↑      Credit: Getty Images Istock

This article descibes the transformation of SF’s Market Street

                by Blaine Merker   –   21 Feb. 2020

Yes, Market Street is now car-free. The real people-first revolution comes next.

San Francisco’s Market Street finally went car-free on January 29 this year — a much anticipated moment of truth in a ten-year-and-counting process that Gehl and many project partners helped kick off with the Better Market Street plan in 2010-2014.

To judge by social media, you might think Market Street had even bigger problems to solve or the city was about to become a pedestrian, cycling and transit nirvana. Other observers have pointed out that taking a decade to realize the modest goal of removing the last few private cars from a street that primarily serves transit is hardly worth a victory lap.

Of course, it’s exciting for us here at Gehl’s San Francisco office to see our city’s grand boulevard finally showing new signs of change toward the Better Market Street vision, before construction begins later this year. (The street is close to our hearts. John Bela and I have been involved in Market Street’s transformation long before starting Gehl’s San Francisco office in 2014.) But prioritizing transit over private, low-occupancy vehicles has always been a no-brainer from a transportation perspective on this, San Francisco’s indispensable street.

But the more radical change is just around the corner. And it’s not about transportation modes.

Market Street is a mobility workhorse—but it’s also San Francisco’s largest and most important public space. The two big innovations in the Better Market Street design developed by Gehl were 1) generous, elevated, Copenhagen-style cycle tracks that are part of the sidewalk and 2) “street life zones” – areas of the sidewalk devoted to spending time, not just movement. So far we’ve seen prototypes of these ideas in the Living Innovation Zone which popped up at Yerba Buena Lane and the cycle track pilots tested by SFMTA three years ago.

What cities like Copenhagen understand about cycling is that it’s more like walking than driving. It’s part of public life. Cycling contributes to the vitality of public spaces. A person on a bike can make eye contact with people around them, at human speed, stopping in an instant to have a conversation or spontaneously pulling into a store. Cycling is more about people than it is about bikes.

The move to pull Market Street’s bike lanes up to sidewalk level, welcoming cyclists as full contributors to the public realm, is a big shift that radically repositions biking in our city. So big a move, in fact, it will require relocating subway entrances! But it will be worth it. It leverages the cultural change underway in San Francisco where cyclists wearing business clothes and pedalling cargo bikes with child seats now seem to outnumber lycra-clad warriors. This new generation of cyclists is more diverse, more focused on utility, and an important part of the city’s public life.

Cycling on Market Street has matured as our vision for Better Market Street has taken shape. Cycling no longer has to be aggressive to survive or put on a show to catch attention (never stop wearing costumes, San Francisco). The Better Market Street vision imagines that cycling can also just be urbane, everyday life. It can be public life.

On the first day of car free Market Street, cycling was up 20%. We can safely say public life was up just as much as well.

View original article at gehlpeople.com