Streetsblog San Francisco

Photo: San Francisco Days

San Francisco’s world-famous commercial strip on Castro Street, which gained a popular pedestrian plaza in 2009, is poised to become a more inviting destination as the SF Planning Department develops plans to widen the sidewalks and install other improvements from 17th Street to 19th Street.

The sidewalks on Castro, currently 12 feet wide, could reach widths up to 22 feet, according to Nick Perry, project manager for the Planning Department. That real estate would be created by narrowing traffic lanes, which would calm motor traffic and may reduce the rampant double parking that often delays Muni buses on the 24-Divisadero line.

The new Castro Street, as envisioned by the Castro/Upper Market Community Benefit District.

“Right now, it’s a little bit like the Wild West,” said Perry. “Because the travel lanes are so wide, cars and trucks feel free to double-park or speed down the street because there’s the room to do it. And once we are able to make these improvements, it will function as a neighborhood commercial street that has traffic going both ways in a hopefully stately, well-managed pace.”

The project got a boost after D8 Supervisor Scott Wiener announced in the Bay Area Reporter earlier this month that $4 million would be secured from Prop B bond funds. “While the Castro has wonderful parks at its edges, the neighborhood has remarkably little usable public space,” Wiener wrote. “Harvey Milk Plaza is poorly designed and doesn’t honor its namesake with a wonderful and safe public gathering space. Jane Warner Plaza is terrific but small. While the Castro is one of the most pedestrian-focused neighborhoods in the city, Castro Street’s sidewalks are embarrassingly narrow.”

The Planning Department expects to begin developing street designs through public workshops starting in January, but the process was already kickstarted several years ago by a community streetscape vision known as the Neighborhood Beautification and Safety Plan, developed by the Castro/Upper Market Community Benefit District. That plan, adopted by the CBD in 2008, called for widening Castro’s sidewalks and narrowing its excessively wide traffic lanes to accommodate the crowds of pedestrians. It also envisioned the pedestrian plaza on 17th Street, which was built in 2009 as part of the Planning Department’s Pavement to Parks program and later dubbed Jane Warner Plaza (a.k.a. the Castro Commons).

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Market and Fremont Streets, one block from where a pedestrian was killed last week. Photo: fdo h/Flickr

While there’s no concrete Pedestrian Action Strategy (formerly the “Action Plan”) for San Franciscans to read over yet, city officials went ahead and held a press conference today to tell the public the document is coming next month.

Mayor Ed Lee, SFMTA Director of Transportation Ed Reiskin, and other officials gathered on the Powell Street Promenade (a.k.a. the “mega-parklet”) to tout the importance of street safety improvements and targeted enforcement efforts to reduce pedestrian injuries by 25 percent by 2016, and 50 percent by 2020, as set out in former Mayor Gavin Newsom’s Executive Directive on Pedestrian Safety.

The press event was unusual in that the officials didn’t have much substance to make public at this time. They previewed the pedestrian safety plan but that was about it. Lee said the plan will help ”lessen the inequality that exists that we know today between neighborhoods, where people literally fear walking on our streets.”

The main piece of actual news to surface today is that SFPD is using a new data-driven enforcement tactic called “Focus on the Five.” SFPD Deputy Chief of Special Operations Denise Schmitt said that under this strategy, each police district is targeting enforcement at its top five most dangerous intersections or areas, as well as focusing on the top five most dangerous traffic violations: drivers running red lights, running stop signs, violating pedestrian right-of-way, committing turning violations, and speeding.

Schmitt said police are targeting corridors like Market Street, Van Ness Avenue, and 19th Avenue, where a disproportionately high number of the 800-900 vehicle-pedestrian collisions occur every year. ”We’ve got to bring these incidents down,” said Schmitt. “Really, what this is all about is saving lives and letting people enjoy this city.”

“The need for action is clear,” said Walk SF Executive Director Elizabeth Stampe, who called “Focus on the Five” and the developing Pedestrian Action Strategy “promising” ways to “use data to prevent traffic crimes just as we do to prevent other crimes.”

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Proposals for one section of Polk. Images: SFMTA

Planners at the SF Municipal Transportation Agency this Saturday unveiled options for redesigning Polk Street as a better place for walking, biking, socializing, and transit. The proposed concepts [PDF] show different ways to arrange the limited amount of street space for traffic lanes (which serve buses on Muni’s 19-Polk line), bike lanes, expanded pedestrian areas, and spots for vehicle loading and parking.

Planners divided Polk into four sections, each with a set of possible configurations, and listed each proposal’s pros and cons for the different modes of transport. Proposals include curbside bike lanes separated from motor traffic by parklets, buffer zones, and boarding islands (though some proposals include removing the bike lanes or making them part-time only on the calmer stretches). Pedestrian space could be expanded by adding “mega parklets,” like the one spanning several blocks of Powell Street, and re-making intersecting alleys to “activate” them as pedestrianized public spaces. Corner bulb-outs would also be added at the most dangerous intersections along lower Polk. Transit could be sped up with more bus bulb-outs and boarding islands, though one proposal would actually convert Polk to a one-way street and re-route one direction of Muni’s 19 bus onto a parallel street, an idea transit advocates are still debating.

“Polk has been identified by the city as a high-injury corridor for pedestrians,” said Walk SF Executive Director Elizabeth Stampe. “It has many wide, one-way cross-streets whose high-speed traffic poses the greatest risk. There are many opportunities for bulb-outs and other traffic calming. You can see how much more pleasant the street is where there are bus bulbs now. Traffic calming, greening, and more sidewalk space were the priorities our members identified on our walk along Polk.”

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Speeds have dropped by two to three miles per hour for cars and bikes, according to a new SFMTA report.

John F. Kennedy Drive in Golden Gate Park is a bit calmer since it was reconfigured for San Francisco’s first parking-protected bike lane – and a majority of people like the change, according to a preliminary report [PDF] recently released by the SF Municipal Transportation Agency.

Since JFK was redesigned, average speeds are down by two to three MPH for both bikes and cars, the report says. The perception of safety for bicycling and driving went up significantly, though for walking, it went down a few percentage points.

“It’s having a calming effect in Golden Gate Park overall,” said Leah Shahum, executive director of the SF Bicycle Coalition. “Given the environment of a park, that’s a good thing to see.”

Photo: SFBC/Flickr

The bike lanes are the first in the city to be placed between the curb and parked cars, separated by a buffer zone — a configuration that other cities have employed to help more people feel safe riding bikes. Although traffic counts won’t be reported until the release of the SFMTA’s final report early next year, they’re expected to show a significant jump in bicycle ridership. Shahum said the SFBC has heard strong anecdotal evidence that the lanes are attracting new riders who didn’t feel comfortable riding between parked cars and moving cars under the old configuration.

“If anything, Golden Gate Park should be the ideal location for people who are new to bicycling or who want to build up their comfort level,” said Shahum. “I think it’s really great to see that the JFK Drive bikeway is having that positive, intended impact.”

When the redesign was first implemented, it saw its share of complaints, especially as drivers adjusted to the novelty of parking away from the curb. In the SFMTA’s survey, conducted through interviews in the park and online submissions, 87 percent of respondents now say they understood the configuration.

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A conceptual plan for protected bike lanes and pedestrian islands on Second Street. Image: SF DPW

Following a public process that revealed a strong preference for protected bike lanes, the SF Department of Public Works yesterday announced the selection of the preferred option for the Second Street Improvement Project. And yes, the design includes one-way protected bike lanes on each side of the street. The redesign will extend from Market Street to King Street, connecting downtown San Francisco to the SOMA district.

The bike lanes will be separated from auto traffic by a four-foot, planted buffer, creating a safe and comfortable space for cyclists to travel through this important corridor.

From SF DPW:

The preferred One-Way Cycletracks option envisions protected bicycle lanes in both directions,
increased opportunities for landscaping and retiming traffic signals to separate bicycles from turning
vehicles. It also would entail removing parking on one side of the street between Market and Harrison
streets; removing all parking between Harrison and Bryant streets, and retaining parking on both sides
of the street south of Bryant Street. Left-hand turns may need to be restricted at some intersections
during certain hours of the day.

We’ll have more information as it becomes available, but for now you can read up on the Second Street Improvement Project and take a look at conceptual renderings of the bike lanes on SF DPW’s project website.

Photo: SFMTA

Two blocks of 15th Street, from South Van Ness Avenue to Mission Street, went on a road diet this week. It’s part of the SF Municipal Transportation Agency’s “Home Zone” pilot project to study the effects of concentrated traffic calming measures on a few blocks around Marshall Elementary School, with the aim of creating a haven of slow-speed streets.

The reduction from two traffic lanes to one is part of the first phase of safety measures planned for that stretch of one-way 15th Street, as well as the connecting single blocks of four alleyways: Minna, Natoma, Capp, and Adair Streets. By narrowing the roadway for drivers, it also creates some unofficial “edge line” room for bicycle riders between the traffic lane and the parking lane. This improvement is one of the few pieces the SFMTA has implemented since the project’s final report [PDF] was approved in June of last year. Two more phases should follow.

The plan also calls for raised crosswalks, speed humps, narrower lanes, bulb-outs and permeable pavement. A timeline isn’t immediately available, but the SFMTA will evaluate the effects of each phase in sequence, according to the report. The project could serve as a model for the “school track” of the agency’s traffic calming program, which aims to bring driver speeds down to the new 15 MPH school zone speed limits. The SFMTA is also planning to overhaul how it implements its overall traffic calming program next spring.

A speed hump on Octavia Boulevard. Photo: sfbetterstreets.org

Swamped by demand for safer streets, the SF Municipal Transportation Agency has been working to overhaul the way it delivers speed humps, sidewalk bulb-outs, chicanes, and other measures proven to tame traffic speeds and save lives.

By next spring, the SFMTA intends to implement its revamped traffic calming program, which was put on hold this year while planners streamlined the implementation process. The change was necessary to address a massive backlog of traffic calming requests that were often left unaddressed for a decade or more.

SFMTA planners say the new traffic calming prioritization program would be more efficient at targeting the neighborhoods with the most severe speeding problems and deliver low-cost improvements like speed humps and traffic islands with as little as a year from when it accepts an application to implementation. Miriam Sorell of the SFMTA’s Livable Streets Subdivision outlined [PDF] the new process to a committee of the SF County Transportation Authority Board (comprised of the Board of Supervisors) on Tuesday.

Under the past approach, a resident’s application for traffic calming, if accepted, was placed on a waiting list and ranked based on the severity of the speeding problem in a neighborhood. When an application reached the top of the list — which was hard to predict, since a new, higher-ranking application could always displace an older request — it would be grouped with other applications from neighbors to form an area-wide plan, and the SFMTA would hold community meetings to ask neighbors which type of traffic calming measures they preferred. As more requests were lumped in with others, Sorell said, small projects grew larger, delaying implementation. Meanwhile, improvements like speed humps, which should be quick and cheap to implement, would go through excessive traffic studies and community meetings.

Constrained by limited funding and staff, the SFMTA can only implement 20 to 35 traffic calming “devices” per year, with a current backlog of $9 million in plans ready to hit the ground in the next five years. Sorell said planners hope the new process will allow them to better prioritize improvements for the areas where they’re needed most.

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A "walking bus" on the way to Buena Vista Horace Mann Elementary in the Mission this morning. Photo courtesy of Walk SF

A continuous “walking bus” of school children spanned several sunny blocks of the Mission this morning as the kids made their way to Buena Vista Horace Mann School.

“Drivers just waited and smiled, and everybody had a great morning,” said Elizabeth Stampe, executive director of Walk San Francisco.

San Francisco broke records for Walk to School Day today, with an estimated 55 schools and 8,500 students taking part, many of them in walking buses, which provide kids a safe and healthy commute option. In fact, BVHM Principal Jennifer Steiner announced that the school would begin scheduling a weekly walking bus heading out from Parque Niños Unidos, where parents can drop their kids off five blocks away.

Walking in groups provides a presence on the street that not only makes students and parents more visible to drivers, but also sends the signal to slow down perhaps more effectively than any speed limit sign.

Advocates and city officials celebrated the SF Municipal Transportation Agency’s implementation of 181 15 MPH school zones. The project, which had just gotten underway by last year’s Walk to School Day, was the first of its scale in the state.

But while the city has set a strong example for others to follow, “We’re also looking for ways to tame speeds in San Francisco,” said Stampe. The danger of streets with high-speed car traffic is one of the main barriers discouraging parents from letting their kids walk to school, she said. “When kids have to cross a street with fast traffic, or cross where cars don’t yield like on Monterey Boulevard, that’s a real issue for parents.”

According to the Department of Public Health, 42 percent of students citywide live within a mile of their school, but only 25 percent walk, said Stampe. Those numbers do vary — for Buena Vista Horace Mann, located in the walkable Mission District, 23 percent of the students live within a mile, and 19 percent walk.

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Polk at Geary, where a parklet is hosted by Jebena Cafe. Photo: Scott Sanchez, SFPlanning/Flickr

An effort to revamp conditions on Polk Street for walking, socializing, bicycling, and transit is underway by the SF Municipal Transportation Agency, and residents say they’re eager to see calmer motor traffic, wider sidewalks, better bike lanes and more public space along the corridor.

At a well-attended SFMTA community meeting on Wednesday, planners said construction on the redesign of Polk, between McAllister (at City Hall) and Union Streets, could start by early 2015, though a pilot project could also be implemented to test ideas on the ground by the time America’s Cup races return next July. That project will be developed in future community meetings, but it could result in anything from temporarily widened sidewalks, to restrictions on car traffic, to protected bike lanes. Roughly $8 million in Prop B street improvement bonds are already devoted to the pilot, in addition to street repaving funds.

D3 Supervisor David Chiu, who has lived near Polk for 16 years, walks and bikes the street regularly. “It’s an experience that can absolutely be improved,” he said. “This corridor has enormous potential to be a 21st-century model of transit-first living. Whether it be ideas around pedestrian safety, around bike lanes, parklets, or bulb-outs, in ways that allow all for all the modes of transit to be used and builds community, the conversation is very exciting.”

Polk was one of the corridors where Dutch bicycle planners joined the SFMTA on a ride one year ago to re-imagine it as a more pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly street using methods practiced in the Netherlands, which is known for its exceptionally safe street designs. The recommendations that resulted included expanding pedestrianized areas and providing continuous, parking-protected bike lanes — an idea also called for in the SF Bicycle Coalition‘s Connecting the City campaign as a safe, relatively flat connection linking Market Street to Fort Mason and Fisherman’s Wharf.

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