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Banning cars on SF’s Market Street, once a radical idea, approved unanimously
- eindiran 7y agoI think the only potential issue is that it isn't clear what sections of Market are not intended for cars currently from the signs visible from the side streets intersecting it, so major improvements to signage need to be made or unsuspecting people are going to constantly end up turning on to the car-prohibited sections of the street.
- mc32 7y agoCan’t they just put up bollards[1] like most places do when they want to restrict traffic? Some systems require the vehicle going through the retractable bollard to have high clearance in order to make it less palatable to circumvent. [1]Pneumatic bollards can retract and can rise to become a barrier.
- bluejekyll 7y agoBuses will still be allowed. This is just passenger vehicles. So they’d need bollards that can retract for the buses if they were to do that.
- mc32 7y agoStanford has had that since -well, a long time --though it can be abused, i.e. relatively easy to defeat, but you can have meaningful consequences for circumvention.
- notatoad 7y agoBollards that automatically retract for certain classes of vehicles (like buses) are very common and have been in use in many places for a long time. That's very much a solved problem, although it's not especially cheap
- manojlds 7y agoTaxis too.
- inferiorhuman 7y agoThey want to restrict private automobile traffic not public transit (tram, bus) and professional stuff like delivery vehicles.
- amluto 7y agoWhen most turns were banned a few years ago, I found trying to get anywhere nearby by car to be extremely unpleasant. There was no clear signage as to how one was expected to navigate. I hope they do better this time around.
- LeoPanthera 7y agoAs long as navigation software knows what to do, most people will be OK. (I've always thought that in-car built-in navigation can be a liability for reasons like this. You have to pay for updates, if they're even possible at all, and no-one ever does.)
- toomuchtodo 7y agoOne should be able to successfully navigate with no in car or mobile navigation.
- sjwright 7y agoThat complexity is a good disincentive for unnecessary traffic.
- toomuchtodo 7y agoThen remove vehicle access entirely, don’t build a dystopian traffic route. Otherwise you’re attempting to justify poor urban planning and unsafe vehicle travel.
- semiotagonal 7y agoGood riddance. It was impossible to drive on anyway, no rules whatsoever.
- newnewpdro 7y agoIt's true, driving on Market was a comedy of horrors.
- scurvy 7y agoIndeed! Just this morning, I saw a black Town car with the plate "REGENCY1" make an illegal left turn from Market to 9th in order to pick up some fatcat at NEMA. This was a professional driver who will still be allowed down Market under the new rules. The only solution is to ban all auto traffic and only allow busses in concrete separated lanes.
- newnewpdro 7y agoThe street is a clusterfuck. Most of my experiences driving it are late at night, after last-call, sharing the road with intoxicated tourists, it was total insanity. Between the copious amounts of confusing signage, partial lane divisions, crazy painted lane colors, taxis/ride shares obstructing the right lanes compelling drivers to use the bus/taxi/carpool lane to get around them... oh man. I remember one night mowing down the flexible plastic divider posts in protest, at about 2MPH. Thud, Thud, Thud, Thud, nobody even seemed to notice, well, other than my passenger. It's such a circus.
- Karrot_Kream 7y agoWhy would you mow down the bollards? You're acting like a bully, just because you're big and strong (in other words: you have a car), you're throwing your weight around. The bollards are an essential part of keeping cyclists safe, and you driving a multi-ton hunk of metal doesn't give you the right to endanger cyclists in "protest".
- dang 7y agoDidn't Jello Biafra run on that in the 70s?
- Judgmentality 7y agoWell, Jello wanted to ban all cars in the city. He had some other fun ideas as well. > His platform included unconventional points such as forcing businessmen to wear clown suits within city limits, erecting statues of Dan White, who assassinated Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk in 1978, around the city and allowing the parks department to sell eggs and tomatoes with which people could pelt the statues,[45] hiring workers who'd lost their jobs due to a tax initiative to panhandle in wealthy neighborhoods (including Dianne Feinstein's), and a citywide ban on cars.[38] Biafra has expressed irritation that these parts of his platform attained such notoriety, preferring instead to be remembered for serious proposals such as legalizing squatting in vacant, tax-delinquent buildings and requiring police officers to run for election by the people of the neighborhoods they patrol.[44] > He finished third out of a field of ten, receiving 3.79% of the vote (6,591 votes);[46] the election ended in a runoff that did not involve him (Feinstein was declared the winner). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jello_Biafra#Mayoral_campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jello_Biafra#Mayoral_campaign
- CalChris 7y agoI can’t wait to ride that first Critical Mass straight down Market.
- busterarm 7y agoMake sure there's fenders on your bike -- you don't want a stripe of what's on that road.
- sushid 7y agoNow let’s get the government to create two lanes for bus and bike. It makes no sense to share them as buses aggressive cut off poor cyclists at every light.
- stingrae 7y agothe plan does create a separate lane for bikes.
- Symbiote 7y agoUnfortunately, it's at the same grade as the pedestrian footway. That will lead to people wandering into it, and cyclists skipping outside it to overtake. It would be much better to have a small drop, even if it's only 5cm or so.
- TulliusCicero 7y ago> Unfortunately, it's at the same grade as the pedestrian footway. This is how protected bike lanes work in Germany, and it works fine. A slight drop would probably be okay too though.
- brlewis 7y agoThat may be a side effect of German culture. In Boston, Massachusetts the bike lane in the sidewalk near North Station does not work fine at all, even though it's very clearly marked.
- dependenttypes 7y agoIn my experience it is the cyclists that aggressively cut everyone off, especially pedestrians.
- megablast 7y agoReally? How many cars have cyclists killed over the last 20 years? Not sure how you can get more aggressive than that.
- DeonPenny 7y ago`Thanks its terrible to drive. Get a motorcycle, bike or scooter
- baby 7y agothat would be freaking amazing, I really miss public streets in Europe and restaurants and bars with terasses. I have to cross Market by foot every day to commute and it's a nightmare. I also like to use kick scooters along Market to travel in San Francisco and it's also a nightmare because of the car and the state of the road :/
- robotstate 7y agoIn what way is it a nightmare to cross? Most of the time you don't even need to wait for a signal. Market Street is usually empty aside from buses.
- baby 7y agonot from castro to church, there's a bunch of traffic and it's not straight forward to get from one point to another.
- ladon86 7y agoDisappointingly, taxis are still allowed.
- valley-green 7y ago“start building “Better Market Street” immediately, and then replicate it elsewhere.” Nobody wants to be like San Francisco. Worst city in the state. Try doing something about the needles and feces.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- buss 7y agoAll of the press releases state that cars are banned. In fact, taxis are still allowed (except for Uber and Lyft). As a daily bike commuter on Market street, this is hugely disappointing. There's very few cars on Market already, and taxis are the most dangerous of those left.
- stingrae 7y agoThe approved plan is creating a divided lane for just bikes.
- buss 7y agoIt'll take a decade to build the full protected lane for bikes. But banning taxis would improve safety overnight.
- SECProto 7y agoAs someone who does just that, it should not take anywhere near a decade. From now, two or three years would suffice for a complete streets design + rebuild. Extras included (eg separating storm+sanitary sewers, or other infrastructure recapitalization) could add a year or two. If it takes them more than 4 years, construction delays inclusive, the issue lies elsewhere than the design and construction. Perhaps things like maintaining traffic flow, etc.
- Ar-Curunir 7y agoThis is San Francisco; construction will always take forever
- cbhl 7y agoHas CEQA been fixed yet? The Van Ness bus lane project was approved by voters in 2003 after Proposition K, but the CEQA report was finished only in 2014 because one of the eighteen environmental measures that required a full CEQA review was "level of service" for automobiles (so any project that reduced car throughput "hurts the environment" and required a review). Construction is slated to finish in 2021, a full 18 years after the original plan. For more context: https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2014/07/transit-projects-are-about-to-get-much-much-easier-in-california/374049/ https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2014/07/transit-proje... https://www.sfcta.org/projects/van-ness-improvement-project https://www.sfcta.org/projects/van-ness-improvement-project
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- AlphaWeaver 7y ago> Once the redesign is under way, drivers who steer their cars onto Market will risk a moving violation. Cars will still be able to cross Market at intersections. When I first read this article, I had a vision of a mixed use pedestrian and cyclist space in place of the street, like one long thin plaza. If cars are allowed to cross the road perpendicularly, will there be any significant effects from this change?
- rco8786 7y agoYou can’t realistically take a whole city and draw a line down the middle and say “no cars can cross this ever”.
- alwaysdoit 7y agoSure you could. We have more than 2 dimensions.
- benmusch 7y agoI guess, but the amount of space and inefficiency that building a highway that literally runs over 1 block over the middle of a city would seem to be not at all worth it.
- dajohnson89 7y agoit wouldn't be a highway, it's called an overpass. and they're quite common.
- Symbiote 7y agoAn overpass tends to make the area underneath it pretty grim: surrounded by concrete with little natural light. I can't think of any examples of a nice shopping street with an overpass above it. An underpass works well, but is likely to be much more expensive.
- alottafunchata 7y agoBecause San Francisco is being ran by radicals.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- MaupitiBlue 7y agoThe cars seem to be much less of a problem than the limitless hordes of insane drug addicts and their excrement.
- dependenttypes 7y agoCars are one of the leading causes of death, resource usage, pollution, and noise pollution. Drug addiction and homelessness is a problem indeed but this is a step in the right direction.
- randyrand 7y agoWhat exactly is costing 600 million dollars? thats a huge sum of money to rebuild a few blocks on a single surface level road.
- pardavis 7y agohttps://medium.com/@josefow/streets-paved-with-gold-sfs-ridiculous-repaving-costs-can-t-be-explained-219690e9ff21 https://medium.com/@josefow/streets-paved-with-gold-sfs-ridi...
- m0zg 7y agoIt costs $1M or so in the US to e.g. outfit an existing intersection with a set of traffic lights. I thought they'd be some gold plated, diamond encrusted traffic lights, but no, they're just standard issue. Constructions costs are pretty ridiculous.
- rhacker 7y ago25K for the workers, 100K for materials. 875K for the company that sold this to the city. Rich keep getting richer.
- nilkn 7y agoIf it's this simple why aren't other companies entering the market offering steep discounts? I don't see how such an arbitrary and vast margin could be sustained in the presence of even minimal competition.
- wasdfff 7y agoIn LA rail projects generally go to one contractor not because they are the cheapest (they aren’t), but because officials like that they worked on the previous project and have ‘experience.’ AKA nepotism and corruption.
- Ericson2314 7y ago
- NDizzle 7y agousername checks out
- RiOuseR 7y agoWouldn't this just create more traffic? How are cars supposed to get from south of market to like... anywhere else in the city? SF really loves to bike shed.
- sjwright 7y agoMore accurately it’ll just shuffle the deckchairs on the traffic map by creating a dedicated taxi thoroughfare.
- SECProto 7y agoThis is not the meaning of bikeshed. If they spent years debating whether a particular spot on the block should be a loading zone or a taxi zone, that would be bikeshedding.
- closeparen 7y agoCars can still cross market, just not drive on it east or west. Which you wouldn't want to do anyway; the adjacent SOMA streets are a lot faster.
- base698 7y agoThe cars are a danger to the people passed out on heroin and a threat to the open air drug market by sixth. Good thing they banned them.
- kevincrane 7y agoThat's true, why fix one problem when there are also other problems?
- yostrovs 7y agoBecause some problems are bigger than others. If you're going to make a pedestrian area, try to make it at least mildly inviting to pedestrians. Who would want to go walking on Market now? Even if all cars were gone?
- busterarm 7y agoSo they can get rid of cars but they can't get rid of shit?
- spikels 7y agoThis will turn San Francisco’s Market St into a “Transit Mall”, an urban planning idea from decades ago that failed 85%+ of the times it has been tried. The one new and hopeful element is the protected bike path. However because the area is already overwhelmed with a crime, drug and homeless problems and struggling retail and restaurants this project seems almost certain to end in disaster. More info here: https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/pedestrian_and_transit_malls_study_center_city_commission.pdf https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/pedestrian_and_transit_malls_stu... https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RW09rbBLB5A https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RW09rbBLB5A https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/revisiting_pedestrian_malls_scmidt.pdf https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/revisiting_pedestrian_malls_scmi... https://www.boulderdowntown.com/_files/docs/americanpedmallexperiment.pdf https://www.boulderdowntown.com/_files/docs/americanpedmalle... https://www.curbed.com/2019/9/30/20885226/best-pedestrian-mall-design https://www.curbed.com/2019/9/30/20885226/best-pedestrian-ma...
- doctorpangloss 7y agoThat deck is from 2008, I bet I could find you a lot of failing retail and restaurant businesses that year. Furthermore, Lincoln Road Mall in Miami, which it lists as struggling, is definitely thriving today. I feel like the whole thing is bunk?
- robk 7y agoLincoln road has high end shops and an excellent location on the water and there's no sign of a bus depot anywhere visible
- spikels 7y agoSeems it’s all the tourists and the university campus that make Lincoln Road work. The key is lots of pedestrians that aren’t dependent on cars - tourists in hotels and students on campus are perfect. Unfortunately Market St doesn’t have much of either. You are correct that buses and light rail are a negative.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ulfw 7y agoHow this costs $604 million is beyond me. Why do costs spiral out of control so much in California? Am I missing something maybe?
- empath75 7y agoSays the engineer making 300k a year in San Francisco.
- rayiner 7y agoExcept the $300k salary is coming out of the pocket of Proctor and Gamble and other advertisers, while the $600 million in public expenditures is coming out of state and local taxes. Public sector cost inflation and inefficiency at the state and local level hurts the poor and lower middle class the most. They both pay for the excess, and are most reliant on the poor services delivered in return. (And saying “just tax the rich more” doesn’t fix the problem either. Even if you totally overhaul the state and local tax system, you’re then diverting that money to public sector workers, who are generally comfortably middle class, instead of the people who need it the most.)
- SllX 7y agoCEQA, pervasive unionization of labor, cronyism, and probably at least five other reasons I can’t think of at the moment. Feel free to chime in add to the list!
- mistursinistur 7y agoAll transit projects in San Francisco are actually combined sewer, power, and water projects with transit branding. Better Market Street's budget incorporates all these components: https://www.sfcta.org/projects/better-market-street https://www.sfcta.org/projects/better-market-street