Car-Free Streets

When Mayor Gavin Newsom dedicated the first of three Pavement to Parks plazas at 17th and Market streets, he promised to push forward with the next two trial plazas in short order, including one at the intersection of Guerrero Street and San Jose Avenue, one of the more precarious corners in the city, where traffic speeds down Guerrero after exiting I-280, the footprint of the now-abandoned Mission Freeway. For community residents like Gillian Gillett, who has been fighting to make the neighborhood more pedestrian friendly and less sick with dangerous traffic for years, the news was thrilling.

San Francisco's traffic managers last week approved a trial closure of one block of Mason Street in North Beach from August 1st to September 27th to test what their models tell them: that they can close the street permanently to allow expansion of the North Beach Branch Public Library and the park at Joe DiMaggio Playground. Mason Street currently serves as a direct route to Fisherman's Wharf from Columbus Avenue and detractors are concerned that traffic will worsen on adjacent streets and that drivers will have difficulty understanding the change.

The massive Sunday Streets in the Mission two days ago was touted by organizers and Mayor Gavin Newsom's office as an event that would bring shoppers to the neighborhood and improve sales in a very difficult economy. After walking the route and speaking with the owners and managers of nine businesses, I think it's safe to say that, by and large, merchants cheered the car-free event for not only adding to business but improving the neighborhood.

Massive crowds came out to the Mission yesterday to enjoy the first of two Sunday Streets events, packing Valencia Street and 24th Street with families, dog walkers, and cyclists of all ages and abilities. Organizers were thrilled with the turnout and seemed only to worry how they would get everyone off the streets at 2 pm, the scheduled closing time.

The first of two Mission Sunday Streets is this weekend, opening up wide swaths of car-free space away from the city’s edges and in busy neighborhood streets where businesses are excited about the prospects.

In the past few weeks, Stanford University students have built support for a proposal to reduce parking, widen sidewalks, and eventually close eight blocks of University Avenue in Palo Alto to motor vehicles. The Palo Alto Pedestrian Mall (PAPM) started out as an assignment in a "Creating Infectious Action" class at the design school at Stanford and has since garnered support among transportation committee members of the city council and businesses along the avenue, many of them restaurants that want to take advantage of extra sidewalk seating. 

I've lived in New York City for just about twenty years now but yesterday was my first trip to Times Square.

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