Streetsblog San Francisco

Photo: Aaron Bialick

A new set of reports released yesterday by the Better Market Street Project, a coordinated effort between San Francisco city agencies and urban designers, presents ideas for optimizing the mobility, safety and overall experience on lower Market Street when it is rebuilt in 2015.

While the authors didn’t explicitly recommend the growingly popular idea of a car-free Market Street, they did point out that “car volumes… are low, but have disproportionately high effects on other modes” and recommended a study of vehicle restrictions “both for traffic along Market Street and for traffic turning onto Market Street…to determine what diversion may occur and what benefits to other modes might be derived.” (For a full-throated endorsement of a car-free Market, check out yesterday’s editorial in the Huffington Post, where Michael Portanova points out that “most anyone who has ever used a car in San Francisco knows that if you’re driving on Market Street, you’re doing it wrong.”)

Urban design consultants have been teaming up with a raft of public agencies the last couple of years to analyze Market Street and collect public input on the upcoming reconstruction. The reports include some interesting output from that partnership, including a summary of the top priorities voiced at public workshops last May. Creating a more attractive pedestrian environment and more comfortable bicycling infrastructure are toward the top of the list.

“The Better Market Street Project is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to transform Market Street and bring this major artery for the Bay Area to its full potential,” said Mohammed Nuru, director of the Department of Public Works (DPW), one of the leading agencies on the project.

The reports present a collection of best practices from similar streets throughout the world that can be adapted to improve Market Street. “It’s very valuable background information to help us know if we’re on the right track with our design concepts,” said DPW Project Manager Kris Opbroek.

Drawing on some of those celebrated streets for inspiration, the reports make a wide-ranging series of recommendations to improve safety and mobility on Market. To speed Muni vehicles, the recommendations include extending and enforcing bus-only lanes, optimizing stop locations, longer boarding islands, off-vehicle ticket machines, bus-priority traffic signals, and seeking alternative locations for deliveries. The reports also suggest that continuous protected bikeways could reduce conflicts with pedestrians and buses, and recommend multi-modal solutions like locating bike share stations at transit hubs.

“We are looking forward to this much-needed renewed commitment and sense of urgency from the city to design and construct a next generation Market Street,” said San Francisco Bicycle Coalition Executive Director Leah Shahum. ”We hear every day from the huge and growing number of people biking on the street about how important a better Market Street is for getting them to work, school and around town.”

Here are a few of the more intriguing ideas and possibilities:

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This piece by noted amateur filmmaker Tullio Pellgrini features a windshield-bound tour of some of the city’s most famous sights in 1955, but it also offers a peek into the changes some of our major streets have undergone since the earlier days of the motor age.

Some differences are striking, like the additional vehicle lanes on streets like Market and the Great Highway and the lack of parked cars on others. One eye-catcher for me was seeing cars driven through the Powell Street cable car turnaround on what is now Hallidie Plaza. A friend also pointed out the since-removed mid-block crosswalk on Van Ness between City Hall and the War Memorial Opera House.

A reminder of the flexible nature of our streets, for better or worse, is always refreshing. San Francisco streets have changed before and they can change again.

H/T BoingBoing.

Market at Mcallister and Jones Streets, near where Huckleberry Bicycles will open in the fall. Flickr photo: pbo31

Venturing into the Mid-Market area this fall, Huckleberry Bicycles aspires to go well beyond selling bikes. As co-owners Brian Smith, Jonas Jackel, and Zack Stender launch the first full-service bike shop to open on Market Street, they aim to bridge more everyday riders with bicycle advocacy and provide a much-needed service along the busiest bicycling street west of the Mississippi.

The shop’s simple motto is “Bikes are for people,” and it will specialize in bikes designed for everyday urban transportation. But Stender sees an opportunity to fulfill a greater role in the promotion of cycling.

“Bike shops are kind of this access point where you get to touch every cyclist out there and talk to them personally,” said Stender. ”We can be this awesome connection between cyclists and the advocacy world if we want to be.”

Bicycle advocacy will be incorporated into the shop’s everyday conversation, says Stender. As a member of the SF Bike Coalition (SFBC) Board of Directors and an experienced bike shop manager, he feels bike shops typically fall short of engaging in that effort.

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Photo: Myleen Hollero/Orange Photography

San Franciscans are dreaming big as Market Street’s transformation approaches in 2015, when the city’s most important street is scheduled to be redesigned and repaved. City planners are engaging with citizens to answer a century-old question: How can we make Market Street the glorious thoroughfare that it needs to be?

Better Market Street, a collaborative project of five city agencies, has held public meetings and webinars the past two weeks to field input from people who walk, bike, ride transit, and even drive along the street. The effort is being informed by a large swath of research brought to the table by city staffers, which is now available on the Better Market Street website.

“Market Street is San Francisco’s civic backbone, connecting water to hills, businesses to neighborhoods, cultural centers to recreational opportunities,” the site’s about page states. “The movement of people and goods, from the very earliest times, has dominated its design and use. But Market Street needs to be more than a transportation route. It needs to be the city’s most vibrant public space and many San Franciscans feel it falls far short of this ideal.”

Block-by-block, hour-by-hour data documenting the urban environment were collected by researchers to help inform input from attendees at recent workshops. Researchers note everything from fluctuations in pedestrian and bicycle traffic along the street, to the conditions plaguing its extremely high volume of transit trips, to the placement of trees and how the usage of plazas is impacted by the sun and wind. Comparisons and best practices from major streets abroad help put it all in perspective.

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Photo: Aaron Bialick

SFMTA crews continue laying out the green carpet on Market Street in time to welcome the thousands of bike commuters expected on the 17th annual Bike to Work Day May 12. The improvements will help invite first-time riders to embrace the bicycle as their regular choice for commuting to work.

Bike lanes were greened on the block between 8th and 9th Streets yesterday, and crews said they’re on their way to filling in the gaps all the way down to Octavia Boulevard in time for the event.

Crews have also installed green bike boxes and highlights at bike lane merges on Lower Market Street in past weeks. They also expect to implement a particularly innovative upgrade that would add a green rectangles underneath the sharrows at Van Ness Avenue guiding riders through the interchange.

The turnout of new riders is expected to continue its strong growth over the past few years. Thirty three percent more people biked on Market Street between Bike to Work Day 2009 – 2010, bolstered by ongoing improvement efforts like reducing automobile traffic.

See more photos and a video from last year’s event after the break.

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Market Street approaching Sanchez. The bike lane will be extended along the painted lines and the three front parking spots will be replaced. Photo: Aaron Bialick

Preparations for improvements [pdf] to the Upper Market Street bike lanes are underway and when completed will mark a step towards safer passage for travelers by bike at three intersections along the city’s busiest bike corridor, where a vision for a protected bikeway was dropped nearly forty years ago.

The extended bike lanes should provide safer guidance through intersections where they previously ended abruptly, forcing people on bikes to merge or squeeze between faster-moving motor traffic and parked cars. The redesign will facilitate riders more safely by replacing several right-turn lanes and fifteen hazardous parking spots between Castro Street and Octavia Boulevard.

“The improved bike lanes will help draw more people to the Upper Market businesses,” said Leah Shahum, executive director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (SFBC). “There are a ton of families in the neighborhoods lining Market Street, so I think we’ll even see more people bicycling with their kids, which is already a growing trend.”

Cars will still be able to turn right by merging into the bike lane, a standard practice in San Francisco: “Bike lanes serve as the right-turn lane for all vehicles by definition,” the SFMTA noted in a presentation on the project last year.

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