ”We have a highly popular, beautifully designed project to replace an outdated and inaccessible structure with a beautiful, usable and accessible new library; to create additional, much-needed open space in a densely populated neighborhood.”

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A Bike-and-Roll rental station in front of the Hyatt Regency at Market and Spear.

I’ve been bicycling in San Francisco since the late 1970s so I vividly remember when almost all bicyclists could recognize each other on the streets of the city. There really weren’t that many of us even as recently as the beginning of the 1990s, just two decades ago. We’ve come a long way, and one of the less recognized aspects of this bicycling boom has been the incredible expansion of bike rentals and bicycling tourism.

I wrote a flyer back in 1986 calling for a “City of Panhandles” and one of the arguments I made in that largely unnoticed document was that a systematic effort to provide safe, separate bikeways crisscrossing the City would itself lead to a tourism boom. As it turns out, we’re experiencing a dramatic increase in tourists cycling even before we provide adequate infrastructure. San Francisco is just an incredibly beautiful place, and people come from all over the world to experience its beauty. Growing numbers of those visitors aren’t much interested in seeing it through windshields and are opting instead (or in addition) to rent bicycles.

There are three “big” companies doing bike rentals in SF: Bike and Roll, Blazing Saddles, and Bay City Bikes (a number of smaller places, like the BikeHut at Pier 40, also rent bikes). I recently spoke with Darryll White, owner of Bike and Roll, and he gave me some impressive aggregate numbers. Since 1995 the local bicycle rental business has grown from about $500,000 a year to over $10 million! The remarkable thing about this huge increase in tourist cycling is that about 90 percent of the rentals are heading to the Golden Gate Bridge and to Sausalito, where the City Council has erupted into battles over bike parking vs. car parking, even pondering charging fees to touring bicyclists. The Golden Gate Ferry service keeps at least four of its ferry runs going to accommodate the cycling tourists, which have hit peaks of 2,500 per day during recent summer months.

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Enjoying car-free streets at Redding's first-ever ciclovía-style event, Shasta Living Streets. Photo: Jeff Worthington

Redding, California, with a population of 90,000, is probably best known for its sunshine, breathtaking landscapes and conservative politics. Located 200 miles north of Sacramento in Shasta County, the lush region surrounded by the Trinity and Cascade mountains offers an abundance of recreation, including a growing number of paved multi-use trails that draw large crowds of bicyclists and pedestrians.

The seven-year-old Sundial Bridge, a 700-foot long steel marvel on the Sacramento River designed by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, has become Redding’s living room.

“It is where everyone hangs out in town, especially when the weather is nice. In a normal community, whatever normal is, you would see that sort of energy in a downtown square, or park, or even a downtown third place, but it happens to be out at the Sundial Bridge,” said Paul Shigley, the senior editor of the California Planning and Development Report (CP&DR), who lives six miles west of Redding near Whiskeytown Lake.

Downtown Redding does not draw a similar convergence of people enjoying public space because like many California cities it was designed for the automobile, and is not a particularly welcoming place for pedestrians and bicyclists.  The city ranks 40th among 103 cities in California “for the number of pedestrian collisions by population,” according to a recent report [pdf]. Just last week, a 16-year-old boy was struck and killed by a driver while walking across a bridge that lacked a sidewalk.

“The town is set up to conduct motorists fast and to allow them to drive up to 50, 60 miles an hour right through the middle of town,” said Scott Mobley, a reporter for the Record Searchlight, the city’s daily newspaper.

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Image: Streets Alive

San Mateo County’s first Streets Alive event may have had bad luck with the weather last April, but many Peninsula cities are eager to get another shot at celebrating car-free streets with an even bigger event in 2011.

“Even though it was rained out, it was pretty popular with residents,” said Eric Pawlowsky, an aide to San Mateo County Supervisor Carole Groom, who declared May 1 Streets Alive Day last week. “There was really some momentum there from the public.”

Thirteen cities are set to participate by allowing people to enjoy healthy activities on open streets, up from eight last year, including Belmont, Brisbane, Burlingame, Daly City, East Palo Alto, Foster City, Millbrae, North Fair Oaks, Pacifica, Redwood City, San Bruno, San Mateo, and South San Francisco.

The Peninsula region will join a global movement of cities from San Francisco to Bogotá, Colombia, where it all started, to close streets to cars and open them up to people for a Sunday afternoon. From Grand Avenue in South San Francisco to Visitacion Avenue in Brisbane to Redwood City’s Courthouse Square, residents will be able to walk, bike, sit, talk, and play in temporary sanctuaries of open public space.

Cities will have community bike rides, fitness activities, and farmers markets as part of their events, said Pawlowsky. Redwood City is said to have the largest event planned, including activities like Bollywood fitness and educational exhibits, while East Palo Alto will tie in their street opening with a Cinco de Mayo celebration.

Even with limited funds available for the budding program, some cities that can’t afford motor vehicle closures are finding creative ways to get people active, said Pawlowsky. Residents can enjoy trail walks in Pacifica, the Serramonte Fair in Daly City, and other outdoor community events in Millbrae and North Fair Oaks.