Streetsblog San Francisco

The series of trials scheduled to begin September 29 on Market Street are still seeping into the public's awareness, but so far, pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit riders seem to share an excitement about the plan, which will reduce traffic by forcing eastbound private automobiles to turn right at 6th and 8th Streets, and enliven the city's main thoroughfare with art projects, mini-plazas and entertainment.

"I think overall it would be a good idea," said Jerry Chung, who rides Muni to work from his Richmond District home, and also takes the bus during lunch to go shopping. "Sometimes it takes several minutes just to move a few blocks" on Market Street because cars hold up buses, he said.

Nicholas Whitacre, who rides up and down Market constantly in his duties as a bike messenger, said the changes would be very welcome. "I think it's awesome. I hope that that happens," Whitacre said.

Fewer private vehicles would make Market much safer for him, he said, and cars have little use for Market anyway. "Unless you're a delivery truck or a taxi, you're wasting your time" on Market Street, Whitacre said. "It's also got to be safer for cabs, buses, and delivery trucks."

Kit Hodge, Director of the Great Streets Project for the SFBC, said the the vast majority of people surveyed about the project wanted to see a change on Market. "Overwhelmingly, people are responding to the idea of wanting to see a better place for Market Street overall," said Hodge. "What's really striking is that people are already talking about wanting the street to be a better place. It's all about placemaking for them, and they're open to the idea of trying things. They recognize it's not what it should be right now."

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Five San Francisco agencies, together with a number of community partners, will initiate a series of bold trials this month, which they hope will eventually help transform Market Street into a revitalized, thriving city thoroughfare, bustling with "activated public spaces." In addition to altering traffic patterns, the project intends to convert the streetscape, with art projects in empty storefronts, new mini-plazas and entertainment venues.

Starting at the end of September, officials will begin restricting traffic on Market Street with forced right-turns, similar to the recommendations in the 2004 Market Street study conducted by the San Francisco County Transportation Authority (SFCTA) (PDF).

From the new Better Market Street Project website:

Beginning Tuesday, September 29, private vehicles on eastbound Market Street will be required to turn right at 8th and 6th Streets. The purpose of the trial is to determine if discouraging through traffic on Market Street can improve transit and pedestrian conditions along the corridor. Signs will be installed along eastbound Market Street starting at Van Ness Avenue encouraging drivers to turn off of Market on 10th Street in advance of reaching 8th Street, where the right turn will be required.

• This trial will be effective all day, seven days a week.
• Pedestrian, cyclists, public transit vehicles, taxis, emergency vehicles and delivery vehicles will still have full access to Market Street.

This pilot program is the first of several pilot projects designed to determine how best to improve transportation conditions on the Market Street corridor. The City will closely monitor the changes to determine its impacts and will be refined as needed.

Details of the plan are just being made available tonight. We'll have more coverage tomorrow. 

This is a really exciting weekend for our Streetsblog colleagues in New York City, as Ben Fried writes: 

When Memorial Day weekend rolls around, here at Streetsblog we usually take the opportunity to note the advent of the summer driving season -- and all the waste and violence that entails. This year's going to be a little different, because we've got a major livable streets milestone to celebrate in New York City.

With all those cars headed out of town, DOT is going to re-route traffic at Times Square around Broadway and onto Seventh Avenue. Come Memorial Day morning, New York City will have brand new public spaces carved out of the street, smack in the middle of Midtown. If you're staying in the city for the long weekend, it's time to party.

The Times Square Alliance will be out bright and early Monday setting up beach chairs. Virgil's Barbecue will be firing up the grill. At some point, a giant movie screen will get unfurled for a noon showing of "On the Town" (it's the last day of Fleet Week, folks). I suspect that I won't be the only New Yorker heading over to Times Square for the first time in ages.

I wish we had something as grand to announce, like come Monday we'll have a car-free Market Street. Wouldn't that be sweet? We're taking the day off anyway. Have a great Memorial Day weekend! We'll be back Tuesday.

In Glasgow, Scotland a few weeks ago I had the opportunity to reacquaint myself with a lovely feature of many European cities: broad central city streets converted to pedestrian only. In Glasgow it's on Sauchiehall Street and makes a grand turn onto Buchanan, covering over 20 city blocks. Mostly lined with stores and offices, the landscape created can be "read" as an extended shopping mall, but outdoors, with storefronts opening onto a real street, now converted into a pedestrian and bicycling oasis. The zone is crowded with walkers and shoppers at any given time. (Similar zones that I've visited are the Strøget in Copenhagen, Denmark and Istiklal Caddesi in Beyoglu in Istanbul, Turkey.)

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Don't get me wrong, I love San Francisco's historic streetcars. I have ridden them often and can appreciate the nostalgic bumpy rides, even more so if I don't have to stand, and can grab a seat and peer outside the small windows.  But when I saw Rachel Gordon's story in the Chronicle this week about how Muni plans to renovate Streetcar Number One for $1.9 million it really got me thinking: In these tight budgetary times, is that really where we want to be investing our precious transit dollars?

According to the MTA, the money for the project is a mix of capital dollars: local funds (sales taxes) as well as state and federal grants, and it had been set aside for vehicle restoration. Fine, but how about this question:

"Why should San Franciscans only experience public transit's past? What if we were to also show people what public transit's future looks like?" asked Tom Radulovich, director of Livable City and a member of the BART Board of Directors. "I don't want this to be a transit museum. I want this to be a city where transit actually works."

Why, Radulovich asks, couldn't the MTA invest in some modern low-floor trams, like in Milan, Italy, that would carry greater volumes of people, especially during peak hours, when the historic F-line streetcars are often jammed because of the overcrowded LRVs on Muni Metro? He said the historics also interfere with bus movement. Despite the costs of the modern trams, Radulovich said it's an issue advocates have been talking about.

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“Rebuilding Market Street has become a civic obsession in San Francisco. The city’s main street has been torn up and rebuilt completely at least once in every generation since the Civil War.”

Apparently it’s time again. San Francisco faces another massive effort to remake Market Street, trying one more time to get it right. What is right? Some folks harbor fantasies of a boulevard that brings out San Franciscans to re-create a life that exists mostly in our imaginations. But there is some evidence that a more vibrant and convivial street did exist in our past. An article in the long-defunct African-American journal Spokesman in 1933 described night life in the Tenderloin along Market Street:

Altogether the street is like the fairway of an enormous circus or carnival. Colors, lights, crowds, music, candy, hawkers, ballyhoo--everything is there but the elephants and the sawdust...

This photo taken around 1940 shows the old “roar of the four” as folks referred to it when four streetcar tracks, two privately owned and two public, dominated the center of the street. Cars park along sidewalks crowded with pedestrians in this image, taken midway between 4th and 5th Streets. If the view looked westerly instead of east we’d see a mid-Market full of movie palaces and locally owned small department stores and other retail outlets dependent on working class shoppers.

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Editor's note: This is the first in a series of stories that will focus on how to improve streets for pedestrians.

We're all being encouraged to exercise more and drive less. But sadly, more people walking in conjunction with the minuscule funding dedicated to pedestrian infrastructure will increase the number of pedestrians hit and injured or killed by motorists.

This has already been happening on San Francisco's streets. According to a U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) study, SF is the 4th most dangerous city for pedestrians per capita (among U.S. cities with populations of 500,000 or more) and the streets are becoming more frightening by the day.

According to the latest crash data from the San Francisco 2007 Collision Report (PDF), in 2007 about 800 pedestrians were injured by cars. Given that as many as 21 percent of pedestrians don’t report the altercation, that amounts to nearly 3 pedestrians hit each day. Over the same period, the number of cyclists injured by cars increased by 31 percent to 451. Also, 32 pedestrians were killed by motor vehicles, an increase of more than 50 percent from the year before.

These crashes are not only devastating to the victims, but they burden health care systems and tax budgets. Twenty-five percent of pedestrian-auto fatalities were Muni crashes. In the past 7 years, Muni paid out about $66 million to people who experienced injury, wrongful death or property damage.

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