
No ‘carmageddon’ on auto-free Market Street: study shows bikes and buses benefit - luu
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Results-of-car-free-Market-Street-so-so-for-SF-15087210.php
======
Symbiote
The linked article (1) says the redesign will have "sidewalk level bike
lanes".

If there's a way for local people to comment on this, please encourage these
to be changed to in-between-road-and-sidewalk level. (Or road level with a
continuous kerb in between).

This makes it much, much easier for pedestrians not to accidentally wander
into the lane. (2)

1 [https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Car-free-
Market-...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Car-free-Market-What-
happens-to-the-side-14999923.php)

2 [https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/copenhagen-
denmark-...](https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/copenhagen-denmark-
april-28-2015-people-273751205?src=r5lx0IqAiK-ujRzrOcMg6Q-1-1)

~~~
brnt
As a Dutchie blunders like the one you mention are so stupifying... Takes you
a ten minute visit to NL to figure out why you need to separate modalities
consistently, yet even as close as Germany and France cities are designed so
obviously by people who never ever bike.

~~~
ChuckNorris89
Same in Austria, we simply grew accustomed to bikes sharing the road with
cars, busses and trams which I'm sure would be terrifying to someone from NL.

The problem is, after the post war boom, the cities were planned for cars and
now there's simply no space left for cycling lanes unless we ban cars which as
much as I wish for will never happen in my lifetime.

~~~
Quequau
I live in Graz and I'm hard of hearing. Hearing aids make locating where some
kinds of sounds come from difficult, so I miss a lot of acoustic cues that
pedestrians use to navigate their way through busy places.

I've been run down once by a bicyclist and once by a skateboarder while I was
walking on mixed use pathways. The skateboarder took a harder fall than I did,
still helped me up, and sincerely apologized. I fractured my wrist in my fall
when the bicyclist hit me and not only did they not stop, they yelled at me as
they cycled away.

Anyway, I too would support limiting the use of cars as well as on street
parking in city centres and other similar zones.

~~~
close04
Bikes shouldn't share the lane with pedestrians any more than they should
share it with cars. In an ideal world they would look more like Danish ones,
with all 3 separated by at least a small kerb. This helps pedestrians,
cyclists, and drivers alike. Cycling in Denmark was the best cycling
experience I ever had relative to the way bike lanes are designed (definitely
not related to the cyclists that were sometimes falling like bowling pins when
the huge crowd was starting to move at a green light).

Getting used to some bad compromise hardly makes it good.

~~~
ehnto
Bikes can certainly share pedestrian areas, they just need to ride slower, the
walkways need to be wide, and the walkways should be easy to enter and exit in
the case you need to ride around groups of people (shallow curbs you ride up
and down). Look at Osaka, you have almost free reign on a bicycle there. Bikes
are slow, cars are slow, but it all flows. Bikes even join foot traffic in
shopping precints. But when it's too busy people are no longer on their bikes
anyway, because the whole place is walkable.

It takes a level of empathy and cooperation I think doesn't exist in the bike
versus car debate, because it has become an "us versus them" debate and
everyone is trying to win not collaborate.

~~~
labawi
Cars can certainly share cycle paths, they just need to ride slower, the paths
need to be wide, and they should be easy to enter and exit in the case you
need to ride around groups of cyclists.

Pedestrian areas, yes - people usually don't commute through there. Sidewalks
vs. cycle paths vs. car lanes - not a good idea.

When people propose path sharing among pedestrians and cyclists, they often
mean cyclists slowing down to speeds (e.g. 10km/h, or even 5-7km/h), which
they would find unacceptable for cars, even if multiplied x3 (try telling
drivers to go 30km/h so they share with cyclists going 15-30 km/h).

~~~
ehnto
I want to be clear, I'm talking about the city metro areas. Not commuting from
suburbia. We should have fully separated bike paths for longer distance
commute bike traffic, because mixed speed traffic with cars just doesn't work
when cars are going faster, and unprotected bike lanes are just a bandaid
solution to that problem.

But once you're in the metro area, everyone should slow right down. The
dominant traffic in the city is foot traffic.

Cars go at 50km/h through my city, meaning they need to be separated really
strictly. Slow them down to 20km/h with narrower roads, and you can reclaim
the area for mixed pedestrian traffic, allowing more free movement for
everyone in the city. Something as simple as crossing the road shouldn't take
10 minutes for 200 people just so five cars can cross the road.

With narrower streets and slower traffic, you can reasonably cross the road
anywhere you want. That also allows bikes to move reasonably along the road
but slowly on the footpaths, you open the whole area up for the people using
the city.

It's all a balance, not everywhere in a city should be like that. I'm just
advocating to move away from the heavy car-oriented lean many places currently
have for their city centers.

~~~
brnt
There is no difference between city centers and suburbia in much of Europe.
Apart from that, the Netherlands has a few bike highways now to cater to
faster intercity transport.

What you want to do is enable fast biking everywhere (so a bike first infra)
and seperate modalities for safety and comfort. Any urban transport research
will show that bikes in foot traffic is a Very Bad Idea(tm).

------
Tepix
Just the fact that riding a bicycle got more attractive and 25% more people
are using their bicycles now means that there will be less people left stuck
in traffic in their cars.

Not to mention the people who are exercising by using their bicycles will have
health benefits as well.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Will 25% more cyclists have much of an impact on the number of cars on the
road?

25% more of a small number is still a small number.

~~~
abyssin
It will have an impact on congestion. For instance in Brussels, a 10%
reduction in number of cars on the road translates to a 40% percent reduction
in traffic jams.

~~~
bagacrap
Which seems like it would translate to at least 10% more people being willing
to drive...

~~~
rcMgD2BwE72F
And yet, even more will discover than riding a bike is more pleasant than
driving a car once the city has been designed that way.

I'm one of them, and many of my friends are just waiting for the
infrastructure to be further improved to make the switch. More space, better
markings (…), just more reasons to drop the expensive, polluting, stressing
space-taking cars and take a breath of fresh air while commuting.

~~~
u801e
> And yet, even more will discover than riding a bike is more pleasant than
> driving a car once the city has been designed that way.

Most people aren't going to find cycling more pleasant than driving in
inclement weather, cold weather, hot weather, low traction conditions, uphill,
or carrying cargo.

------
stevenwoo
There was a world wide meeting on transportation similar to the Paris climate
change one, same result, almost everyone but USA committing to better
standards for future -
[https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/02/1057721](https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/02/1057721)
The USA response that the market and self driving cars will fix this was
pretty delusional.

~~~
J5892
Any responses from the US from about 3 years ago to between 1 and 4+ years
from now are going to be delusional.

------
tiku
Studies? Just check out how we do this in the Netherlands. It works great here
in most bigger cities.

~~~
asjw
You live in a flat country, were cities are quite densely populated and you
don't have to travel a lot.

Mine is not.

~~~
re-actor
The flatness is almost entirely canceled out by the relentless 20km/h+ wind

~~~
chinesempire
You get pretty strong winds in southern Europe as well, without the flatness

------
scarejunba
I thought it would be mayhem but traffic overall didn't change at all. It's
exactly the same.

~~~
wahern
That's because most cars were taken off Market St in 2015:
[https://www.sfmta.com/project-updates/turn-restrictions-
mark...](https://www.sfmta.com/project-updates/turn-restrictions-market-
street-going-effect-aug-11-2015)

Since then most cars on Market St north of Van Ness seem to have been Uber and
Lyft. Now they're finally banned. If buses are actually running faster--not
just a consequence of less traffic during the winter months--it goes to show
how much Uber and Lyft have contributed to traffic in the city. They drive
slow, erratically, and stop in the middle of the road on main arteries to pick
people up and drop them off.

~~~
Areading314
It still doesn't make sense that they let the "yellow" taxis continue driving
on market. They are on average much worse drivers

~~~
new_realist
There are fewer of them and they are more efficient, running at higher
passenger utilization.

~~~
thedance
This can’t be true. Taxis often run with zero passengers, whereas a private
car never does.

~~~
wahern
I could only find two studies on capacity utilization:

* Judd Cramer, Alan B. Krueger, "Disruptive Change in the Taxi Business: The Case of Uber", 2016, [https://www.nber.org/papers/w22083](https://www.nber.org/papers/w22083)

and

* Y.M. Nie, "How can the taxi industry survive the tide of ridesourcing? Evidence from Shenzhen, China", 2017 [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0968090X1...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0968090X17301018)

Both seem to confirm that ride-hailing has better utilization rates, though
Nie qualifies that--e.g. sometimes too many private cars might turn out.
However, at least in San Francisco all the licensed taxi cabs also use ride-
hailing apps, so their utilization should be at least as good as unlicensed
cars.

The real issue with ride-hailing is induced demand. In places like San
Francisco public transit took a huge dip, and ride-hailing simply isn't
anywhere as efficient as mass transit. Studies have shown that ride-hailing
has contributed to a _substantial_ increase in traffic and traffic delay:
[https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/5/eaau2670](https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/5/eaau2670)

Ride-hailing can even be worse than personal cars because a personal car has a
100% utilization rate at minimum, whereas the average utilization rate for
ride-hailing, even accounting for multiple riders (e.g. >100% for any
particular trip) is <100%.

Ride-hailing only pencils out for the last mile--to and from transit hubs in a
local vicinity. But too many people take it to cross town. It's hard to blame
ride-hailing companies, though. Cities need to be build more subways. Perhaps
companies like Uber, if they were allowed to build subways as cheaply as The
Boring Company can do (i.e. small diameter tunnel, though still larger than
London and Budapest; no red tape; no extravagant stations) and to capture the
revenue, would invest the money. They'd finally be able to ditch drivers, too,
because driverless cars will probably only ever work, if they work at all, in
moderately dense residential areas.

~~~
eru
Personal car usage doesn't have a 100% utilization: lots of time is spent
cruising for parking and coming back from some out of the way parking. You
can't really count that as being productively utilized. It's the opposite.

------
closeparen
Market St. has never been a significant thoroughfare for private cars. Of
course there’s no traffic impact.

Try the same thing on Mission, Howard, Folsom, Harrison, Geary, Van Ness, etc.
and you’ll see a very different story.

~~~
rabeener
Can you clarify your point? I read the article but don’t see any mention of
trying this on any of the streets you listed. It looks like the city of SF
made a good call here and the first part of your comment supports that.

~~~
closeparen
Doing this for Market St. is basically free. There are no real risks or
tradeoffs. Of course it’s a good call.

But to frame this as a triumph against critics predicting doom is just weird.
No one was seriously predicting doom on this one. The only people driving on
Market are confused tourists. But then it’s going to be held up as an example
for other streets that actually _do_ have risks and tradeoffs.

~~~
jvagner
The news media kept hammering the potential for cArmageddon.. which was weird.
It was a non-story, and it still is, but I guess someone needs content to
promote.

------
rhn_mk1
There are numbers on speed, but are there any on throughput?

~~~
thedance
Throughput doesn’t change with speed, just like with cars the rate is the same
at 5 or 75MPH because the spacing in terms of time stays constant. What
improves is the latency for individual riders, and the reliability of the bus
arriving on schedule.

------
hamandcheese
I take the 5R nearly every week day. Anecdotally, it seems like it’s been
better lately (though it’s always been adequate), but I didn’t connect that
with the market street car ban until now.

------
tmpz22
Great for buses, bikes, taxis, cars that accidentally make a wrong turn, and
bikes running red lights to slice through crossing pedestrians (sometimes
avoiding collisions sometimes not).

------
flyinghamster
Chicago tried this decades ago with the State Street Mall project [1]. It
turned out to be an overall flop, with stores seeing reduced traffic, and by
1993 it was gone and good riddance. As a pedestrian, I hated it when I worked
downtown.

Maybe they'll do something on Market Street that will work better, or perhaps
it might be a better fit there than in Chicago, but I wish them luck, because
they're going to need it.

[1] [https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-
opinion...](https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-opinion-
flashback-state-street-pedestrian-mall-20191025-cos5svz7w5dvzgznqouu2xqimu-
story.html)

~~~
lotsofpulp
The weather in Chicago is markedly worse for being outside for half the year.

~~~
rconti
Probably more like 10 months. I imagine there's a shoulder season in the
spring and fall where Chicago is more desirable, from a weather standpoint,
than cool and windy SF, before it gets too hot and humid in Chicago's summer.

------
gok
The main problem with Market Street for pedestrians is the heroin and poop,
not cars.

------
iblaine
There is an impact for some retail businesses. I tried shopping near market
street for items that require a car to transport. I gave up trying to get
through traffic, and instead did my shopping online. This is an acceptable
trade off for me, and demonstrates how some retail businesses may need to
adjust.

------
Camillo
The only redeeming feature of that part of Market Street remains the subway.

------
turbostyler
I don’t notice any difference on Market from before the car ban. I also see
cars driving on the street all the time.

------
Traster
>His conclusion: When cities shut streets off to cars, people drive less. The
myth of a “carmageddon”-style traffic jam is apparently overblown.

This seems to completely ignore the fact that what actually has occured here
is that the reduction of drivers is a negative for those drivers. Those
drivers now either have to cycle or use public transport instead of their cars
or have to move. That might seem positive to the people who don't have to make
those sacrifices, but it's a massive negative impact on the people effected by
this.

~~~
dbingham
Well, and the externalities of the driver's carbon emissions are a massive
negative impact on all of us. In a city as dense as San Francisco, transit,
walking, or biking can easily cover most people's transportation needs. The
more we build safe and effective infrastructure for those modes, the more
people will use them. And that will be good - in the end - for the remaining
few who do absolutely need to drive (though I believe that if we get creative,
with things like bike rikshaws, we can even cover that segment with out cars).

If we don't change these sorts of habits, the climate will change them for us.

~~~
Traster
I'm not advocating for designing life around increasing car ownership. I'm
pointing out that re-designing existing systems to disadvantage a specific
group of commuters is more than a little problematic. Let's put it this way -
how would you feel if we shut down your nearest train station and used the
money saved to give everyone a tax break.

We can also decrease carbon emissions by just shutting down every power
station in China, but targetting a single group of people to take the vast
majority of the cost of fixing climate change is not reasonable.

~~~
wpietri
Your point is that changes can be bad for some people while being good for
others? I'm pretty sure everybody knows that.

Given that they spent 10 years planning this, and given the enormous
infrastructural support cars get, I'm quite sure the city was aware.

------
UI_at_80x24
Am I the only one disappointed that the author was NOT referring to the PC
game Carmageddon in the title.

Expected summary: "Well, we were pleasantly surprised that shutting down the
streets didn't lead to a rage-induced, car-killing-spree murder rampage."

------
yellowapple
Translation of the first couple paragraphs: "SF street traffic is already
abysmal, and yet we still managed to make it a little bit worse."

Market Street was already pretty devoid of non-bus/taxi traffic before "a
month ago". If you want a better test, try closing off Van Ness or Embarcadero
and see how well that goes for y'all.

"No carmageddon"? SF is _already_ a carmageddon.

------
everyone
A big traffic jam would be nothing like 'Carmageddon'

An extremely popular series of computer games starting in 1997, where u race
around smashing into other vehicles and running over pedestrians.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmageddon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmageddon)

Why do they keep saying carmageddon????

~~~
wpietri
I think you could call that moderately popular at best. 20+ years ago.

They keep calling it that for the same reason the game got that name: it's a
cute term that quickly conveys "giant automotive disaster".

------
pleasecalllater
I'm always wondering what about people with disabilities, older people with
problems with walking, pregnant women, families with four kids, etc.

Sometimes the public transport for such people is problematic and using taxi
all the time is too expensive. Total banning cars makes a great space for the
healthy ones, the rest is happily ignored. And this is sad.

I like decreasing the number of cars, not forbidding them at all.

~~~
99052882514569
>people with disabilities, older people with problems with walking, pregnant
women

Are precisely the kinds of people _less_ likely to be able to drive.
Accessible and convenient public transit is a better option for them, provided
of course that it's accessible and convenient throughout their journey - that
means sidewalks, intersections, transit stops, building access, etc.

If families with 4 kids don't need a vehicle at all, it's a huge financial
benefit for them. Here in Canada a mini-boat on wheels large enough to
accommodate such a family is friggin' expensive. Cities tend to have free or
very cheap tickets for kids, so if you can get away with doing commutes by
transit and have a Corolla for weekend errands and groceries that you don't
have to shove all 4 into, you win $1000s every year.

~~~
Valgrim
I'd like to add another thing to consider: good urbanism, specifically mixed-
use development, which reduce the distances immensely.

I live in Montreal and I use my old used "mini-boat on wheels" maybe twice a
month to see my family outside the city. I intend to sell it actually. I
travel to work on public transport because most of the city is covered 24/7
with a pretty acceptable bus and metro.

Everything is close enough that I can simply walk, even in winter. There are 5
schools, 4 parks, 3 pharmacies, 2 grocery stores, a bunch of shops and
restaurants, two medical clinics, two metro entrances, several of my friends,
etc, all within 15 minutes on foot.

And I don't even live in a "dense" area. It's actually considered a food
desert compared to the rest of the city.

------
ARandomerDude
It would be awesome if you had something like a bicycle, only more comfortable
that could hold you, a friend, and some of your things. You could enclose it
to protect you from the weather, too. For longer distances, or people with
disabilities, you could add some mechanical contraption in case you can't
pedal that far.

That'll be the day.

~~~
r_klancer
Some of those already exist! At increasing levels of car-like-ness:

* [https://www.wired.com/gallery/best-electric-cargo-bikes/](https://www.wired.com/gallery/best-electric-cargo-bikes/)

* [https://www.contemporist.com/5-examples-of-enclosed-bike-des...](https://www.contemporist.com/5-examples-of-enclosed-bike-designs-that-are-taking-over-the-roads/)

* [https://www.arcimoto.com/](https://www.arcimoto.com/)

(Studiously ignoring parent's intended snark)

In all seriousness, I'm expecting an explosion of these new light vehicle body
types in the coming decades, as global trends of cheap electric drive +
batteries, increasing urban congestion, and less car-oriented urban planning
trends converge

~~~
paradox101
"I'm expecting an explosion of these new light vehicle body types in the
coming decades, as global trends of cheap electric drive + batteries,
increasing urban congestion, and less car-oriented urban planning trends
converge"

Don't motorcycles already serve that purpose? Its already the chief form of
personal transportation in most of the Earth's population.

The problem I see with all the concepts you posted is that they have all the
drawbacks of a car and a motorcycle. They would fare as well as a motorcycle
in a crash, and have almost the same footprint as a small car. Also, a
motorcycle will handle much better than a trike with narrow tracks and short
wheelbase at higher speeds.

Then, there are electric assist bicycle. They have two main problems that
small motorcycles/scooters don't suffer from. A 350lb scooter/motorcycle is
much harder to steal than a 50lb electric bicycle. I own a rather expensive
electric assist mountain bike that I don't feel comfortable parking it out of
my sight. You can't travel on the highway with electric bicycle unlike
motorcycles.

~~~
kqr
I think you might be underestimating the size of a modern car -- they're
_huge_!

~~~
paradox101
By small car I meant Smart ForTwo, or Fiat 500. These not-a-car trikes/quads
have comparable footprint to these cars. Which isn't small enough to fit in-
between 2 lanes.

~~~
kqr
Sure, but those are exceptions to the modern car size, and the median car size
on the street is far bigger than that. If everyone would switch to Fiat 500
sized cars, that would be an amazing start.

