I'm cautiously optimistic but as someone who lives and walks down that street every day (particularly between 2nd and 6th) it seems like its the same amount traffic. It's mostly buses/taxis and the odd car making the wrong turn. Weren't cars always blocked from a subsection of it anyway?

Ultimately this just seems like another move against Uber/Lyft, who the city seems keen on milking for every last dime while they're still solvent. From cranking up taxes, giving them the terrible routes around SFO and Chase, etc., getting around the city is just getting harder/costlier whether its public or private transit.

Again I'm trying to be optimistic, but SF sells regulation/taxes/projects like a snake oil salesmen playing on peoples dreams and fears, then manages to find the worst possible outcome with massive cost overruns by the time the dust settles.

The new SFO arrangement is a huge improvement. At peak times it used to take 10-15 minutes for a ride share to make it from the entrance to Terminal 3. Now it takes 2-3.

Yep. And Lyft and Uber haven’t allowed pickups on Market street for a while, presumably also due to the city’s requirement, so I don’t see how this will change much.

Market was always a disaster to drive on, and so as someone who mostly drives in the city I'm for this change because the worst thing about driving in SF was that you might end up forced onto Market Street and the fundamental rule of Market Street was once you turned onto it, you were never allowed to turn off it until it dumped you into the bay.

But I think the idea that this will be the spearhead to big changes is fundamentally a farce. Market already had enormous sidewalks, pedestrian-first intersections, and all that crap. And it was already the only part of SF that was actually well-served by public transit.

> until it dumped you into the bay

I’m just imagining a whole pile of cars underwater at the end of market street after flying into the bay like that scene in The Game.

That’s where we’re building our next skyscrapers.

Cynical me just imagines a lot of homeless tents.

But, if you’ve been to any city in Europe it’s SO clear how much nicer a city it feels to be in when infrastructure becomes focused on human scale. You breathe easier, you’re less stressed. You can meander. More businesses are viable.

Human scale cities are nice to visit, but if you think you are breathing cleaner air in Europe, with their focus on diesel cars for decades, you are mistaken. The air is much dirtier than in US cities. The Volkswagen scandal might change that around in a decade or two.

Diesel pollution is worse than petrol pollution, but the average European car is smaller, and there are fewer of them.

Many of the diesel vehicles are public buses, and these can be replaced pretty quickly with electric or natural gas (or hybrid) buses. Others are large delivery vehicles, and with some "encouragement" (restrictions) the owners either replace them, or rearrange their fleet to use their newest vehicles in cities.

For example, London has done both, and is already seeing improvements [1]. I noticed when I visited over New Year that the air seemed fresher, so I'm glad I've found some statistics to show that -- it wasn't just a one-off.

[1] https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/ulez_six_month...

Have you been in a French city of late? I almost couldn't visit Tours-centre because of all the diesel smell a few years ago.

It has improved slightly in the last 2 years but it will take a full adoption of EVs (and increased public transit) to resolve. It's not like France is lacking for fuel taxes or road taxes and insurance costs. Demand is still too high.

When I visited Paris, around 7 years ago, it was by far 2-stroke exhaust that was the problem. My Parisian coworkers, who also rode motorbikes, explained it was because the licensing and vehicle taxes are tiered by displacement. So everyone gets a small displacement 2-stroke, since a 2-stroke makes power equal to a 4-stroke double the displacement.

I haven't checked to see if this has changed since then.

Do you have a source for this? Diesel pollution is and was never a clear known spike at least I have never heard from your statement.

I’ll take “air next to a tree” vs “air next to a car” any day, regardless of average ambient. And I like cars a lot.

Cynical me who moved to and from SF (lived there for a year) and walked Market street everyday worries about this as well. SF does not seem to have the political will to really deal with this issue. Measures such as increased street cleaning and feces remediation have done little to improve the experience of walking on certain parts of Market (at least in my time when I saw new efforts go into effect).

I think of it as resources rather than will.

At market rate, it costs a TON of money to place people in homes. They can’t be too nice or it will encourage people to be homeless. They can’t be too bad because then you end up with ghettos or with mobs of angry neighbors. It also costs a lot more money to provide services all spread out amongst the city.

European cities are denser, and they have services everywhere. They have housing. Their costs are lower. They don’t have to pay for healthcare a la carte.

You can throw people in jail, but that’s untenable to people with conscience, unless you convince people that every homeless person deserves their situation. Anyone struggling to make rent in a city can empathize with people who are homeless due to bad luck or not enough safety net.

The problem is there is no mechanism to split up the people who are going to be wards of society no matter what from those just passing through, because there’s nowhere to put them.

I think the solution is we go back to centralization. Build a large scale shelter. Also bring back psychiatric hospitals. If you can’t make it in the shelter, you belong either in the psychiatric hospital or jail.

I hear you, but a certain political will could make resources go further. For example, cheap affordable housing costs a ridiculous amount in California due to many government controllable mechanisms (zoning laws, certain overly onerous codes and regulations). There a numerous articles showing the absurd 6 figure per unit construction cost buildings that were meant to be affordable and ballooned to incredible amounts in CA.

A certain political will could fix this.

Reminder that the European downtowns you visit on a vacation are the nicest and most tourist friendly parts of that city, and often the entire country.

The places you probably don't go to are far grittier, dirtier and less welcoming.

Also you're on a vacation, and will enjoy most everything more than usual.

Nothing wrong with that, just keep this inevitable bias in mind.

Going and visiting train stations where people actually live is more revealing. Just as I understand the “tourist playground” areas in my city!

> But, if you’ve been to any city in Europe it’s SO clear how much nicer a city it feels to be in when infrastructure becomes focused on human scale. You breathe easier, you’re less stressed.

Clearly we didn't visit the same parts of Europe. My last visits had me choking on 2-stroke and diesel exhaust while dodging two-wheeled maniacs when crossing streets. Paris and Palermo were especially awful in this regard.

> Cars and car owners have had completely unchecked rights in American cities for decades.

That's like saying fish have unchecked rights in the fishtank. American cities have been built around the automobile, so of course the automobile will have an elevated level of importance. It would be absurd to think anything else. I appreciate people want alternatives, and more power to them, but until cities are organized so that an individual's living radius is miles rather than 10s of miles, the automobile will continue to be king. And rightly so.

"until cities are organized so that an individual's living radius is miles rather than 10s of miles", this is exactly what San Francisco is doing. You can't ask for that and then oppose yourself to the transformation of Market Street at the same time.

San Francisco seems like it is going the opposite way. As it gets more expensive people are forced into longer and longer commutes.

Cities more than 100 years old weee not built around cars. Streets were used quite differently back then and are again in cities with “no car” zones.

And the “10s of miles” issue can change back; the car was the forcing function for that, not the other way around.

The US population is 3x as large as it was in 1920. France is 1.5x. Most Americans don't live in places designed before cars.

Even the old megalopolis NYC was redesigned for cars over 50 years ago. (Robert Moses)

Well the inverse was true 100 years ago. It's not implausible that someone could make a similar statement a century from now:

"The US population is 3x as large as it was in 2020. France is 1.5x. Most Americans don't live in places designed for cars.

"Even the old megalopolis NYC was redesigned away from cars over 50 years ago. (Moses Roberts)"

>"American cities have been built around the automobile, so of course the automobile will have an elevated level of importance. It would be absurd to think anything else."

Car ownership only reached a critical mass in the 1920s with the arrival of the Henry Ford's Model T. Obviously well after American cities were laid out. American cities were laid out when the dominant form of transportation was the horse and the dominant commerce feature was likely a port. It would be more absurd to overlook these facts.

Most US cities were built or redesigned after 1920 and the personal car.

Yeah that's not true at all. By 1920 more American were living in cities than rural areas. Please read up on the Industrial boom that took place in the late 19th century in the US. Massive urbanization took place in the 50 year period from 1870 to 1920. This is historical fact.

So no, most US cities were not "built or redesigned after 1920."

I’ve lived in San Francisco for 9 years without a car. So it’s already possible, and there are likely many thousands of people doing it.

I’ve been car free in SF for 40 years. About 31% of households are car free.

https://www.governing.com/gov-data/car-ownership-numbers-of-...

You can't have that reorganization without this type of change.

As someone who is staying in the city for a few months near market, this is very welcomed because I bike on the lyft bikes or lime scooters a lot. It's quite nice now.

> Cities are congested with traffic, sidewalks are small and crowded, and bikers are playing Frogger every day.

It goes so much further than this. Highways are causing air/ocean pollution, learning issues in schools, etc.; noise pollution is multiplied by cars in cities, with horns, sirens etc. competing with the loudness of these vehicles; massive fractions of public space is allocated to free or heavily-subsidised parking space for them; even with all that parking, in my city of NYC and probably others, there is rampant illegal parking on sidewalks, in bike lanes, and more of the tiny fraction of space that is still reserved for non-car use.

In NYC, we recently banned private cars on 14th street and all the buses now run far quicker, providing a higher throughput of people on that street, and an overall more pleasant experience of walking/cycling on that street. This took immense effort to put in place, suffering a lot of pushback but now traffic in even nearby blocks has been massively reduced. Similarly with the pedestrianisation of the streets by Rockefeller Center, people are delighted once these plans are implemented, despite the massive outcry and calls for concern for drivers that precedes them.

Politicians need to realise that it's the end for private motor vehicles and just take the plunge. They so cowardly bend to the will of the driving population, even when they could gain massive popularity with all constituents by making these changes. More projects like Market Street cannot happen soon enough.