Eagerly Awaiting the New market Street

Even if it is just temporary. As you've probably heard by now, five city agencies have announced that they will change the traffic patterns on Market Street on a trial basis starting September 29th and lasting at least six weeks, according to the Chronicle Comical.

The traffic changes to be made during this trial are notably stronger that the SFCTA had proposed back in May. The new configuration will leave a virtually car free road Eastbound, East of 8th Street.

The SF Chamber of Commerce's New Clothes

Rachel Gordon reported last week that the SF County Transportation Authority has decided not to pursue a car-free Market Street, favoring instead a plan to "discourage" driving by "managing traffic." That management amounts to restricting some turns at a couple of intersections.

(The SFCTA is the same institution of brilliance that's pushing a 'shovel ready' Doyle Drive replacement and maybe Geary BRT in, well, not your lifetime)

According to Gordon's piece, the meek plan is in response to concerns that "businesses don't suffer" (Quote from Ken Cleveland, director of government affairs for the Building Owners and Managers Association of San Francisco. Apparently he's qualified to discuss this because Market Street is a building).

This pro-car = pro-business attitude is nothing new, so why bring it up? because it was apparently enough to sway the Transportation Authority's decision makers despite the TA's own study, which proved that cars traveling down Market are not major contributors to economic activity.

Where's our JSK?

I think studying various options for a car-free or car-lite Market Street is a big step in the right direction for San Francisco. But when I read about what's going on over in New York, I get green with envy.

Where's our local bureaucratic hero/ine who will diligently push livable streets projects through quickly, so that we can see and feel the results. Where's our Janette Sadik-Khan?

SFCTA Agrees to Study Car-Free Market Street

Rachel Gordon of the (soon to be extinct?) SF Chronicle reports that the SF County Transportation Authority voted yesterday to study the effects of restricting cars on Market, between Van Ness and the Embarcadero.

According to Gordon the study is to be finished in three months and will provide a comprehensive analysis of the effects of banning cars outright, or of limiting their access in other ways.

The comments on that article on SF Gate are as divorced from reality as comments on that site usually are, so I wouldn't recommend reading them unless you want to frustrate yourself. But I would definitely encourage everyone who reads this to write a letter to the editor of the Chronicle expressing support for the study, and for a car-free Market Street. You can email your letters to letters@sfchronicle.com. From experience I can tell you that your letter stands a decent chance of getting printed, and it will influence the dialogue about the issue.

Just for fun, here are a couple of simulations of what Market Street could look like with fewer cars or no cars. These simulations were created by a transportation engineer named Gregory Riessen, but it's not clear if they were done as part of any specific plan or study, or just for fun: