The Pedestrian-Priority Movement Picks Up Speed

By John Reinhardt, AICP

Private cars are now banned from San Francisco's busiest corridor. The move was unanimously approved by the city's Municipal Transportation Agency in October as part of the broader Better Market Street Project, a $600 million redesign intended to prioritize public transit, enhance pedestrian safety, and improve the public realm along the 2.2-mile corridor of Market Street between the Embarcadero and Octavia Boulevard.

These efforts attempt to address a challenge cities across the globe are tackling: How can our streets, still firmly the domain of the automobile, better accommodate the needs of all users? In San Francisco and a handful of other cities, the solution is trending toward physical and operational street design interventions that limit — or completely eliminate — car use.

Busy Market Street in San Francisco will soon be off limits to personal cars. A two-mile stretch will get transit-only lanes, bikeways, and painted safety zones. Photo by Sergio Ruiz.

A generational opportunity

In recent years, a series of technological innovations has increased the demand for city streets: the well-documented rise of Uber and Lyft, the increased need for curb space given the popularity of online shopping and direct-delivery services, new mobility options like bike share and e-scooters. At the same time, increased congestion, declining public transit speeds, and an increased focus on pedestrian safety have all put a renewed spotlight on street design.

"There's a growing sense that our streets have to function in multiple ways," says John Rahaim, San Francisco's planning director. On Market Street, that includes not only cars, but BART trains and commuter rail underground and buses, streetcars, and bicycles on the surface. "Market Street is where the region's transit system comes together, and it's also the city's most important ceremonial street. The goal of this project is to improve both conditions."

Prioritizing public transit is a major goal of the redesign. Along with the restrictions on private vehicles, Phase 1 is expected to launch early this year with transit-only lanes, a rethinking of commercial and passenger loading to shift many of those curb uses to side streets, and painted safety zones at eight key intersections. While taxis will be permitted, ride-share vehicles like Uber and Lyft will be required to use pickup points along side streets.

The plan also calls for new furnishings; proposed changes to bus operations, including streamlined routes, a priority center lane, and consolidated stops; and elevated bikeways separated from pedestrian sidewalks.

Currently, the area is identified as part of Vision Zero SF's High Injury Corridor. A recent spate of pedestrian fatalities at Market Street intersections, including three in a two-week span last August, highlight the danger. "Part of this discussion has certainly been around safety, how we design streets so they're safe," says Janice Lee, the director of advocacy for the San Francisco Bike Coalition.

The redesign has been a long time coming, she says. The San Francisco Bike Coalition has worked for nearly a decade in support of the plan — and it's been even longer since the corridor last saw improvements on this scale.

"The last time Market Street received major focus was nearly 50 years ago, when Lawrence Halprin, the famous urban designer, created the redesign plan that left us with the series of plazas we have today," says Lee. "In that respect, Better Market Street is truly a generational opportunity."

Despite the magnitude of the proposed changes, there has been little public opposition to the car ban. "What was really exciting was that there was such consensus around this project," Lee says.

"Part of it is because we've had certain vehicle restrictions in place for some time already," says Rahaim. Restrictions have been in place since 2015 that prevent private vehicles from turning onto Market Street at specific intersections. "Part of it is because you realize quickly that the clashing grids make Market Street a very inefficient place to drive."

New York's M14 bus, once the slowest in the city, is 38 percent faster now that it no longer shares the street with private vehicles. Photo by Tdorante10, Wikimedia.

A growing trend

A few other North American cities are experimenting with pedestrian-priority streets. In late 2017, Toronto piloted a redesign of its heavily congested King Street that restricted car traffic to improve transit speeds. The city also ceded some of the former four-lane street to other uses, allowing for the installation of 18 new pedestrian plazas along the route.

Through a robust monitoring and evaluation program, the city discovered by the end of the pilot in December 2018 that weekly transit ridership was up 17 percent, while cycling increased by 190 percent. The pilot proved so popular that in April, Toronto's city council voted to make the redesign permanent.

In New York City, a plan that had been in the works since 2017 to prioritize transit and trucks on 14th Street — home to the M14, the city's slowest bus route — was twice stymied by lawsuits. The pilot finally moved forward this past October following approval from the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court. According to the Metropolitan Transit Authority, the M14 is moving 38 percent faster than last year's bus travel times, and ridership has already increased by 21 percent.

San Francisco begins implementing its "Quick Build" improvements this month, including the vehicle and loading restrictions. "Private vehicles will be banned from 10th Street all the way to the water," which amounts to nearly two miles, Rahaim says. "That's quite a stretch."

"Something like Market Street is going to move the conversation," Lee says. "Maybe this is a watershed moment. I certainly hope it is."

John Reinhardt is a transportation consultant at Sam Schwartz.