The Spine of San Francisco Is Now Car-Free (citylab.com) 189
The plan to ban private cars from Market Street -- one of the city's busiest and most dangerous downtown thoroughfares -- enjoys a remarkable level of local support. From a report: In a city known for stunning vistas, San Francisco's Market Street offers a notoriously ugly tangle of traffic. Cars and delivery trucks vie with bikes and pedestrians along this downtown corridor, as buses and a historic streetcar clatter through the mix. Dedicated lanes for transit and bikes end abruptly several blocks from the street's terminus at the edge of the San Francisco Bay. But the vehicular frenzy is ending, in part: Starting Wednesday, private vehicles -- meaning both passenger automobiles and for-hire ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft -- may no longer drive down Market, east of 10th Street. Only buses, streetcars, traditional taxis, ambulances, and freight drop-offs are still allowed. The closure to private vehicle traffic heralds the start of a new era for the city's central spine, and perhaps for San Francisco at large, as it joins cities around the world that are restricting cars from downtown centers.
"We need to do better than use Market as a queuing place for the Bay Bridge," said Jeffrey Tumlin, the newly arrived executive director of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. "Today represents the way the world is finally changing how it thinks about the role of transportation in cities." After decades of debate, the vision for a car-free Market Street has arrived at a remarkable level of support among activists, politicians, planners, and businesses. (Especially compared to the rancor and legal challenges that greeted New York City's long-delayed effort to create a car-free busway along 14th Street in Manhattan.) In October, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency's board of directors voted unanimously in support of a $600 million "Better Market Street" capital construction plan. Ground is set to break on construction for a protected bikeway, repaved sidewalk, fresh streetscaping, and updated streetcar infrastructure by the start of 2021.
"We need to do better than use Market as a queuing place for the Bay Bridge," said Jeffrey Tumlin, the newly arrived executive director of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. "Today represents the way the world is finally changing how it thinks about the role of transportation in cities." After decades of debate, the vision for a car-free Market Street has arrived at a remarkable level of support among activists, politicians, planners, and businesses. (Especially compared to the rancor and legal challenges that greeted New York City's long-delayed effort to create a car-free busway along 14th Street in Manhattan.) In October, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency's board of directors voted unanimously in support of a $600 million "Better Market Street" capital construction plan. Ground is set to break on construction for a protected bikeway, repaved sidewalk, fresh streetscaping, and updated streetcar infrastructure by the start of 2021.
That's great news! (Score:5, Funny)
Now maybe they can pour another soy latte, stroke their hipster beards, and figure out how to keep folks from shitting on the street.
Feces (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: Feces (Score:3, Funny)
Just be careful where you step, or wear your wellies and have a hose and drain fitted at your front porch.
Re: Feces (Score:5, Insightful)
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No no, I think it's important that with have bicycle lanes before we deal with the garbage littering the street. Nevermind that rent rates are artificially high.
SF is a city that wants you to leave. Honestly, the next project should be a big sign saying, 'Leave This Hell Hole Now!' Brought to you from the 'We want to be just like destroy campaign.'
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If you have problems it's a good idea to prioritize them and address them in order of importance.
This is a good idea for an individual person because focusing on one task to completion is more efficient than swapping.
But for a city of a million people, doing "one thing at a time" makes no sense at all.
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But for a city of a million people, doing "one thing at a time" makes no sense at all.
Please show me where in my post I said what you wrote in quotes, or where I even implied SF should only work on one thing at a time. Nope, you're the only one who said that. What I actually said is "If you have problems it's a good idea to prioritize them and address them in order of importance.".
Straw man much?
Re:That's great news! (Score:5, Insightful)
The solution is pretty simple, actually: public toilets. The problem is that solution would make another solution people see as a problem worse: the *presence* of homeless people.
San Francisco is what's in a lot cities' futures are going to look like. Urban housing costs are rising around the world as cities become more desirable for young professionals -- not to mention the immense market for luxury apartments created by Russian money laundering. Ever wonder why Norway is one of the richest countries in the world while Russia, which also has a largely petroleum based economy, has a median income of $550/month? It's money looted by Russian oligarchs and stashed in cities like San Francisco and New York.
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Are you seriously suggesting that Republicans would provide better public services for the homeless?
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Democrats have to get out of the mindset that people who live on the street are all that guy in Pursuit of Happyness. They're like 0.0001%, the rest of them are in need of intervention or enforced segregation because they're dangerous to themselves and/or other people. Quite a lot of them will remain institutionalized or incarcerated for the rest of their life. That's not ideal, but it's worse if they're on the street.
What's really annoying about this situation is having to hear about how terrible it is fro
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The big driver of homelessness used to be deinstitutionalization. Now it's the opioid crisis, which does not respect political boundaries.
In cities, the opioid crisis manifests itself as a homeless problem, but in rural areas the problem is just as bad or worse, but it's more spread out. People aren't living in the streets, they die in their homes or under some railroad bridge somewhere.
So? (Score:3)
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It's better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
Yeah, I think that applies here.
Just like ... (Score:2)
Re: Just like ... (Score:2)
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Going to need some context here.
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I assume that people are shot on streets open to cars all the time, so the implication is faulty, but maybe it's just to present a foil to the notion that getting rid of the cars will transf
Re: Just like ... (Score:2)
Every major city provides "affordable housing" to their low-level criminals, subsidized with taxpayer dollars. The more successful criminals buy large condos and mansions.
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Apparently you haven't been to San Francisco.
No, but I've seen plenty of documentaries about police chases there. Like The Streets of San Francisco.
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And Bullitt!
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And here it's been working out great for 50 years.
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Just fact checked in Google Maps. Nicollet mall is about 1 mile long. Market St. SF east of 10th St. is 1.8 miles long. So while the proposed corridor in SF is longer, Nicollet mall is by no means tiny in comparison.
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They tried doing that on State Street in Chicago in the 70's to combat the new retail threat to downtown business that malls created - but it failed spectacularly.
https://chi.streetsblog.org/20... [streetsblog.org]
The Chicago version was terrible because of the bu (Score:3)
Your linked article from streetsblog is a gem, it totally corresponds to my memory of that corridor. When they put in the changes, State Street remained unpleasant for meany reasons cited in the article, but particularly repelling for me was the incessant, busy bus traffic and associated particulate-laden fumes.
I think the circumstances on Market street may be different. At the very least, the buses will not be emitting quite so much choking exhaust.
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Many of the buses are electric (powered via overhead cables) which emit no fumes locally.
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I think the circumstances on Market street may be different.
It's going to be turned into a cab stand. Uber and Lyft are banned. But not 'traditional taxis'. Buses, bicycles and delivery trucks will still be allowed. So Market will devolve into the loading dock side of businesses that occupy a full block. And smaller storefronts will be given over to smoke shops and bodegas selling malt liquor and junk food. And peep shows (actually, I'm OK with this). Adjacent housing prices will be depressed until they become accessible for housing subsidy programs.
cars (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:cars (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, making driving less attractive and improving public transport and bike infrastructure will result in a shift from one mode of transport to the other. But only for those people for whom public transport and bikes are actually viable alternatives. It really depends on the local situation; that portion of drivers might be significant, or it might be tiny. Th le article suggests that a lot of the traffic there is destined for the Bay Bridge, so how viable are those alternative modes of transport for those people?
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I used to commute from Oakland to San Francisco. Using public transportation is much nicer than driving the Bay Bridge. There are plenty of options. There are also much, much better streets to use for the approach to the Bay Bridge if one is driving. Look at a map of San Francisco, Market is a weird diagonal street with far too many intersections.
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Common wisdom holds that if you increase road capacity, it will attract more traffic until the new road is just as congested as the old one. In other words: cars magically appear. So by the same token, if you decrease capacity, the cars will magically disappear again.
That's some over simplistic reasoning that just assumes you could build a road anywhere and it would fill with cars. Few people drive just to drive, especially these days. If increased capacity results in increased traffic it means that people want to utilize that capacity, and unless they're bringing in new cars (which does happen to some degree) that weren't previously on the road, that it's just load balancing and reducing capacity on some other road.
If you destroyed the roads completely it wouldn't r
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Common wisdom holds that if you increase road capacity, it will attract more traffic until the new road is just as congested as the old one. In other words: cars magically appear.
That's complete bullshit.
Morons like you call it "induced demand". The reality is that there is already demand going unserved. Building capacity does not induce demand. Demand exists, capacity is built to handle it, and the new capacity is used. You simply aren't building enough capacity to handle all the unserved demand.
Next you'll hit me with the "wisdom" of how adding new roads designed to decrease travel times can instead increase travel times.
It's not the extra road and the bandwidth it represents,
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It is not, yes demand is not increased, because demand is effectively infinite. But since roads better make it easier to drive a car more people drive.
For example if I have go to the shop to by a packet of chips, then I am unlikely to eat them, if someone puts them in a bowl next to me I am almost certain to. As my demand for chips changed, no. Has the cost of the chips changed definitely.
The question is, is the goal of society to consume as much as possible so we are temporarily "happier". In the case me a
If you made driving less attractive (Score:2)
Unless the argument is that public transit can never, under any circumstances, be a viable alternative, which might be true.
That said, I don't think any serious attempt to find a way to make the suburbs work (which is the real issue) has been done. And people want the suburbs because a) they don't want to pay to maintain cities and b) they want large, cheap houses.
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Unless the argument is that public transit can never, under any circumstances, be a viable alternative, which might be true.
How good public transport is depends for a large degree on personal circumstances. I had a door-to-door connection for a while, which was great. But if you have to change trains once, the suck factor goes up by quite a bit. Add a 10 minute walk in crappy weather and it gets worse. Especially if the trains you travel on are rather crowded during rush hour. On most of my routes, driving is faster even if you factor in traffic jams.
The reasoning is that improving roads attracts more traffic, which seem
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this is like saying there's no need for gigabyte networking, if you put in wires, more packets will just magically appear.
This is actually true to a great extent, as the capacity of the network increases people start using more, for marginal gain, e.g. streaming 4K or even 8K video instead of 1080p, game developers start make games that 100Gb on install because the can. They start to no longer care about bandwidth because they know it is available. There is a marginal gain here movies have slightly better quality, games better graphics, less development time goes into compressing the data, etc. The issue is if the cost of that
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Induced demand is bullshit. It's just EXISTING UNSERVED DEMAND being (partially) served after you increase supply.
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You are being absolutist, and that's the wrong way of thinking about this.
People like and want their own personal transportation, of course. But people value other things, too, and they make complex tradeoffs (largely subconsciously). Other factors include: affordability, speed, reliability, how much they enjoy driving, degree of any claustrophobia (for underground networks), how much they like the feeling of wind in the air (for cycling), and hundreds of other things too. It all goes into the mix that dete
Re:cars (Score:5, Informative)
Market runs diagonally through a non aligned grid, and is a major streetcar route with tracks in the middle. Most intersections before 10th street are nightmares of five or more streets. Getting rid of cars on Market will make traffic in the rest of the area better, by keeping those terrible intersections more clear. It will also speed up the buses, streetcars and taxis that use Market.
Re:cars (Score:5, Informative)
I've driven in Manhattan, Boston, Paris... San Francisco is the only city whose roads I never want to deal with again, in a car or otherwise. It's an epic fail all around, and a shining example of how to screw up a road system beyond the point of it remaining viable.
IMO, the fact that buses will still be running on Market means that the five-way intersections will still be a problem. The only difference is that cars won't be able to benefit from it as much. So I have serious doubts about whether this will really make things better in any meaningful way.
As someone who has driven through there several times, the closure of the already-closed portion of Market is the essence of hell, and expanding that mistake cannot possibly make things better. The only way that this plan won't be a complete disaster for traffic is if they simultaneously remove all of those No Left Turn signs on Mission that prevent you from turning away from Market Street.
Right now, if you're going south(west) on Mission, every single street for tens of blocks is marked No Left Turn. So turning left or turning around requires you to either A. go across Market to the other side of the 45-degree bend, do some bizarre eight-block lopsided rectangle with a left turn at the end, and then come back across, or B. drive all the way out to where cars are allowed on Market Street just so you can turn one block to the right and go around the block. This effectively makes southbound Mission Street useless unless your destination is on the other side of Market.
In theory, Mission ought to be one-way northbound, but without Market St., there's no way to move enough traffic in that direction without it, so everything would break completely if they did that. So they really need to figure out a way to allow left turns off of Mission.
SF also desperately needs to change all of its traffic lights to have all-ways pedestrian cycles so that pedestrians don't block turning traffic for cycle after cycle, and issue huge fines for anyone walking across that street outside of that pedestrian cycle. That might make it practical to keep traffic flowing better on Mission, making it more practical to have a proper protected left turn every so often.
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So now the cars are crowding up other streets even more? The problem I see with the plan is that they don't seem to have a plan for what the cars should do. (Maybe they planned that, but it's not in the article). Everyone wants fewer cars, me too, but they don't just magically disappear.
It's surprising how quick they disappear when they're not as convenient or far more expensive than other options.
Huh? (Score:2)
So you think just by banning cars in places they previously preferred to drive to get somewhere, they'll just disappear because "now, driving is more expensive than your other choices"?!
I think that's a great way to essentially close your eyes, stick your fingers in your ears, and say,"Can't see you hear you. Nah! Nah!"
I'd say the majority of people driving a car don't really own it yet. Their bank does, and they're committed to making monthly payments for years to pay it off. Some even do a lease with the
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Informative)
It seems (so far) to have worked on 14th St. in Manhattan. They designated it for busses only due to a planned shutdown of the L subway line that runs underneath. The subway shutdown never happened (they reduced service, but kept it open), but they went ahead with the bus-only plan anyway. And everybody loves it (by everybody, I guess I mean everybody who lives and works here - i.e. doesn't drive here). At least the public is decidedly not up in arms, and 14th St is a pleasure...
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Informative)
So you think just by banning cars in places they previously preferred to drive to get somewhere, they'll just disappear because "now, driving is more expensive than your other choices"?!
I think that's a great way to essentially close your eyes, stick your fingers in your ears, and say,"Can't see you hear you. Nah! Nah!"
I'd say the majority of people driving a car don't really own it yet. Their bank does, and they're committed to making monthly payments for years to pay it off. Some even do a lease with the intention of never owning it. These people aren't all going to just bail out on their contracts with lenders and let the vehicles get repossessed because "my city made it less convenient and more expensive to do my daily commute". They're going to put up with the added hassles and keep driving around the closures.
Mass transit is useful to help alleviate traffic congestion, but it comes at the cost of every taxpayer in that area funding it endlessly. It's really never profitable because people have to make too many compromises to use it to pay what they'd really need to collect per fare to break even.
Let me clarify. I don't think changes like this are going to cause a bunch of cars to suddenly disappear altogether, but they'll be used for fewer and fewer trips. A couple of simple examples:
For many years I used to go to an annual conference in Boston. And as part of the confirmation you'd always get some information about places to stay, maps, how to get around, etc. For the last couple of years that information packet started actively discouraging people from renting cars explaining that Boston is a very walkable place. Instead they gave information on how to get to the hotels using public transportation, shuttle services, etc.
That simple message probably meant anywhere from 50 to 200 fewer cars in that area during that week.
Example 2:
I work in a part of town that's booming. Parking has gotten harder and harder to find and more expensive. Our company used to pay for parking for our employees even though the public transportation options are pretty good. Many people could take the bus or train but they opted for the free parking because one or two days a week they need to drive for various reasons. Several years ago the company started to make the employees pay a small portion of the parking costs because the expense was getting out of control. There was a small amount of grumbling but for the most part people just paid the money and continued to drive.
Well, parking costs have continued to climb and now the company is taking a different approach. You can have a free transit pass or they will subsidize your parking up to the cost of the pass, but no more. This will be a significant additional monthly expense for people. So guess what? Some will grit their teeth and pay the money. But for others, transit suddenly make more sense. It is cheaper for them to take the bus most of the time and pay for parking one or two days a week (or park a mile away). Some people have talked about sharing a spot and carpooling.
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I do. I would much rather ride public transit and relax than drive through aggravating rush hour traffic.
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Who is actually from SF? It's a city of transplants. I don't live there now but I used to live there, and also in Oakland for a while. I commuted over the bay bridge every day, and yeah, I would MUCH rather ride than drive in that mess.
Re: cars (Score:5, Insightful)
Rich assholes have ruined most cool cities. They need somewhere to stash all the money they stole from the working class, and real estate is a good investment. But that means, no housing for the poor or middle class.
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Oh, obviously "market forces" is a totally different thing than "Rich people buying up all the housing." Totally different.
Here, maybe you'll trust the pro-capitalist Wall Street Journal on the issue. I've found that they present issues like this quite clearly for their target audience, and don't try to sugar coat anything. Because their target audience really, really doesn't give a shit about the peons or their plight.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/i... [wsj.com]
But please, do elaborate on these "market forces" that a
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Everybody wants other people to have fewer cars.
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Visit San Francisco and ask people on the sidewalk if they want to drive a car more, or less.
The answer will usually be less.
Here in Oregon it will be the same in nearly any city; people who can't park right at their destination (eg, downtown) would usually rather have taken public transit if it the service is good enough. A lot of people would rather bicycle, if they had protected bike lanes.
Like in Portland; people who work downtown and live in the suburbs frequently drive a fairly short distance to the p
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Oh lots of people want fewer cars on the road. As long as its fewer of other people's cars.
msmasn never fails to disappoint (Score:5, Insightful)
"The spine of San Francisco..." actually about one fourth of one street, ("Market Street east of 10th street")
"...is now car-free" except "buses, streetcars, traditional taxis, ambulances, and freight drop-offs"
Re: msmasn never fails to disappoint (Score:3)
If you have to look both ways before crossing Market Street east of 10th Street, then it isn't car-free in any meaningful way.
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Around here you do need to look both ways on car free streets, because bicycles ignore traffic signals and crosswalks.
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Extra lanes idea (Score:2)
Re: Extra lanes idea (Score:2)
There are no unused road lanes, taxis and deliveries to businesses will keep Market Street east of 10th hopping.
$600 million for 2 miles of paint and sidewalks? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why we can't have nice things.
In NYC, subway construction costs are seven times higher than in the rest of the world outside the US. [nytimes.com]
Florida is spending $1.4 billion to rebuild a single freeway interchange. [tampabay.com]
Something is deeply wrong with how infrastructure projects are run in the US.
Re: $600 million for 2 miles of paint and sidewalk (Score:3)
Something is deeply wrong with how infrastructure projects are run in the US.
Two things:
- Union Labor, and
- Environmental Impact Studies
Union Labor assures workers are paid top-dollar for their labor, and any infrastructure project of any size will require massive environmental impact studies before work can commence. In the US Union labor is essentially required as part of the appropriations.
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Compared to the rest of the world, the US is very anti-union and has very little in terms of environmental protections. Have you compared the infrastructure project costs in the US vs. other countries to back up your argument?
Re: $600 million for 2 miles of paint and sidewalk (Score:2)
> Something is deeply wrong with how infrastructure projects are run in the US.
Florida's population has doubled, and almost doubled AGAIN, since the day most of Florida's $billion+ to rebuild interchanges were originally designed & built. Most of them were under-built & dysfunctional, even BACK THEN.
If you want to see "expensive", just WAIT until Miami finally bites the bullet & rebuilds I-95 from scratch (the way Broward & Palm Beach counties did 10-20 years ago, while Miami kept putting
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1) Unions - and kickbacks and mafia
I can rigorously disprove this. Live in TN, a notoriously anti-union state. All public works projects are still insanely expensive here.
2) Regulations (OSHA) and different rules in different cities/states
You ever hear the saying that if you see sign, there's more than likely a story on why it went up? Yeah, same applies here.
3) The bidding process to do work, which is known to be a game of who can overcharge the least to get the job (bid the lowest overpriced charge you can that is lower then the other bidders).
Sort of. Here in my state it's usually who is currently the mayor, governor, or whatever giving their friend a kickback. I've just given up on the notion that I'll ever have a local government that isn't corrupt.
I'll be paying around $300k (Score:2)
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So you live somewhere cheap? [SF Bay area resident here].
Welcome to the 80s, America! (Score:4, Informative)
We have that since the 80s, all over Europe.
We banned everything but deliveries to shops/residents of those streets though. They are our shopping streets now. Very busy, very popular.
Our cities were originally designed for pedestrians in the first place though, and we got public transport hot spots all around them. So I wonder how well this will go down in a US city. Especially half-asssing it like that. (People still can't actually walk *on* the street. Nor put chairs and tables there for resraurans, bars, etc.)
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We have that since the 80s, all over Europe.
We banned everything but deliveries to shops/residents of those streets though. They are our shopping streets now. Very busy, very popular.
Our cities were originally designed for pedestrians in the first place though, and we got public transport hot spots all around them. So I wonder how well this will go down in a US city. Especially half-asssing it like that. (People still can't actually walk *on* the street. Nor put chairs and tables there for resraurans, bars, etc.)
Exactly. All they've really done is cut out private cars plus Uber and Lyft. (I'm sure the taxi services are loving that.) The rest of us still have to contend with the homeless and their excrement on the sidewalks. It's intended to have politicians feel good about themselves and get press, not to actually improve quality of life.
I'm sure there will be before and after photos showing how much the traffic is reduced, which will be trumpeted as a big win. The press will ignore that the foot traffic situa
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Context: I have homes in San Francisco and a city in Europe. I spend 50% of more of my time in various EU/Schengen/Eastern Europe cities.
Shops on Market Street are unlikely to appear -- the US is moving faster than anywhere toward on-line shopping. If things work out, I'd expect to see more service shops and cafes, but not more products shops. When we're in Europe we wish for the convenience and pricing of on-line shopping -- not as pervasive as in the US, and often a pain in the ass. Downtown shopping
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I have homes in San Francisco and a city in Europe.
Damn, you own a whole city? Must be nice...
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We have that since the 80s, all over Europe.
But when Europe does it, they go all the way. Look at pedestrian malls in Amsterdam (Nieuwendijk/Kalverstraat). No cars, cabs or transit. No deliveries during the shopping hours. Bicycles, maybe. But you aren't riding through those crowds. So you end up walking them.
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I lived in Europe and North America. While public transportation works well in Europe, the problem in North America is much lower population density. Distances are much greater, and end-to-end public transportation is not feasible. Public transportation can work well for people who live in large cities, like L.A., or Toronto, but there will still be a large number of people commuting into the city, and since they need a car to get to the city, they are not inclined to look for parking somewhere and then tak
What a bunch of self-important trolls! (Score:5, Insightful)
None of them actually drive in SF, but they object to closing it down to cars. If they ever went there, oh, dear, they might have to... WALK!!!
Horrors.
Btw, I've read that Julius Caesar closed down the streets of Rome to chariot traffic during the day... and that was a couple thousand years ago.
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None of them actually drive in SF, but they object to closing it down to cars. If they ever went there, oh, dear, they might have to... WALK!!!
Horrors.
I'm sure limousines are still allowed.
Re:What a bunch of self-important trolls! (Score:4, Funny)
None of them actually drive in SF
Well yeah, no one drives SF. There's too much traffic.
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None of them actually drive in SF, but they object to closing it down to cars. If they ever went there, oh, dear, they might have to... WALK!!!
Horrors.
No surprise to me. You know who bitches the most, especially here, about the US Department of Homeland Security and how airport security is done? Right wingers who never fly. Some years ago I had a friend who was a big time conservative right winger and he last flew anywhere in either 1999 or 2000. He never flew after the events of September 11, 2001 so he never encountered Homeland Security. You could not get that guy to stop complaining about DHS. He is unlikely to ever fly again anywhere in his l
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Maybe he's complaining about it because it's bullshit, and that bullshit is making him decide against flying.
THINK, idiot.
Re: What a bunch of self-important trolls! (Score:2)
With TSA, shrinking seats, carry-on baggage fees, and all the other fun unique to air travel, the threshold for driving/flying is now about 8 hours driving range, of 500 miles, give or take. Any flight, no matter how short, requires at least 2 hours in the terminal, plus driving and parking at airport before you actually board the plane, along with renting a car and driving to destination.
It is almost always quicker/easier to drive up to about 750 miles - cheaper too.
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Any flight, no matter how short, requires at least 2 hours in the terminal
I'm trying to think the last time I got to an airport 2 hours before a flight. I usually shoot for about 1 hour, maybe 1-1/2 hours if I think it might be a busy day/time for security lines. And at my local airport for short flights I don't bother showing up more than about 45 minutes before the flight. What are you talking about, minimum 2 hours? That's insane.
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Julius Caesar closed down the streets of Rome
That worked out really well for him.
So... they traded cars for poop. (Score:4, Informative)
Not sure that's a very good deal. But, to each their own, I suppose...
uber and lyft (Score:2)
> meaning both passenger automobiles and for-hire ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft -- may no longer drive down Market, east of 10th Street. Only buses, streetcars, traditional taxis, [...]
And finally, traditionally taxi services find a way to shut out Uber and Lyft. I fully expect the prices to go up.
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Well, they couldn't practically allow Uber/Lyft to operate if they didn't allow private cars. How would you tell who was just driving around vs. who is an Uber/Lyft car?
Uber and Lyft cars have signs saying they are an Uber and/or Lyft car. Similar to taxis having signs that say "taxi".
and the queueing place for the bay bridge (Score:2)
I'm wondering how SF is going to look in, say, 20 years. I'm betting, a lot like Detroit now.
Market Street is the spine? (Score:2)
Success on King St in Toronto (Score:2)
Traffic was restricted on the downtown section of King St by requiring all cars to turn off the street after at every intersection to prioritize the King streetcar, one of the busiest surface transit lines in North America. It has been broadly considered a success and has been made permanent after the trial period.
They are planning to greatly restrict or ban cars from a section of Yonge St (the spine of Toronto) to make room for all the pedestrians that use it.
Exceptions for The Rich (Score:2)
Transit Last (Score:3)
Priorities (Score:2)
Congratulations, you got rid of cars.
Now if you can just get rid of the human turds that litter your city, it would be an accomplishment that would rank San Francisco up there with...well, pretty much any little town across the US.
For most towns, they prioritize the turds first, but you go SFO!
SF has no idea how to design streets... (Score:2)
Car free! (Score:2)
This'll leave more room for the piles of human excrement!
San Francisco's BIGGEST mistake (Score:3)
Back when Market Street was closed to traffic for years during the construction of BART and the Muni subway, they should have just made the hole ~25 feet deeper & built the new Market Street in a depressed open cut on top of the subway stack, with the cross streets going over at ground level.
Seriously. The whole road was dug up into a 50 foot deep manmade canyon *anyway*. The marginal cost of making it a little deeper to depress the road itself (or at least its intersections) would have been a drop in the bucket compared to what they were *already* spending.
The whole "Market Street has better things to do than be an approach to the Bay Bridge" is ironic, considering that the loony decision to demolish the Embarcadero Freeway is the main reason WHY Market Street ended up choked with traffic using it as a bridge approach in the first place.
Re: (Score:2)