Market Street Renewal

All too often our beloved Market Street is seen as a series of extremes.  People champion ideas such as: closing it to all cars, enlarging other streets for traffic capacity, redeveloping huge swaths of buildings, or simply throwing ones’ hands in the air.   The obvious problem is that each idea only takes one thing into account.  The trick is to balance all the interests:

Transit & Traffic

• Commuters and other traffic, including bikes and pedestrians
• Residents & employees of nearby buildings
• Building owners and tenants
• Visitors/tourists
• Homeless people
• Politicians
• Economists

At first glance, it does look impossible, and that’s why the status quo has prevailed for so long.  In any situation like this, we have two basic paths.  Option 1 is for radical change, which will never be agreed upon.  Option 2 is for incremental progress towards a goal.  The problem is that the ‘goal’ has been ever changing.  Instead of viewing Market St as a ‘main street’, we need to see it as a disturbance in the grid; an anomaly.  A street that has so many odd corners and intersections should never be a thoroughfare.  After we’ve successfully identified what is needed, only then can we move towards it.  

A list of things that are broken would be worthy of a blog all by itself.  Instead, I propose that all we need is a Market Street that ‘works’.  This is not to be confused with merely being ‘adequate’, because there isn’t enough space for everything to be acknowledged.  It’s truly an area plan, not just a Market Street Plan.   Here are a few less obvious steps that can be made piecemeal to slowly increase the functionality:

Landscaping & Separation

• Remove the accidental traffic by forcing turns.  The latest version of constantly ongoing study says that forcing traffic to turn right on 8th would reduce auto traffic by about 30%.  
• Segregate MUNI lanes.  Left turns are illegal anyways, so the middle lanes need to be truly separated by a curb so no other traffic clogs the route.  
• Limit deliveries to evenings only.  Sure to upset local businesses, but even now they must be ready to settle for any improvement.
• Landscape the sidewalks and medians.  Plants tend to slow traffic, and make the pedestrian experience more enjoyable.
• Create open desirable spaces from bad streets, similar to the 17th St Plaza.  Open areas always encourage more walking and sitting, things that many areas of Market severely lack.
• Use real time arrival data at street level for subway trains.  This simple step will allow people to more easily decide whether to head underground for the Muni Metro lines, or try one of the above grade options.

These are all a list of things that can happen in the next 2-3 years at most, but can potentially turn the corner towards a better corridor.  Tomorrow, long range planning, full of optimistic ideas that could transform the city as a whole – based on the idea of bettering our worst/most important street.