Following in the footsteps of New York City, Indianapolis, Portland, and others, San Francisco's Market Street will soon be redesigned for use by buses, pedestrians, and cyclists.
The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency board of directors has unanimously approved the so-called Better Market Street Project, a plan that will expand existing bus-only lanes, add new fully protected bicycle lanes, and create pedestrian safety improvements to the thoroughfare. The measure would also largely ban use of the street by private automobiles along the street, including ride-hailing services, Curbed reports.
The $604 million initiative would transform Market Street between the Embarcadero, at the foot of the city's downtown, and Octavia Boulevard on the western edge of the city center, where the Mission, SOMA, and Civic Center areas meet.
The move comes as New York City's bus lane experiment receives rave reviews from local residents (a recent study showed that the changes have not led to an increase in automobile traffic in surrounding areas) and as Portland begins to plan for similar changes.
The plan includes a handy app that can help city dwellers envision their current and future commutes along the street.
13 Comments
Fucking brilliant. Dump all the traffic from Market onto Mission Street. The Mission District has been decimated by redevelopment, this will no doubt finish it off.
Banning cars is great. Banning them from one street is absurd. It’s long past time to end autocentric culture. SF has great public transit, time to expand it and ban cars altogether.
NYC recently blocked car traffic on 14th and as far as I've seen (from friends in the area + twitter observation) traffic hasn't noticeably picked up on parallel streets. What has happened is that transit has become more convenient since it moves faster, and people are more willing to take it. That said, I agree with banning cars in cities.
Majority of traffic in SF is Uber and Lyft. Until people stop relying on cars, it's going to be whack-a-mole. But you get nowhere without starting somewhere.
A little late to the game, but... This has nothing to do with the Mission District. The portion of Mission Street that runs parallel to Market, and especially the portion addressed in this proposal, does not run through the Mission District. After it's passed through SoMa it bangs a left, and after a few more blocks, it eventually passes through the Mission. I'm gonna call that unrelated.
In more "know how I know Miles doesn't know SF" news: "SF has great public transit." LOL.
pedestrian streets are great. pedestrian streets with busses are just roads.
600,000,000 dollars is really a lot of money spent to do something very basic. the mapping app is asinine; this is a very simple ordinary route change.
miles, you think the report from NY about traffic not increasing as a result of closing streets will not carry over to SF? Any reason why?
I like your idea to remove cars completely from the centre. For cities with solid public transport it makes sense.
Las Ramblas in Barcelona (3/4 mile long) has been around since the 1300s. Pretty sure it didn't cost $604 million. Perhaps the SF people should take a trip?
las ramblas is a great example of a "both and" solution because it still has a lane for cars, scooters, and buses on either side of the wide, central strip. the focus, however, is clearly on the pedestrian traffic and the civic culture it creates.
It's a good start, and that part of Market Street can certainly handle it. Spread it out and you'll need to make sure there's not just adequate public transit (which there is) but a certain amount of density in the surrounding areas. BTW, I've never understood how the Tenderloin is still a bit seedy considering it's location and wonderful building stock.
The busses would be great in SF if they weren't constantly getting blocked by assholes parked in the way delivering goods and entitled people.
they can also allow regular cars but they have to impose a toll fees for the number of hours they intend to stay in the city the like of other countries who put toll fee ,Singapore are one of them
las ramblas is a great example. great to make nice old strips into pedestrian walkways. (Think Broadway in NYC or 5th Ave would be a good bike/pathway). However, the idea has limited practical application for most cities — only works in very old, downtown, one-offs
In addition to the bus criticism, it would be much, much nicer if one could take a stroll and not have to worry about a crossing at every block. This seems like such a half-ass measure.
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