Is a Slight Improvement Much of a Victory?

Streetsblog reported yesterday that the SFMTA Board unanimously approved the plans for a redesigned Western half of Cesar Chavez Street.  The redesign was prompted by a PUC sewer replacement project that will tear up the street anyway, presenting an opportunity to rebuild a more liveable - and above all a more safe - street than the one we currently enjoy.  But the multi-million dollar design for the new street falls short as I've written before.

To be sure, the redesign is an improvement over the status quo.  It removed one lane of vehicle traffic and replaces it with a median and left-turn lanes.  A small amount of the freed-up space will go toward new bike lanes.  But while this has been framed as a major improvement for bicyclists and pedestrians throughout the process and even now, I remain unconvinced. And apparently so do many of the bicyclists and pedestrians who read Streetsblog, judging from the comments section:

Only in California can a government official call $6,000,000 for 0.9 miles of painted bike lanes and sidewalk bulbs “cost-efficient.”  -SteveS

The doorage will be brutal.  -Brian

It’s an improvement, but it’s just plain wrong to only do that kind of bike lane. There’s really no excuse for it. It should be buffered. I don’t see why you’d have to remove anything, just reorganize it. And even if you do have to remove something, so be it. Remove one of the six lanes in the picture above dedicated to motor vehicles, which really have no place in almost any part of our city, anyway.  -Stuart Chuang Matthews

But the only street users that seem to have gained in any real significant way from the redesign are drivers in the left lane who will have some nice plants to look at when they’re stopped at red lights (the green space is not accessible to pedestrians, who can only look at it from across 33′ of vehicles) and drivers who use on-street parking who will now have a much nicer parking lane.  -SteveS

What do ‘underground sewer pipes’ have to do with the median? Is that what we’re saying — that the raised median, which prevents biking and speeds automobile traffic, has to be 14′-wide because there are ‘underground sewer pipes’ that can only be accommodated with a 14′-wide median?  -Peter Smith

I agree that this plan is already outdated, and it’s discouraging to think if it’s implemented, this is what we’ll be stuck with for the next 20 years. (Yes, it’s better than what’s there now, but what’s there now is truly awful.)  -taomom

There simply is no reason for us to accept second-rate solutions anymore.

Thanks should be due, in no small part, to Streetsblog SF and all the great work they’ve done in raising these issues and providing these forums.

Keep it up, everyone. We’ll probably lose this battle for Cesar Chavez, at least this portion of it, but I’m encouraged that soon we will begin winning the war, fought in similar battles all over the City and the Bay.  -Jake Wegmann

The overall theme of the comments tacks closely to my own thoughts, that this is an incremental improvement to an awful street, but a missed opportunity to improve conditions for the most vulnerable street users.  I'm surprised, given the strength of that reaction in the comments above as well as comments on other articles about the redesign, that these thoughts have received very little coverage.  While I look forward to any improvement on C. Chav, I can't help but see this as an advocacy failure.  Pedestrian advocates need to get louder and more bold in our efforts to create real pedestrian improvements.  If we don't, then more streets will be given the green lipstick treatment of planted medians and a few bulb-outs, while pedestrians squeeze past each other on the same narrow sidewalks and abuelitas take refuge on tiny islands of concrete between rushing traffic.

The Median Mistake

Michael Helquist at BIKE NOPA has a summary of Tuesday nights MTA workshop on redesigning Masonic Avenue.  (I wish I could have attended the meeting but Muni connections to that part of town are slow these days, and I had prior commitments).

According to Helquist, attendees broke into small groups to brainstorm designs for the street.  In summary, attendees wanted:

• Smooth and steady flowing traffic lanes for vehicles and Muni buses
• The current 25 mph speed limit
• A designated bike route
• Wide sidewalks for walkers
• Curb-side parking

But they also wanted to re-design or at least enhance the corridor by

• Improving safety and the perception of safety for all users on the street
• Enhancing a sense of community or neighborliness that is blunted now by a corridor that separates east from west with several lanes of speeding vehicles
• Normalizing traffic flow by removing the changes in number of lanes along the corridor
  Quieting the street with landscaping and other sidewalk features
• Installing a new landscaped median with refuges for safer pedestrian crossings
• Installing a dedicated, perhaps separated, bike lane on one or both sides of the street
• Providing for safer crossings for people walking

(enphasis mine)

Less Median, More Sidewalk

Work is about to begin on the Valencia Streetscape Improvements project. There are a number of elements of the Better Streets "Plan" that will be installed along the four-block stretch in question, but the biggest single change will be the removal of the 13-foot wide center parking lane median and the addition of 6 to 9 feet of sidewalk (half on each side of the street, of course).

According to Streetsblog, Liveable City Executive Director Tom Radulovich "was hopeful that Valencia could serve as a model for many of the ideas that are in the Better Streets Plan." And indeed we all should remain hopeful that more of our street space is turned over to pedestrian use.
Unfortunately, not all street improvement projects currently underway are quite so admirable.

The project to redesign notorious traffic sewer Cesar Chavez Street will not include wider sidewalks but will instead add 14-foot-wide center median to the expressway. Thus ensuring that cars will continue to speed to and from the "hairball" of on/off-ramps below Highway 101 and the street will continue to divide Bernal Heights from the Mission - albeit under the shade of pretty new trees.

Divisadero will also be "improved" without doing much to address the public pedestrian spaces along the street.