Thumbs up from cyclists on redesign of Market
Cassidy Deline drafted behind a bus as she headed east on Market Street, then flowed into the stream of fellow bicyclists jockeying for safe space on the edges of a 9-San Bruno, a 21-Hayes and an F-line streetcar as they hit the light at Fifth Street.
Deline wouldn’t miss having to navigate the moving Muni maze as she rides her bike twice daily between her Mission District home and her job in the Financial District. Sparing her and thousands of other bicyclists the daily ordeal is one of the main goals of a $604 million redo of Market Street that the city hopes to undertake starting next year.
“I think it’s awesome, it’s really great,” Deline, 31, said Wednesday of the city’s plan. “To be honest, I don’t really think cars want to be on Market Street anyway.”
Cars, and their drivers, wouldn’t have a choice under the plan that city agencies released Tuesday and that still must be approved by the Board of Supervisors. Except for taxis and commercial vehicles, automobiles would be banned
from Market between the Embarcadero and 10th Street. No exception for Uber, Lyft and other ride-hailing outfits.
Most of all, the plan is meant to make Market Street safer for the growing number of bicyclists and pedestrians. Muni would have its own lane for buses and streetcars. Sidewalks would be extended to create bike lanes that would be separate from both buses and pedestrians.
Count 32-year-old Leia Rollag as someone the city hopes to win over with the street redesign. She rides her bike to work now, but only occasionally.
“I was scared to ride my bike to work every day,” Rollag said as she cycled up to the door of her startup office on Market. “I still don’t every day. It can be so congested.”
The few car drivers who still take Market largely shrugged at the plan to overhaul the 2.2 miles of Market from Embarcadero to Octavia Boulevard. Since the city banned left turns onto Market between Eighth and Third streets in 2015, bikes and buses often outnumber private cars downtown.
Most of the cars that still ply Market belong to drivers for ride-hailing companies. Some of those motorists shrugged off the possible change as not much of a change at all.
John Leibbrand of San Francisco has driven for Uber for two years and said he generally avoids picking up passengers on Market Street because he doesn’t want to be fined for breaking the 2015 rule. Of the city’s new plan, he said, “It is what it is already.”
Street redos in other parts of San Francisco have angered business owners, who said their customers disappeared along with the parking spaces that the city eliminated to create bike and bus lanes. That’s not an issue on Market, where there’s no street parking downtown, but some owners worried that the construction itself could drive people away.
Tiana Narruhn, a bartender at Sutter Station Tavern on Market near Sutter Street, said her business depends on foot traffic. There may not be much of that for a while once construction gets under way, as the city’s plan is to rip up Market’s red-brick sidewalks and replace them with concrete pavers that are less slippery in the rain.
“There’s a million other bars in the city, especially in downtown, where it’s quieter and more accessible” than a construction zone, Narruhn said.
But there’s a potential upside, too, she said: “Construction workers like to drink, right?”
Narruhn doesn’t use her car to get to work, but the owner of the nearby Miss Tomato Sandwich Shop does, and he’s worried.
“It’s a very bad idea,” Nabeel Abdallah said. “What if you’re a business owner and you want to use your own private car to drop off something when it’s busy? It would be harder for me to run my business without access to my car.”
Abdallah recalled that when San Francisco hosted the Super Bowl in 2016, Market Street east of Beale Street was shut down. It was a hassle, he said. Business owners were given permits to drive on streets at certain times, but it wasn’t the same as being able to drive up whenever a delivery was ready.
Avtar Khalsa, who runs the Dosa Brothers South Indian food stand at Market and Montgomery streets, said that as long as city officials communicate with businesses about the Market Street overhaul and try to work with them, everything should be fine.
“We are open to working something out, especially for such an awesome idea,” Khalsa said. “I’ve seen at least six people slammed with car doors as they’re biking. If it was a peaceful environment here, it would be better for the city in a lot of ways and our business, too.”