Pedestrian Infrastructure

Update: A petition in support of wider sidewalks on Potrero has been created.

As if Geary and Masonic wasn't already hostile enough to pedestrians, here's an example of street dysfunction exacerbated by freight traffic at the newly-opened CityTarget. Winston Parsons happened upon a delivery truck driver setting up shop in a crosswalk and, he said, impeding buses on the 43-Masonic.

Most merchants on central Irving Street in the Sunset may have come around to the idea of turning 12 parking spaces into sidewalk extensions with greenery and stylized seating fixtures.

A new button-activated pedestrian beacon was installed on Sloat Boulevard and Forest View Drive this week as a part of a package of safety improvements, along with three bulb-outs and a more visible crosswalk. It's the spot where 17-year-old Hanren Chang was killed on her birthday in March by a drunk driver as she was crossing the street.

Along Marina Boulevard there's a bicycle and pedestrian path where visitors and residents can stroll along the bay without having to worry about cars -- until they get to the stretch between Scott and Baker Streets, where drivers are allowed to enter the path to access 51 parking spaces.

Plans to create calmer, greener streets on the Wiggle came into clearer focus Tuesday after the SFMTA presented more refined proposals for raised crosswalks and intersections, bulb-outs with greenery, traffic circles, traffic diverters, and other safety improvements.

The SF Fire Department tried to delete an amendment to the fire code that would allow city agencies greater flexibility in widening sidewalks to improve pedestrian safety, according to Supervisor Scott Wiener, who championed the measure.

Just two weeks after Oakland’s Latham Square opened on August 16, office workers could be seen arriving in ones and twos at lunchtime. A clutch of high schoolers from the nearby Oakland School For the Arts zoomed in on skateboards and sat together on a big bench in the shade, looking cool and disaffected. The park, which made the last block of Telegraph Avenue below 16th Street car-free, provides such a natural definition of the border between downtown and uptown Oakland that it feels like it has always been here.

Once again, a merchant group is contesting a proposal that would improve walking and public space on a San Francisco street. At a community meeting on plans to add greening and sidewalk corner extensions on central Irving Street last week, merchants balked at the idea of removing 10 to 12 parking spaces to extend eight sidewalk corners and create spaces where people can rest.