A once-radical idea to purge all private cars from Market Street becomes reality on Wednesday.
New turn lanes will stripe the roadway, diverting traffic from a transit spine that’s intended to be a grand promenade, rife with bicycles and clattering streetcars. The city’s new “quick-build” procedures allowed transit officials to banish automobiles east of 10th Street within three months of approving the project. Meanwhile, a more substantive redesign is inching forward.
Eventually the old “lollipop” traffic signals will get a full overhaul, gray pavers will replace the red sidewalk bricks, and officials will swap the green bunker toilets for a more futuristic model. . . .
How many drivers use Market Street, anyway? Not as many as you might think. According to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, 200 to 400 cars travel in each direction on Market Street every hour during the peak commute. That’s roughly half the number on Mission Street, which sees 500 to 900 cars per hour in each direction.
Traffic wasn’t always that sparse. The city gradually steered cars off the thoroughfare by installing forced detours in 2009, adding more turn restrictions over the years to stymie east-west travel. Many of the vehicles that currently use Market are Uber and Lyft cars, and those drivers will face the biggest shock. As of Wednesday, they will be relegated to loading zones on side streets.
Is this going to speed up the buses? With rapid, subway-like service in the center lane, Muni estimates that 464,000 riders who board buses on Market Street every day will save lots of time. Faster service unimpeded by automobiles would shorten each trip by 15% to 25%, according to transportation planners.
From a transit perspective, Market is the beating heart of the city, with 200 buses and streetcars running down the strip per hour at the busiest times, while BART and Muni Metro subway trains rattle underneath. Roughly 500,000 people walk along Market each day, and 650 cyclists roll through each hour during the peak commute.
What about parking? Parking on Market, already limited to six metered spaces east of Spear Street, will disappear entirely with the redesign. The more drastic change will occur on cross streets and side streets, where 227 spaces will be converted to commercial loading. . . .
