Market Street

In response to concerns that the SFMTA is taking too long to put in more green protected bike lanes and other innovations on Market Street, the agency's Sustainable Streets Director, Bond Yee, in a letter to the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, has outlined and provided a timeline for his agency's planned improvements.

Nearly five months after the SFMTA installed the green protected bike lanes on Market Street, which most agree has been a successful trial, bike advocates are urging the agency to finish the job and plug in the gaps from 8th Street to Octavia Boulevard.

At the heart of the San Francisco Planning Department’s 328-page Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) for CityPlace, sustainable transportation advocates have pinpointed one glaring flaw. In assessing the impacts of new off-street retail parking, the environmental analysis [pdf] concludes that building a 167-space garage will have the same effect on traffic as building no garage at all.

On the same day San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom announced yet another intervention along central Market Street aimed at rejuvenating the beleaguered section between 5th and Van Ness, the Department of Public Works (DPW) announced it was convening a citizens advisory committee (CAC) to help steer the long-term vision for remaking the city's most iconic street.

It appears the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency has come to similar conclusions to Streetsblog's in its review of the pilot traffic changes on Market Street at 6th and 10th Streets: A big thumbs-up for transit, bike riders, and people on foot, relatively minor impacts on traffic, and some uneven results when it comes to driver compliance with the new configuration.

Riding a bicycle down Market Street may not be a completely hassle-free experience just yet, but new safe-hit posts installed on the bike lane today between Gough Street and 8th Street are a big hit with bicycle riders.

After experimenting with one configuration for soft-hit posts for a few weeks along Market Street approaching 10th Street, the MTA has changed the configuration to give cyclists more room in approaching the intersection. The new soft hit posts extend from just before the intersection at 11th Street and Market up to 10th Street in the eastbound direction and the lane has a larger painted buffer.

With six months of hindsight since San Francisco began trial traffic diversions and art in shuttered storefronts on Market Street, city leaders are taking stock of what has been successful and what has been less so. Within weeks, they expect to complete a scoping document and put out bids for a three-year design and transportation plan that will remake the most iconic street in San Francisco.

Cyclists traveling inbound on Market Street are being squeezed into an unnecessarily narrow bike lane as a result of safe-hit posts installed to enforce the new required right turn at 10th Street. The posts, put in place by the MTA to the left of the existing bike and right-turn-only lanes, have shaved what was already a skinny passage for cyclists.