Banning cars on SF’s Market Street, once a radical idea, approved unanimously | Hacker News Reader

Banning cars on SF’s Market Street, once a radical idea, approved unanimously

sfchronicle.com

266 pointsalmost_usual212 comments

All 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.

The approved plan is creating a divided lane for just bikes.

It'll take a decade to build the full protected lane for bikes. But banning taxis would improve safety overnight.

As 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.

This is San Francisco; construction will always take forever

Has 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-proje... https://www.sfcta.org/projects/van-ness-improvement-project

Can you explain briefly how this could possibly take 3 years? I mean, I don't know anything about street design, but it seems so straightforward adding a protected bike lane. They aren't widening the streets, right? How could it take 3 years?

> They aren't widening the streets, right? How could it take 3 years?

There's no upper limit to how long you can take to do something.

Lower limits, sure, but no upper ones.

So if you're just adding some painted bike lanes, or maybe some curb-separated bike lanes at street level, it shouldn't take anywhere near that long.

The situation I'm picturing where it could take a few years is if the bike lanes are raised up to the same level as the sidewalk. Which can take a long time because it means moving existing curbs, which means moving catchbasins (curbs direct water flow) and often light posts (should be near edge of road for accessibility purposes - maintaining clear walking path, having push buttons and audible signals at edge of street). Doing either or both of these things means stuff is getting moved around underground, and underground is a very busy place (sewer, water, natural gas, buried electrical, signal infrastructure, old foundations, ... And all these are at different depths, with different separation requirements, severally limiting what can go where). And add in a busy location like Market Street, and maintaining access all the time, and probably limiting working hours to minimize impact on residents/businesses. The time would add up fast.

I agree that it _shouldn't_ take that long. This project was first started in 2011. Construction won't start until some time in 2020 (optimistically).

From https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/sf-transit-board-approves-ca...:

> Better Market Street will be implemented in three phases: Market from Fifth to Eighth streets is phase 1, Market from Fifth to Second streets is phase 2, and Market from Van Ness to Octavia Boulevard will comprise phase 3.

> The second phase will also include the construction of a loop in the Financial District for the F-Market & Wharves historic streetcar...

> Phase 1 is scheduled to stretch at least until 2022, according to the project’s website. The construction of the streetcar loop is expected in 2023, and future phases of the project are dependent on identifying funding

So 1/3 of this project is projected to be finished by 2022. And the other two portions of market street don't even have funding or a timeline yet. We will be lucky if it's finished by 2026 (no delays, no recession puts funding in jeopardy, etc).

By the time everything is done, it may be _20_ _years_ to build protected lanes. In the meantime, we have sharrows and intermix with taxis.

Did you not see how quickly it happened on Valencia? I mean as a temporary, instant measure they could mostly add paint and more of those plastic separators: https://laecovillage.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/market-st-1...

That is odd. Couldn’t people hail a cab at an intersection instead? Just walk half a block or less.

On a related note, I’ve become more sensitive to the exhaust and engine noise from ICE cars when riding my bike. Nothing like directly breathing in the pollution to sour the trip and dash hope for getting rid of fossil fuels. Glad to hear about the upgrade anyhow.

I think San Francisco is still bitter at Uber and Lyft for succeeding without permission, and has given their competitors a random handout as a poke in the eye. That’s the only way this “no cars on Market except taxis” rule makes any sense.

> I think San Francisco is still bitter at Uber and Lyft for succeeding without permission

Have they succeed though? Last I saw, neither was profitable, and both were hemorrhaging hundreds of millions (and in Uber's case, billions) of dollars every quarter.

Taxis have long benefited from special treatment, including the ability to use bus lanes. That predates Uber and Lyft AFAIK.

Other taxis operate on a government license, so this isn't really bitterness.

In Utrecht, Netherlands only busses and taxis are allowed in some parts of the city center, and this predates Uber/Lyft existing (let alone expanding to the Netherlands). It's pretty standard municipal policy.

Certainly will be happy to not get a shot of exhaust in the face every time I get groceries.

You're assuming that the people in your example actually _can_ walk a half a block.

Almost anyone can walk half a block. Those who can't probably have some form of support, be it a walker, scooter, etc. Regardless, there are lots of places in the world that you can't drive to; it doesn't make sense to me to say that cars should be allowed everywhere because not everyone will be able to walk to get there.

> Those who can't probably have some form of support, be it a walker, scooter, etc

Yeah, mostly something like a car. Who would want to go that far with a walker? Have you ever tried it?

Personal mobility for local areas without cars is a solved problem. People who can't use walkers can use wheelchairs or numerous other options.

Yeah, wheelchair is a pretty OK way to get to a car. Anything further? Sorry but I consider that purposefully making disabled people's lives significantly worse. There are probably many disabled people around you that only have a wheelchair, and yet you don't see them on the street - because it's too damn hard to push yourself using your hands while your body is broken. I don't understand the hate against disabled people, is it really that bad to give them a slight advantage?

People don't hate disabled people.

They have little patience when they're rolled out as an excuse against every change of use to a street, almost always by people who aren't disabled but simply want to drive everywhere.

It's the "think of the children!" counter argument for local transport planning.

I’m not even sure what your argument is. That taxis+buses+cars on all adjacent and cross streets to Market are insufficient to get people in wheelchairs where they need to go?

Again, this is a solved problem in countries that have significantly larger pedestrian areas than San Francisco's Market Street. People use a variety of mobility solutions, including wheelchairs, walkers, and mobility scooters.

Pedestrian streets are, on the whole, beneficial to disabled people. There is more space, fewer chances of collisions, and crossing the street is trivial instead of harrowing. Go look in any city that has larger pedestrianized areas and see for yourself: it works for pretty much everyone.

> because it's too damn hard to push yourself using your hands while your body is broken

There are motorized wheelchairs for people who can’t push themselves. People in wheelchair for life I met have a motorized one.

Millions of disabled people use walkers and canes. Or wheelchairs. Or motorized scooters.

We're talking about banning cars on a single main road to make it more people friendly. There are still buses, taxis and shuttles on this road. And there are roads with cars right next to it.

What exactly is so challenging here that you claim is "hate against disabled people"? That those living right on Market St suddenly have to go a tiny bit farther if they want to take Uber?

Just thinking about my 90 year old dad, who could get out of the house and to a car, just fine with a stick - but not much further.

Your dad would only be affected if he was looking to get an Uber or into his own car while on Market St and unable to get to the other streets.

Yeah, except when winter comes around and using walkers and wheelchairs for even medium distances becomes dangerous.

Are these disabled people really unable to go to the next road for a private car? And if so, are they unable to take the buses, shuttles, taxis and other emergency vehicles that are still allowed on this road?

How close do you need a private vehicle to be exactly? And is Market St in the middle of downtown really the place for someone who needs that accessibility?

Or is this just some out-of-context concern that doesn't really apply to this situation at all?

> And is Market St in the middle of downtown really the place for someone who needs that accessibility?

You should be ashamed for saying this. Sickening.

Really? Spare me the outrage. Accessibility is a factor in deciding where to live. And unless you're either waiting for Uber or driving your own car on Market St (while also unable to reach any intersection), this policy doesn't affect you.

Why do people only picture someone born with a disability when they think of accessibility?

Any one of us could be temporarily or permanently disabled at the drop of a hat. You don't make you decision if where you live with that in mind though based on your comment.

Accessible design doesn't care if you broke your ankle and only have mobility issues until next month, it still helps you.

People have this weird mentality that accessibility is optional because it doesn't affect them. It doesn't affect you until it does.

That's not close to the only reason you should care, but even someone as needlessly cynical as you can at least appreciate that angle of it.

And none of that is affected by this policy either.

We're talking about a specific street banning a few types of vehicles in downtown SF, not accessibility design principles across the world. Perhaps context is more important than outrage?

The context of your original comment doesn't change how disgusting it was.

You're literally questioning someone's right to exist in a location, the fact it's a single street doesn't excuse it, do you really not see that?

This policy has very little negative effects for disabled people. And if it does affect some then yes, that person might consider leaving as one option in response. The world doesn't revolve around you and when things change for the public good, you might have to adapt along with it. Why is this such a radical idea for you?

There is no "right to exist", and nobody can stop you from "existing", whatever that means. This is a nonsequiteur. A vague extremist statement thrown around to make things dramatic but is actually meaningless.

As for context, if you ignore it and just come in with a generic "what about the disabled people" in any possible conversation then there's no productive discussion to be had, which is clear in this case. You seem to be caught in an emotional argument against a position that was never made so I'll end it here.

Taxis (including Uber+Lyft) are such incredibly bad drivers. They rarely signal turns, often fail to stop at signs, and make sudden unannounced stops inside bike lanes.

It's really no different with most drivers... You just notice the taxis more because they are all one group that stand out.

I'm pretty critical of taxi drivers but they really aren't any worse than most drivers besides the random stopping without signalling at all. Which, no surprise, non-taxis do a lot too if you take enough notice. Taxis just do it more cause they stop more.

"because they are all one group that stand out"

Like BMW drivers?

> It's really no different with most drivers...

It is because they drive all day and do this for a living so "cutting corners" (literally or figuratively) will save them... something. A private driver may not find any value in doing this regularly since they may drive 30-60 minutes per day. You are more likely to cut corners in your day job because you know it very well and you feel comfortable doing this, even if it's not safe.

Not signalling turns is something that I really don't understand. It requires minimal effort, doesn't slow you down in any way, and significantly increases safety. It's something that should be enforced much more.

There’s a significant fraction of drivers that interpret a turn signal as a sign that it’s ok to pass unsafely because the signalling driver is safety-conscious and will act to avoid a colission,

These people are mentally unfit to take part in motorised traffic. Confiscate their driving licence and return it only when they undergo and pass a psychological examination.

It looks like Tesla AI doesn't take the signals into account, but only the car movements.

I’ve heard the argument described like this:

Indicating I’d exactly that: indicating your intention to turn, which is useless information because it causes people to assume they know what you will do.

It’s not an entirely flawed argument.

So if I sign up for Lyft as a driver, I can drive on Market Street?

No, since Lyft isn't a taxi service, according the city.

That's the same problem for me in Berlin. Taxi drivers cause the most dangerous situations on our streets.

Second in line are delivery and post vehicles regularly blocking the cycle lanes.

I get the taxi problem but what is the solution do delivery and postal vehicles?

On most pedestrian streets in Europe, delivery vehicles are allowed at particular times.

That's often very early in the morning, but varies according to the street. (One with lots of bars and nightclubs might allow deliveries during the day.)

For example, Copenhagen's main pedestrian streets are restricted to people on foot at all times, except residents at any time, and delivery vehicles between 04:00 and 11:00.

Reserve for them parking lots which don't block bike lanes. Enforce them not parking on bike lanes. When parked there, they are a safety security threat.

Then you'd have to create parking spots and the delivery vehicles would have to be in those spots at specific times of the day? Sounds great for bikes but impractical for the delivery vehicles.

I like how enforcing the law is portrayed as a nice-to-have here and offering to build specialty parking (in a city no less) is a hardship for the benefactors.

Or you could think of it as enforcing the law would kill the businesses in the area, because you're asking them for a huge additional cost.

Loading zones where other cars are aggressively towed. Last mile delivery with cargo bikes.

How do you deliver a pallet of Fruit Loops on a cargo bike to the corner store?

You don't, you use a dedicated loading zone.

Using a trailer? You can't carry a full pallet, but for a small corner store, 180kg of Fruit Loops (about 350 packages?) might be enough. It's not like they have huge storing space inside anyway.

https://www.fleximodal.fr/pallets

Here's another similar solution: https://1kunva278v7137enrsgbuqym-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-...

Basically this problem is absolutely solvable if you actually want to

Fruit loops are light. How do you deliver a pallet of bottled water on a bike?

Using one of these? https://1kunva278v7137enrsgbuqym-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-...

How do you deliver eight pallets of bottled water in one hour to eight shops?

By having more than one bike. If we assume 2 km median distance from the re-loading zone to the shop then each bike can easily make 2-3 round trips an hour.

By the way, why is it so important that deliveries get done within an hour?

I find it funny that earlier in another thread I read about how the working conditions in warehouses are terrible. Yet here I see suggestions like this for delivery workers.

Can you imagine working a job like this when it's cold outside and you potentially had ice the night before? And to solve this problem you'd basically reinvent the car/truck.

What's so categorically terrible about this? If it's cold you wear warmer clothes, if it's icy you put on studded tires. The point is if you actually wanted to get rid of cars in city centers it would be absolutely doable.

Go cycle around a city, load/unload heavy things for 8 hours in the pissing rain and come back with how it's not terrible.

They don't have to have an 8 hour shift. What about a 6 hour shift with breaks?

So you are telling them to be less productive and/or take less pay?

Seems like if it's that physically taxing they might make slightly more hourly to have the same pay overall. Yes, costs of delivery would go up.

You can't unload a truck to a corner shop from inside the cab anyway.

But you do get back in the nice heated/cooled rain free cab between drop offs to shelter yourself from the elements.

Why do you consider riding a recumbent bicycle an insurmountable hardship?

In icy conditions, it's likely safer for most citizens to have delivery done by bicycle. They're slower and lower mass compared to a van.

In cold, the delivery person can just add layers. And, they'll be moving more, so in all likelihood, the additional layers required is minimal. It's not like a UPS van is super warm inside - not with the driver constantly opening the doors and hopping in/out.

It simply boils down to priorities. Do we want cheap/easy delivery to merchants or do we want safe pedestrian and bicycle zones for customers. Or, is there a magical balance point in the middle?

I’d honestly vote for cheap easy delivery to merchants first. That being said bikes are important, but not necessarily at the expense of intra-city logistics.

Looks like a small truck to me. You solved nothing.

Also I highly doubt these tiny bicycle tires can handle a pallet of bottled water or beers. They will just get crushed.

If in San Francisco: downhill.

I visited Berlin last year - our taxi driver nearly slammed us head on into a Tram at 40+mph. Scary stuff!

Dangerous driving and pedestrianisation are separate issues.

Safety for cyclists and pedestrians could be significantly improved by lowering the speed limit to 20mph or so and enforcing it.

Why are taxis given special treatment in cities? As a cyclist & public transport user it really frustrates me. In London they serve a tiny minority and cause the bulk of the congestion relative to the population they serve.

What would the outcome be of a total taxi ban in a major city? I imagine strikes, outcries etc, but no major disruption to the net ability for people to get around.

>Why are taxis given special treatment in cities?

Because they are point to point transportation for the elderly and disabled.

Very interesting point, it seems that black cabs are specifically required to cater for the disabled [0].

I wonder what the utilisation of taxis by elderly and disabled looks like as a percentage of the total rides. I think finding some mechanism that reduces congestion while catering for this would be attainable.

[0] https://www.gov.uk/transport-disabled/taxis-and-minicabs

What do you mean by tiny minority? I feel like I'd have a problem finding an employed person in London who never used a standard black cab.

A very small percentage earn enough to be able to use them regularly. One five minute trip costs more than a TfL day pass.

Is it possible they all use them once every few months? For example I've gone to a store, bought something rather large, and took it back to my apartment in a cab. I don't take a cab daily be I do take one once or twice a month. Note: I could try to get it delivered, that would generally require me taking a day off from work to be home for the delivery. With a cab I effectively get to choose the time.

I don't know of anyone using them _regularly_, or really at all for that matter.

Ok, fair enough. I understood that as people not using them at all. I'm not surprised though - taxis are great for situations where you can't easily use public transport /for reasons/. Using them all the time is indeed for tiny minority. (And that's... Fine with me)

Hi you've found me. 11 years working in London without taking a black cab. Taken an Uber once in those 11 years.

I am a public transit person also, but come on, there are lots of valid reasons for there being taxis, such as minor medical problems, bad weather, unsafe conditions at night, having to transport packages etc.

It is indeed annoying that the rich just use them all the time, but I won't advocate cutting off the nose (preventing the rich from using taxis) to spite the face (letting regular folks using it for an emergency).

> valid reasons for there being taxis, such as minor medical problems, bad weather, unsafe conditions at night, having to transport packages etc.

Agree with these, and have been glad for an on demand ride service for some of these, but I feel that these are the likely a small percentage of the total use, and that the system currently biases towards a catering for a minority indulgence rather than a general public good.

Agree that it is a spiteful proposal. I'm very frustrated by the slow pedestrianisation of London, and the taxis are a key piece of this.

I'm trying to find some example of how other Western European cities have pedestrianised their cities and dealt with the issue of taxis.

Edit: A further thought: In London, taxis are given the same privilege as buses (they can use the bus lane). This comes to the crux of my issues with cabs in the city. I think the service can exist for the reasons indicated, but giving _an empty taxi_ the same privilege as a _full bus_ speaks to a decision made with different priorities. Not only does this slow down the 100x more people in the buses but it encourages use of taxis as a "rich person's bus" alternative to the tube.

> Why are taxis given special treatment in cities?

Many handicapped people are dependent on (subsidized) taxi services.

Very good point, addressed further down / [here](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21269488)

because in many cities they companies are held by very influential people who pretty much have a local politician or more in their pocket.

the real danger in my city isn't taxi or uber/lyft, it is the ebike rentals. they are currently banned after dark and have caused over two hundred calls for injury to Atlanta fire services, plus four deaths involving the bikes

That sounds bad but I encourage caution in using statistics this way as Atlanta is a big place.

How many traditional bicycle deaths happen in Atlanta per year? How many calls for bicycle injuries happen a year?

Just saying that e-bikes have 200 injury calls and 4 deaths is insufficient information to hold any opinion on them.

Georgia has over 4 automobile deaths per day.

How many of those injuries and deaths were due to a car?

Then how do you get in and out of London with lots of luggage from the airport? And please don't tell me 'schlepp 40kg up and down the tiny tube corridors and stairs and into crowded Central Line'.

I've done exactly that, no one's idea of fun, but what if you can't afford the alternative?

Then you don't do it

As someone who has been a tourist in London multiple times, I've never done anything other than catch public transport in and out. Be it Heathrow or the other airports, they're all very accessible by public transport. More so than a lot of other international airports (for example Melbourne Tullamarine)

If you fly in internationally the Heathrow Express also quickly deposits you at St Pancras. Unfortunately, despite the speed, it's not worth the additional cost in my opinion.

In theory, in cities without good metro systems, taxis are the train-station-to-business-district-or-hotel link needed for business visitors and tourists to travel by train rather than driving directly.

Whether the same logic applies in London (which has a world-class metro system) is debatable, of course.

My experience with with most professional drivers is that they're very calm and cerebral in their driving-- deftly anticipating and avoiding accidents, finding other driver's idiocy amusing if they take any special note of it at all. They patently wait rather than taking seconds-shaving risky maneuvers because they've seen it all and know what can go wrong. They drive predictably, use their signals, etc.

So why is it that almost all my experience in taxis is that the driver seems to be a crazed maniac with a presumably diagnoseable rage disorder? They drive like their car has a bomb strapped to it that will go off if they ever yield at any point, unless they signal a temporary disarm code (4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42) by pulse width modulating their horn immediately after each and every yield event. Any use of their turn signals, however, will block the transmission of the disarm sequence, so they must be used sparingly if at all. Fortunately, their cars are seemingly powered by near misses with pedestrians combined with a form of fusion, so they have little reason to yield in the first place.

This is both my experience as a passenger in these drivers vehicles as well as from sharing the road with them.

It is just that my experience with taxies is mostly in dense city areas and my experience with other professional drivers is in other places with fewer drugs in the water? Is there something about driving a large truck that magically creates more consciousnesses? Is the idea that your life flashing before your eyes repeatedly will convince you of the relative worthlessness of money and cause to to leave a larger tip?

I always thought that this was because taxi drivers wanted to appear, to their passenger, that they were trying to get them there as fast as possible.

I imagine taxi drivers are much more diverse than the professional drivers you have experience with.

That’s not it. Here in London taxi drivers are stereotypically white, male and over-50, while bus drivers come in a wide variety of race, sex and age groups.

Nonetheless almost all cabbies are a menace to pedestrians, cyclists and each other, while most bus drivers seem to be blessed with saintly patience as well as admirable professional driving skills.

According to an anecdotal sample of taxi drivers, they drive aggressively for the same reason Southwest Airlines has stops. The _flag_ paid when starting a ride is the most profitable part of the ride. For Southwest, they are an expert at the turnaround, and the most they take-off and land, the more passengers, the more profit.

Taxis are paid by distance, not time. So if they can cheat the rules and drop you off faster they get the same amount of money from the customer and can go look for the next customer.

> So why is it that almost all my experience in taxis is that the driver seems to be a crazed maniac with a presumably diagnoseable rage disorder?

Payment is based on distance driven right? So more trips, more money. I could see the incentive like that to cause it.

> taxis are still allowed (except for Uber and Lyft)

You don't need the exception. Uber and Lyft are not taxis.

> 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?

You can’t realistically take a whole city and draw a line down the middle and say “no cars can cross this ever”.

Sure you could. We have more than 2 dimensions.

I 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.

it wouldn't be a highway, it's called an overpass. and they're quite common.

An 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.

Also there’s two levels of subways running beneath market street so an underpass wouldn’t be feasible

My city has a two-way overpass over a popular pedestrian street: https://cdn.olhares.pt/client/files/foto/big/980/9808889.jpg

I think it works well as long as the overpass isn't too wide. Also, using colours and stone instead of raw concrete on the outside helps.

Well, there's Golden Gate Park for a good chunk of the way across SF, which has no surface level streets crossing directly through it...

That’s not true. There are several roads that wind through GGP for driving and parking. Crossover Drive cuts through approximately the middle.

Most cities have that in some form. A river acts as a you cannot cross, except for a few far apart areas. The bay in SF does the same. Then there are sea side cities which have a large shall not cross line.

Rivers have bridges. Seaside cities do not have an undriveable barrier down the middle of it.

Rivers have limited bridges. I live in a city divided by a river (I suspect a large number of those reading this do as well: rivers attract cities for various reasons), most streets just end at the river even though both sides are very developed. If I want to cross the river there is are 5 bridges in the 15 miles of river frontage the city covers (then nothing for many more miles either way). There is great demand to get across the river, we are a tiny city and so the only traffic congestion is getting to the river crossing, but the cost of getting over the river is high enough nobody can justify building another bridge.

I don't know SF, but my guess is that market street will have more crossing than our rivers.

That's what I thought too. Honestly, this hardly changes anything at all from how Market Street currently operates in this section. You hardly ever see any passenger cars using it, other than rush hour. Already today, 90% of the traffic is buses and taxis, and even taxis are rare.

Lol, there's literally no way for transport to work if they blocked the whole street. Market cuts through the middle of most of SF.

And yes it will make a huge difference. I have through market for several years and most of the problems are caused by drivers on the road.

Chronicle blocked me for using an adblocker so this is from the SF Examiner [1]:

>Better Market Street will be implemented in three phases: Market from Fifth to Eighth streets is phase 1, Market from Fifth to Second streets is phase 2, and Market from Van Ness to Octavia Boulevard will comprise phase 3.

This leaves 9th-11th streets, and streets past Octavia open to traffic. Also, certain types of transport are still allowed. I believe taxis (excluding rideshare apps like Lyft/Uber) were mentioned in another comment, and the streetcars will be allowed as well. I’m sure there’ll be other exceptions.

[1] https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/sf-transit-board-approves-ca...

> If cars are allowed to cross the road perpendicularly, will there be any significant effects from this change?

Yes, every single block between those intersections will have little to no traffic.

No one in their sane mind want to drive on Market down there these days anyways.

But you have to cross market to allow the city to function, and there's a few major intersections, especially 7th,8th,9th, and 10th. This is pretty much the only way to get access to the south end of SoMA and I-80. You can't "escape" via the Mission, the last option is 13th which exits onto Market street at Duboce triangle.

You can't go under, Bart/muni is there. Only other option is to go over Central FWY style, and the city is more in favor of tearing out freeways.

If Market street is raised to the sidewalk level and crossing it is allowed at 2mph, I don't think it will be a problem.

What exactly is costing 600 million dollars? thats a huge sum of money to rebuild a few blocks on a single surface level road.

https://medium.com/@josefow/streets-paved-with-gold-sfs-ridi...

It 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.

25K for the workers, 100K for materials. 875K for the company that sold this to the city. Rich keep getting richer.

If 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.

In 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.

LA rail is actually much more cost effective than other US cities. There was going to be a federal study why, but it was cancelled.

>> but it was cancelled

Ironically making it even more cost effective.

Federal study I wouldn't think would come out of LA's budget or federal allocation to that budget?

Probably the paperwork involved.

They want to use those new smart bricks that notify police via Twitter when a homeless person does their business with a video of the deed from the ground’s POV.

There’s a little more information at https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Market-Street-ma...

The $600m includes upgrades of sewers and utilities so it’s likely all of Market street is getting dug up some way down. $600m still seems like a lot for that, but it is more than repaving.

If there are going to dig it up anyway they should dig in a subway while they are at it.

Conveniently, there are two running right under Market St! Muni Metro, and then BART below that. I assume some aspect of that also drives up the cost.

I have to admit my ignorance of SF, my comment is a more general comment that city planners should be considering opportunities to share costs more. For that matter, if they have a subway, why dig up streets now - shouldn't the subway tunnels been made a little wider so the pipes are maintainable without digging? (this is a complex question - obviously a bigger tunnel costs more than a smaller one.

I 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.

Can’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.

Buses 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.

Stanford 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.

Bollards 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

Taxis too.

They want to restrict private automobile traffic not public transit (tram, bus) and professional stuff like delivery vehicles.

When 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.

As 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.)

One should be able to successfully navigate with no in car or mobile navigation.

That complexity is a good disincentive for unnecessary traffic.

Then remove vehicle access entirely, don’t build a dystopian traffic route. Otherwise you’re attempting to justify poor urban planning and unsafe vehicle travel.

How this costs $604 million is beyond me. Why do costs spiral out of control so much in California?

Am I missing something maybe?

Says the engineer making 300k a year in San Francisco.

Except 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.)

CEQA, 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!

All 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

that 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 :/

In 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.

not from castro to church, there's a bunch of traffic and it's not straight forward to get from one point to another.

Good riddance. It was impossible to drive on anyway, no rules whatsoever.

It's true, driving on Market was a comedy of horrors.

Indeed! 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.

The 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.

Why 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".

If you're going to get your panties in a wad over rolling over some bollards at 2MPH I'll spare you the stories of the real shenanigans.

No cyclists were threatened or harmed, there was nobody at risk. Bollards won't stop an inattentive driver from hitting anything, as evidenced by my trivial rolling over them without even scratching my car's bumper.

Your "evidence" doesn't mean anything, multiple statistics [1] have shown that protected bike lanes are safer for cyclists. Moreover I'm saddened that you have so little consideration for vulnerable road users.

[1]: http://peopleforbikes.org/our-work/statistics/statistics-cat...

Congratulations on costing us hundreds of dollars in damage just so you could feel like a big strong man for 30 seconds.

Are we talking about the same thing?

I'm referring to the plastic tubes on flexible bases that spring right back up when driven over, at low speed it's as if nothing happened. This was ~8 years ago, maybe Market is different today.

They were definitely standing afterwards like nothing happened, it's not like I rolled on them with my tires crushing them like the UPS guys do.

Yep. I live in a place where Market St outbound is the most logical way to go. Assuming you can dodge all sorts of buses, garbage trucks, and all the hobos stumbling around on the street.

Uber and Lyft refuse to route their rutabaga drivers down Market, so I always try to catch a cab because it cuts 5-10 minutes off the journey.

Disappointingly, taxis are still allowed.

Didn't Jello Biafra run on that in the 70s?

Well, 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

Now 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.

the plan does create a separate lane for bikes.

Unfortunately, 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.

> 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.

That 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.

In my experience it is the cyclists that aggressively cut everyone off, especially pedestrians.

Really? How many cars have cyclists killed over the last 20 years? Not sure how you can get more aggressive than that.

Not sure how this is relevant. Just because bicycles can't kill cars it does not mean that cyclists do not "aggressively cut everyone off, especially pedestrians".

People being aggressive on bikes is a side effect of terrible bike infrastructure. SF has hardly any protected bike lanes. Go to places where the bike infrastructure is good, like the Netherlands, and cyclists aren't any more aggressive than drivers or pedestrians.

`Thanks its terrible to drive. Get a motorcycle, bike or scooter

I can’t wait to ride that first Critical Mass straight down Market.

Make sure there's fenders on your bike -- you don't want a stripe of what's on that road.

The cars seem to be much less of a problem than the limitless hordes of insane drug addicts and their excrement.

Cars 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.

The 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.

That's true, why fix one problem when there are also other problems?

Because 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?

Because San Francisco is being ran by radicals.

Wouldn'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.

More accurately it’ll just shuffle the deckchairs on the traffic map by creating a dedicated taxi thoroughfare.

This 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.

Cars 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.

This 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_stu...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RW09rbBLB5A

https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/revisiting_pedestrian_malls_scmi...

https://www.boulderdowntown.com/_files/docs/americanpedmalle...

https://www.curbed.com/2019/9/30/20885226/best-pedestrian-ma...

That 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?

Lincoln road has high end shops and an excellent location on the water and there's no sign of a bus depot anywhere visible

Seems 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.

And yet it's been wildly successful in Germany...

Indeed. As a German, I found it highly curious to suggest that car free town centers are a failed concept... on the contrary, I would not want to live in a city that does not have this (and I am not for randomly closing streets in cities or banning all cars or anything...)

Market street is already filthy, crime ridden, and covered in homeless drug addict urine/feces.

Removing vehicle traffic is something the city can do.

Dealing with the real issues is something they cannot.

Bike-lane-shedding?

Oh the drugs and homeless? Uh.. Bike lanes! Bike lanes for you, bike lanes for you, and bike lanes for YOU! Bike lanes for everybody!

EDIT: And paper straws!

Not my impression walking down market street, especially between the bay and 10th street.

> Dealing with the real issues is something they cannot.

Huh? Is helping homeless people not possible in San Francisco? In Prague we have a pretty good success with it

It’s not just San Francisco’s homeless people, it’s all of America’s homeless people.

Homelessness is confined to only certain cities in the US, mostly those located on the West Coast. So please don't imply that the entire country has the same political points of view as the West does. Philosophies, when tried, have consequences. The homeless of West Coast are suffering through them.

Seeing as how US cities cannot enforce borders, and literally other states shipped their homeless via buses to SF... the reason you’e being downvoted is because homeless people flock to the West coast because these are urban, wealthy areas with good taxpayer support for homeless services. We didn’t necessarily generate these homeless. They come here for the same reason why they wouldn’t congregate in the middle of a desert.

even though I'm in favor of banning cars, I might actually agree with this. Market street is a terrible pedestrian street. It's too wide so it doesn't feel personal or charming. It's too windy, there are no trees or other features that might mitigate this, and so you will never see significant outdoor features like cafes and restaurants. Not even to speak of the homeless problem.

I would love for the government really invest some money into making market street into an attractive public space, with new park space, some kind of promotion of the area/funding for small businesses etc., but I don't think this is it.

Even with this change I'm not really sure I can envision what kind of space it would be. Maybe just extending the bland faceless non-pedestrian oriented old navy /westfield vibe from 4th & market?

Plenty of major cities all over the world have city center areas that greatly restrict car traffic, and work just fine. I'm an American in Munich, seems to work great here.

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