What Happened After San Francisco's Market Street Went Car-Free? (citylab.com) 85
"Two months after a ban on private cars took effect on a major San Francisco street, bike and e-scooter ridership is soaring, and bus trips are getting quicker," reports CityLab:
[T]he average number of dockless scooter trips provided by one company, Spin, shot up by 30 percent after the car ban went into effect, according to an analysis by Populus, a mobility data startup that works with the company. "Street design changes, big and small, can have a huge impact on what mode of transportation a person chooses and even what routes they decide to take," Kay Cheng, director of infrastructure initiatives at Spin, said in a statement. Some of that shift is likely attributable to seasonal effects, said Regina Clewlow, the CEO and co-founder of Populus; other cities saw a scooter ridership increase of just 10% between January and February...
After just one day of the new vehicle access rules — a preamble to the $603.7 million overhaul, slated to begin in 2021 — the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency reported that bike ridership has jumped by 20%. By the end of February, that increase was up to 25%.
Bus speeds were also running 6% faster on average, according to the SFMTA, with some Muni lines reducing travel time by as much as 12%.
Critics of the project warned that the car ban would boost vehicle congestion on surrounding streets, but Inrix, a global traffic analytics company, found only a minor uptick. "Overall, the cumulative time savings experienced by the more than 75,000 daily public transit users on Market Street greatly exceed the marginal increase in travel times experienced by car users in the closure's vicinity," wrote Trevor Reed, an analyst at Inrix, in a blog post.
After just one day of the new vehicle access rules — a preamble to the $603.7 million overhaul, slated to begin in 2021 — the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency reported that bike ridership has jumped by 20%. By the end of February, that increase was up to 25%.
Bus speeds were also running 6% faster on average, according to the SFMTA, with some Muni lines reducing travel time by as much as 12%.
Critics of the project warned that the car ban would boost vehicle congestion on surrounding streets, but Inrix, a global traffic analytics company, found only a minor uptick. "Overall, the cumulative time savings experienced by the more than 75,000 daily public transit users on Market Street greatly exceed the marginal increase in travel times experienced by car users in the closure's vicinity," wrote Trevor Reed, an analyst at Inrix, in a blog post.
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All you can eat.
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Lots of hours for cleaning.
Welcome to the west coast USA and the use of advanced apps.
To report 4th world conditions.
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Not so fast (Score:4, Insightful)
It took several years for Seattle's 3rd Avenue to decay once it became a transit and bicycle corridor. It took some time for businesses to flee. On the other hand, the county courthouse closed its 3rd Avenue entrances pretty quickly when random assaults spiked.
Re:Not so fast (Score:5, Insightful)
AC has a point, if you make it more inconvenient to reach businesses then business goes down... It's happened countless time, and is one of the main reasons why large stores with their own parking do so much better than small stores.
Re:Not so fast (Score:4, Funny)
The solution is obvious, force the large stores out of business[/socialist]
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"only shops for all the brands you find from London to St Petersburg. The only difference between the cities of the world is the monuments they house, but local economy is totally dead."
Those shops are for tourists, the locals buy on Amazon and only hairdressers, fast-food, bakeries and food-stores remain.
And for a reason I can't figure out real-estate agencies, I guess in case you get a haircut and you see a house you like on the way home, you can jump in for a quick purchase.
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They have access to the magic box and act as a trusted person to guide strangers through your house.
Without a realtor you need to schedule with the house's owner to see the inside, then to schedule an inspection, then to get any repairs down if needed.
With a realtor, you get easy access for all those things.
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When I recently visited a Dutch city (Maastricht) most of the streets in the shopping areas were open to vehicle traffic, but due to the large number of pedestrians few drivers chose to take them. Those who did recognized that they were operating on a street crowded with foot traffic and elected to drive accordingly, giving way to pedestrians as needed. I don't know why they do this instead of driving like sociopaths like I see in pedestrian heavy US cities.
Pro
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Not really that unusual. I drive through Seattle's Pike Place Market on occasion. I just put my truck in low range and creep along with the pedestrians.
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Another example is Melbourne Australia's Swanston Street, and Bourke St which crosses it. Neither street allow cars, and they're two of the busiest streets for retail.
Re:Not so fast (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not seeing anything in that article about the effect on businesses. I'm guessing it is not part of their agenda so they think it does not matter.
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Re:Not so fast (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure Amazon deliveries have had far more effect on business than this.
Hundreds of times more.
OTOH if you want to go out to eat or do anything social then this is ideal. Anybody with half a brain can make money from this.
Re:Not so fast (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Not so fast (Score:5, Interesting)
There are other things to consider: the big box stores with their own parking lots tend to sell things in large quantity, and carrying so much would be less convenient without a car. That assumes a certain style of binge shopper though, whereas densely populated areas with pedestrian shoppers tend to have larger numbers of smaller sales which the pedestrians can carry more easily.
Those big box stores also require cheap real estate, which is not at all available on Market Street in San Francisco.
I don't think the results of something like this are going to be possible to predict without taking cultural effects into account, and how adaptable people in that area are to a different way of doing things.
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There are also changes to development occurring. A carpark open to the sky is not becoming a stupid thing. At minimum covered over with solar panels, smarter, put a concrete slab above those carparks and build townhouses, above, built in customers and exceptional walk ability for those residents and you have sold the same piece of land thrice, once as a carpark, then as retail space and then as residential, for an optimum design.
In higher density development simply doing many floors, with retail and carpark
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Around here they talk a lot about how the inner city is dying, so they're taking away parking spaces and making it better for public transport, bicycles, adding benches and whatnot. Then they're wondering why it's become a commuter through-pass and people shop even less there than before. It's fine for the things where you're not carrying anything like eating out, clubbing, cinema and theater, light shopping like clothes or a pair of shoes. But if you're lugging around on anything semi-heavy or semi-bulky t
Re:Not so fast (Score:5, Insightful)
One method of transportation is now slightly more convenient (or less inconvenient) than it was previously, because the most convenient method of transportation is now prohibited.
The story highlights how there are now more bikes and scooters, but it omits the overall numbers - if 500 people used to use cars and no longer do, but 100 of those now use bikes that's an increase in bike usage by percentage but a decrease in users overall. In the short term this may mean less congestion and more convenience for those remaining, but long term it will damage the businesses operating there.
Another thing to consider, buses may not be slightly quicker but are they now more (over) crowded? A ride on an overcrowded bus is not a very pleasant experience.
People buy things in large quantity if possible because it's cheaper and more convenient that way. You get bulk discount, you have less overall visits to the store so you save on transport costs/time etc. For non perishable goods it's almost always better to buy in bulk.
Although this is basically a tax on the poor, for whom buying in bulk may not be practical (no vehicle to transport bulk goods, no space to store it, no money for the up front bulk purchase etc). So they end up paying more overall by buying smaller amounts more frequently.
Re:Not so fast (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a funny oxymoron!
Similarly, a bus makes a road a LOT more efficient at moving people [danielbowen.com], so Market Street may now be moving more people than ever.
If so, that's easy to fix, just run more buses!
It may appear so when you ignore the high cost of driving [aaa.com]!
Improving bus and bike access so people can get around without a car is a tax on the poor?
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Similarly, a bus makes a road a LOT more efficient at moving people [danielbowen.com], so Market Street may now be moving more people than ever.
May be, but there is no data presented either way. Given that the story was written by those who are in favor of the banning of cars, they would have highlighted the data if it supported their viewpoint - therefore there is a significant likelihood that the data does not support their viewpoint and was therefore omitted.
It may appear so when you ignore the high cost of driving [aaa.com]!
Driving is often essential, there are many cases where there is simply no alternative and in other cases the alternatives will incur other costs (inconvenient schedules, significantly increa
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Yes, if you live in a car-dependent area, you may have no practical alternative to driving. You have unwisely locked yourself into a single mode of transportation, and only have yourself to blame for limiting your options.
That's funny because living in a car-dependent area also limits your choices.
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That's funny because living in a car-dependent area also limits your choices.
The choice i was referring to was the choice as to where you can live and work. Not having a car limits that, there's no reason you can't own a car and live in an area served by public transport.
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Is it convenient to own a car in a city that doesn't force developers and business owners to build and provide abundant, free parking? Name a city like that, or admit that you only value freedom when it is taken from others and given to you.
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People buy things in large quantity if possible because it's cheaper and more convenient that way.
Indeed but you're missing causality. People buy things in large quantity because it's quite inconvenient not to do it in certain cities.
I count myself as someone who dramatically changed my habits when moving countries. In Australia I followed very much a USA based approach. Drive 2-4km to a large supermarket and buy a full weeks worth of groceries, stop at the butcher and buy half a cow on the way home, own a huge fridge, and an even larger freezer. Fast forward to my move to Europe and that practice just
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I too have a supermarket within 5 minute walking distance, and prefer to buy food daily so its fresh.
They offer various promotions like "spend $80 and get $8 discount", but generally i can't spend $80 in a single visit and still carry everything home on foot, although i would spend much more than that in total over the course of several days.
There are various other promotions, where specific goods will be offered at a discount for a limited time before the price shoots back up. I'd like to buy lots of these
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I haven't been to downtown San Francisco, but in any other downtown that I've been to there isn't much that you're going to buy in bulk because real estate is too expensive for the big box stores. Who's going to Nordstrom and filling a shopping cart? No one. And why is that real estate so expensive? Because small shops are making enough profit to pay the rent.
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Sorry, double post, but I just wanted to point out that a ride in a standing room only overcrowded bus is still more pleasant than driving downtown anywhere and attempting to park.
Re: Not so fast (Score:1)
Cars are already an incredibly inconvenient form of transportation in San Francisco. Parking is scarce, expensive, or both. Crackheads *will* smash your window if you so much as leave pocket change in the center console while parked.
Source: I briefly owned a car while living in downtown SF. It was a stupid thing to do. I sold the car and had a better life.
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AC has a point, if you make it more inconvenient to reach businesses then business goes down... It's happened countless time, and is one of the main reasons why large stores with their own parking do so much better than small stores.
This is something that has been repeated ad nauseam by businesses adjacent to proposed future car free zones. And yet the reality has always ended up being different. A large portion of the business have generally seen an uptick in business as streets are turned to pedestrian zones. This is many thanks to the positive effect of increased loitering and public visits to these "desirable" areas. Pedestrian zones the world over are bustling business centres, and generally see a large value increase.
The biggest
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In other words, this change can only improve the current business setup, even if it's still really lousy.
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My town has an 'old' part of town dates back to mid 1800s and it's main street is cobblestone. It had been used as a 2 lane cobblestone road with nightclubs, bouquet clothing stores, restaurants. Back in mid 90s the city managers voted to ban vehicles from driving on the cobblestone road even though folks protested at city hall meeting pointing out vehicles have driven on the cobblestone road since original Henry Ford model A which the city library has old images of.
To add to your point what happened after
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Horsepucky, I went in those doors the last time I was called for jury duty. What businesses fled? The piroshki place? They found a larger location. What else closed?
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That sounds like an interesting one, does anyone have any data to support our esteemed Anonymous Coward's claim?
Most actual data I see goes the other way, e.g. replacing parking with bike lanes is if anything good for business: https://www.citylab.com/soluti... [citylab.com]
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65 MPG (better than a Prius), Euro 5 level emissions (less than 0.1g per km of hydrocarbon emissions), quiet, take a lot less space on the road (easy to ride 2 or 3 abreast in a typical lane). MUCH more efficient than a car. Weight of 600 pounds - a LOT less road damage (which goes as the fourth power of weight). There are massive benefits compared to cars. It's why most of the rest of the world loves motorcycles and scooters - a lot lower cost, a lot less traffic easier, cheaper to operate, and much more convenient.
Neat! You can squeeze as many motorcycles into the same space that I can squeeze my 8-passenger minivan!
quiet
So it's not a Harley. Or a dirt bike. Or a sport bike. It must be electric.
Weight of 600 pounds - a LOT less road damage (which goes as the fourth power of weight).
Nice try. Autos don't damage roads - 18-wheel trucks damage roads. But they carry a lot more supplies like T.P. to people stuck at home due to Covid-19 than your electric motor thingy so I'll give them a pass.
65 MPG (better than a Prius), Euro 5 level emissions (less than 0.1g per km of hydrocarbon emissions), quiet, take a lot less space on the road (easy to ride 2 or 3 abreast in a typical lane). MUCH more efficient than a car.
OK, you got me. My 8-passenger minivan may be less efficient per person, but it takes up less space than eight of your moto
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Yep, but unlike you - all 8 people can go to different areas, when they decide. Nice eh? And it's not electric - it's a Honda CTX700 - gas powered!
Nice?... sure. Except that kind ruins the efficiency rating you were touting. Oh well, thanks anyways.
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Only if you ALWAYS have all 8 seats filled.
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Only if you ALWAYS have all 8 seats filled.
If you read the thread, you'll see that I sometimes have merely seven seats filled. ;-)
Re:Surrounding street traffic can't go up much (Score:4, Insightful)
> Nice try. Autos don't damage roads - 18-wheel trucks damage roads.
I'm looking at the list at https://streets.mn/2016/07/07/... [streets.mn] , which says a loaded 18-wheeler does 400 times the damage of a normal car. This doesn't eliminate the normal damage of cars on roads, especially the accumulated damage on roads where no 18-wheelers travel.
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That's not the whole story. You also need to know how much load it takes to harm pavement. As it turns out, cars do basically nothing to the pavement surface, unless there's something wrong with it like undercutting by rodents or water.
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Let's compare 100 random 8 passenger minivans and 800 random motorcycles then.
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Well that sample size of 1 proves the rule. No need to look at further data here, I'm sure the average number of people to each parking spot is probably 7. Damn those motorcycles for lowering the efficiency of parking spaces, and its obvious we should all ride H2s to capacity vs a moped. We're all going to the same place after all, this is a much better idea!
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No, your motorcycle only gets that kind of mileage when you cruise on the highway at 55 while hunched low over the fuel tank. It doesn't get that kind of mileage around town, and it doesn't get the best emissions then either. Riding two abreast is the exception, not the norm, especially on city streets. Even when you try, one rider is typically lagging the other. Cars don't damage roads unless they are already sloppy, trucks and weather do basically all of the road damage. Most of the world loves motorcycle
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Everything is stricter than my car, it's a diesel from 1982. Even in California it doesn't get emissions testing. The only emissions equipment is EGR, unless you count the ALDA which compensates for altitude to prevent overfueling. There's not even a catalyst. On the other hand, it doesn't make fine (PM2.5) soot particles like your motorcycle does, or like diesels with DPFs do.
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You're wrong. Educate yourself [infineuminsight.com] what Euro 5 means for emissions - including particulate. Do you claim your car produces less than 4.5mg of PM2.5 per km traveled? Gonna have to see some proof of that.
It seems you're not at all familiar with modern motorcycles, and still think it's all 1970 shovelheads or CZs.
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Lol. Guess you missed this story: https://slashdot.org/story/165... [slashdot.org]
Classic diesels make soot, but without a DPF they make bigger soot particles.
Modern diesels have DPF. So they trap soot and burn it off in the trap oxidizer. This converts some of it to CO2, and the rest to PM2.5, actually making it more dangerous to human health.
Gassers don't have trap filters, just catalysts. They don't trap soot and burn it off. Almost all the soot they put out is PM2.5, and they put out just as much soot as a diesel. Onl
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The euro 5 standards only apply to three pollution actually measured in the test, just like all the other standards. That means they miss the bulk of PM2.5. My car produces almost none of that, because it's a diesel without DPF. I'm not going to waste time trying to explain this to you again.
My car gets 30 MPG freeway. But it's so old that it's saved enough energy to build at least one other car, maybe two if they're not hybrids, or aluminum: bodied. And my commute is under 30 miles. I'm hoping to get it un
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That's literally what DPFs do. They burn soot particles into smaller soot particles and CO2. Modern engines make more PM2.5 due to higher cylinder pressures. DPFs can't capture ultrafine particles, but they can turn bigger particles into smaller ones.
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Yep. That is one of the nice things about living here. Lane splitting - like the rest of the world! When everyone else is sitting stalled on the 10 or 405 in LA, or the 680/880/101 in the Bay area - I'm still moving. Which increases the efficiency even more. If more people rode - especially in SoCal where the weather is ideal 90%+ of the time - we'd have a LOT less pollution, congestion, and space dedicated to parking lots.
As a side-bonus, at least at LAX and most city-owned/run parking lots, parking f
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They can, but that's only a benefit to the motorcyclist, not to anyone else. It also frightens drivers and thus perturbs traffic when done on the fly, as opposed to just moving to the head of a line of stopped traffic.
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I know other drivers get jealous anger (I do too, I'm not a biker), but in reality it helps everybody to have less cars jammed up.
Re: Surrounding street traffic can't go up much (Score:2)
My motorcycle gets 50 mpg.
My Jeep, which is what *I* am driving when. It riding the motorcycle, gets 12 mpg.
The fact that someone may make a car that gets 100 mpg doesnâ(TM)t affect my Jeepâ(TM)s mileage in the slightest.
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and they take up just as much space on the road in spite of being smaller because people are afraid to hit them.
Also true of Bicycles.
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Selectively removing roads can reduce traffic congestion. This also works for network traffic. But which road to remove requires modelling / simulation to get it right.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The result was cat-astrophic! (Score:1)
Well first there was a huge increase in mice, rats and other rodents, not to mention the pigeon population exploded.
Even worse, the instagramabiltiy of the place just shot way down without the cute fuzzy faced beings posing alongside you...
Oh wait, you said CAR free!
That's it? (Score:5, Insightful)
After just one day of the new vehicle access rules — a preamble to the $603.7 million overhaul, slated to begin in 2021 — the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency reported that bike ridership has jumped by 20%.
They waited a whole day to report the increase? That's literally a sample-size of one.
Bus speeds were also running 6% faster on average
Well, whoop-de-doo! 6% faster? if it was an hour-long bus ride, that would shave a whopping three and a half minutes off the trip.
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This is just bad journalism, it's not an issue with the data or the reports they generated. The journalist just selected the most useless data points for some reason, probably related to not understanding it.
The longer term data shows good results. Traffic isn't the only thing that affects bus speed (e.g. the speed limit, traffic lights) and timetables account for it so 6% is quite significant for this one change. It could mean an extra stop or three along the route without increasing the overall journey ti
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They waited a whole day to report the increase? That's literally a sample-size of one.
Reporting now on something that happened a day after doesn't imply a sample size of one. It implied a sample size of one on the day. Nowhere does it say that the study only went for a day or that the 20% figure changed on day 2.
Well, whoop-de-doo! 6% faster? if it was an hour-long bus ride, that would shave a whopping three and a half minutes off the trip.
So what you're saying is a whole extra half an hour every week off my commute? Sign me up!
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6% faster means they can also re-schedule the route 6% more often, which means 6% higher carrying capacity on the entire route, without needing additional hardware.
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Clearly they haven't gone far enough yet. The 38 bus buzzes along when it reaches Market Street now, but the long journey across Geary Street clearly needs a transit-only lane to speed it along.
(Once upon a time Geary Street also had a rail line on it-- one of our many post-WWII screw-ups was doing away with that and replac
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And actually, work on that is in progress: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Minor uptick in traffic?? (Score:1)
Don't let whomever has a financial interest in this cloud your vision; the traffic knock-on effects have been horrendous. Thank god for covid-19, cause now I don't ride bart OR drive. closing market has literally doubled the time it takes me to make it 0.8m in SF to park in a garage downtown.
Re:Minor uptick in traffic?? (Score:4, Informative)
The closure also hasn't made the commute any faster for people like me who bike to work. Traffic lights are the limiting factor there (queue jokes about cyclists ignoring lights, it's true but not me, I have reasons to live). So I also really don't understand the point. Frankly if you got rid of double-parked delivery vans on Market and reduced the addicts/mental patients that wander in the middle of the road that would have been enough to keep traffic going fine.
I think the two reasons they really did the closure are
1.) try and get Muni buses on time. I'm betting that this hasn't helped much at all. Muni is a mess for organization reasons, not traffic.
2.) pedestrians kept getting hit by cars. That's because both the drivers and walkers were playing on their phones. They still are, just not on this stretch of road now.
Come to think of it, Market only needed one motorcycle cop to go up and down all day citing double parkers, ticketing light running cyclists, and citing and moving cars that run late yellow lights and then get stuck in cross traffic blocking intersections. One cop could do it all instead of a dozen SFMTA folks standing in intersections.
"Minor uptick" during global pandemic (Score:2)
is not very meaningful. Car traffic is not only highly reduced right now, but it's going to be reduced for months if not years as people recover socially and economically from the current pandemic.
I think this will boost local stores (Score:3)
S.F. is a unique instance (Score:1)
I used to work on Market St., and I learned early on that having a car in S.F. was a very expensive and largely unnecessary proposition.
San Francisco was (unfortunately, no longer IS) a great city to walk, and parking is almost nonexistent, so what's the point?
I'm not a huge mass transit proponent, but I am into practicality. Whatever mode of transportation works best for a particular situation is the one I'll use.
Urban living (Score:2, Insightful)
ORLY (Score:1)