
Banning cars on SF’s Market Street, once a radical idea, approved unanimously - almost_usual
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Plan-to-remake-SF-s-Market-Street-without-car-14535887.php
======
buss
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.

~~~
sails
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.

~~~
viraptor
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.

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

~~~
greggman2
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.

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

~~~
alwaysdoit
Sure you could. We have more than 2 dimensions.

~~~
benmusch
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.

~~~
dajohnson89
it wouldn't be a highway, it's called an overpass. and they're quite common.

~~~
Symbiote
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.

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

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

~~~
nrp
There’s a little more information at
[https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Market-Street-
ma...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Market-Street-makeover-
safe-bike-lanes-and-no-14499546.php)

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.

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

~~~
nrp
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.

~~~
bluGill
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.

------
eindiran
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.

~~~
mc32
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.

~~~
bluejekyll
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.

~~~
notatoad
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

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

Am I missing something maybe?

~~~
empath75
Says the engineer making 300k a year in San Francisco.

~~~
rayiner
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.)

------
baby
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 :/

~~~
robotstate
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.

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

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

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

~~~
scurvy
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.

~~~
newnewpdro
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.

~~~
Karrot_Kream
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".

~~~
newnewpdro
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.

~~~
Karrot_Kream
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...](http://peopleforbikes.org/our-work/statistics/statistics-
category/?cat=protected-bike-lane-statistics)

------
ladon86
Disappointingly, taxis are still allowed.

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

~~~
Judgmentality
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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jello_Biafra#Mayoral_campaign)

------
sushid
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.

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

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

~~~
dependenttypes
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".

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

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

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

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

~~~
dependenttypes
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.

------
base698
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.

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

~~~
yostrovs
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?

------
alottafunchata
Because San Francisco is being ran by radicals.

------
RiOuseR
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.

~~~
SECProto
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.

------
spikels
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://nacto.org/docs/usdg/pedestrian_and_transit_malls_study_center_city_commission.pdf)

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RW09rbBLB5A](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RW09rbBLB5A)

[https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/revisiting_pedestrian_malls_scmi...](https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/revisiting_pedestrian_malls_scmidt.pdf)

[https://www.boulderdowntown.com/_files/docs/americanpedmalle...](https://www.boulderdowntown.com/_files/docs/americanpedmallexperiment.pdf)

[https://www.curbed.com/2019/9/30/20885226/best-pedestrian-
ma...](https://www.curbed.com/2019/9/30/20885226/best-pedestrian-mall-design)

~~~
godzillabrennus
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.

~~~
TomMarius
> 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

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

~~~
yostrovs
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.

~~~
chrischen
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.

