Pedestrian Infrastructure

Planners presented early concepts for a new Market Street to the public yesterday, moving the discussion forward on revitalizing San Francisco's grand boulevard with features like car-free zones, raised bike lanes, faster transit, and more inviting public spaces.

A new buffered bike lane was striped on 8th Street last week, re-purposing a traffic lane for bicycles on one of SoMa's fast, one-way motorways. The new configuration, which removes bicyclists from the door zone and provides a much wider lane, is an improvement over the four speed-inducing traffic lanes and skinny bike lane that previously existed. Still, many say it's just a small step toward a truly safer street.

Rarely does the opportunity to create a new street present itself in a densely built-out city like San Francisco. But neighbors and planners at the developing Mission Bay campus of the University of California, SF decided to make the best of such a chance by designing an extension of Fourth Street as a car-free plaza.

The SF Planning Department this week unveiled its final design for pedestrian improvements on a stretch of Broadway in Chinatown.

Muni riders, bike commuters and pedestrians passing through the re-opened Duboce and Church junction this morning were welcomed with wider boarding islands, fresh pavement, and a newly-painted, lime-green "bike channel."

A new bicycle and pedestrian traffic signal was spotted in action at Page and Stanyan Streets last Friday, one month after it was installed.

The SFMTA is installing ladder crosswalks at intersections along the Wiggle.

Tomorrow's bi-weekly SFMTA engineering hearing has a couple of peculiar items on the agenda:

Safe bike lanes and pedestrian crossings should be top priorities in the redesign of Second Street. That was the major sentiment at a community meeting on Wednesday, where city staffers rebooting the faltered Second Street Improvement Project asked attendees how they would re-envision the corridor.