Board of Supervisors President David Chiu has introduced, and the Board has subsequently discussed, legislation concerning garages in certain parts of Chiu’s home District 3.  The legislation does not address existing garages, but rather, future garages that have yet to be proposed and installed.  The need for this legislation is perhaps epitomized by the Ellis Act eviction sought against low-income seniors at the building on Jasper Place, in which one tenant committed suicide, and the advertisement for the property boasted of the property’s “potential for parking” — a cold swap of human being for automobile.  But Jasper Place is just one case study of the more prevalent issue in parts of District 3, as well as other locations around the city: Ellis Act evictions, followed shortly by applications for garages to be carved out of the newly-vacated space.  Examining Department of Building Inspection and Rent Board records more closely, it was determined that of at least 166 Ellis Act evictions carried out in recent years that were followed by garage applications, roughly half of them were located within District 3.  And that is the problem that inspired this legislation.

At its February 9, 2010 meeting, the Board of Supervisors passed the ordinance on its first reading, with 7 ayes (Campos, Chiu, Daly, Dufty, Mar, Maxwell, Mirkarimi) and 2 noes (Chu, Elsbernd).  The ordinance is expected to be finally passed at the Board’s February 23 meeting.

So what exactly does this legislation do?  The first thing to remember is that it is limited to specific sections within Chiu’s District 3.  Generally speaking, the legislation aims to address the problem of evictions that result in new garages — at once protecting affordable housing supply, while encouraging a livable city and supporting sound urban design principles.  At the same time, it eliminates minimum off-street parking requirements in various parts of District 3.  Here are the highlights:

1. Requires a conditional use authorization to install a garage in an existing building. This is really the centerpiece of the legislation.  Someone seeking to install a garage in an existing building will have to seek a conditional use authorization in order to do so, and the conditional use then becomes the mechanism to ensure that the big policy goals are met.  Section 303 of the Planning Code sets out criteria that apply to conditional uses generally.  However, in addition to Section 303, this legislation imposes an additional list of hurdles that garage proposals must meet in order to be authorized.  Garage proposals may not displace a residential unit, and there must be a record of no no-fault evictions for the past ten years.  Curb cuts should be oriented to minimize the loss of on-street parking, and the new garage shall not take more than two on-street parking spots.  The sidewalk must remain inviting for pedestrians and cannot deteriorate on account of the garage; specifically, it must be at least 6 feet wide, and may not introduce a slope greater than 2%.  Sidewalks on transit preferential streets and neighborhood commercial streets may never be narrowed.  The garage must also comply with other historic resources and design requirements, as applicable.

The legislation requires Planning to consult DPW and MTA (the other city agencies implicated in the garage approval process) about specifics of the garage proposal and ensure there are no glaring problems with it before the Planning Commission grants any conditional use authorization.  Finally, please note that this more exacting conditional use process for garages only applies to certain areas: the North Beach NCD, the Broadway NCD, parts of Chinatown, and a new special use district also defined in this legislation (see #2 below).

2. Creates a Telegraph Hill-North Beach Residential Special Use District for the purposes of requiring a garage conditional use authorization (see #1 above), as well as to eliminate minimum off-street parking requirements (see #3 below).

3. Eliminates minimum off-street parking requirements and revises parking controls in Chinatown, the North Beach NCD, the Broadway NCD, and the new residential special use district (see #2 above).  In Chinatown, the North Beach NCD, and the Broadway NCD, up to 0.5 parking spaces per unit is permitted by right, and up to 0.75 is allowed with conditional use.  In the residential special use district, the controls are more relaxed: up to 0.75 is permitted by right, while up to 1.0 is allowed with conditional use.

4. Prohibits driveways altogether on important commercial and pedestrian street frontages: Columbus Avenue (between Washington/Montgomery and North Point), Broadway (between Mason and The Embarcadero), as well as alleys in Chinatown.

Both the new obstacles to garages, as well as the elimination of minimum off-street parking, are good moves in Chinatown and North Beach, because they push back and scrutinize attempts to build more storage space for cars.  This is especially critical in dense District 3 neighborhoods, whose already clogged streets can scarcely take the hit to livability brought about by policies that encourage car use and ownership.

In some sense, there is nothing new about the good policy underpinning this legislation.  Numerous provisions of San Francisco’s General Plan, coupled with recent City efforts at comprehensive neighborhood land use planning, have explicitly recognized that garage entrances and exits must be placed carefully, so as to minimize their interference with active neighborhood streets and maximize safety to pedestrians.  But in another sense, this legislation is new — simply because many city neighborhoods do not yet enjoy the protection afforded by this more sensitive treatment of garages, even if they would benefit from such protection.  The City’s approach to garage planning has basically been to not plan them — at least, not in a systematic fashion that reaches citywide.

In regard to that last point, this legislation is no different.  The area of applicability contains a disproportionately high number of Ellis Act evictions that later result in garage production — but geographically, the area is indeed quite small: not even one full supervisorial district, but only parts of one.  It is, as Supervisor Chiu put it, “narrowly tailored” to address a particular problem in a particular place.  But even though the legislation does not take the City’s current piecemeal garage policy and transform it into a unified, coherent, citywide policy, it at least adds a dose of sanity to, and sets a model for, the garage discussion.  My hope is that it will instigate a continued discussion throughout the city, and in the Planning Department, about the value of protecting affordable housing supply and making it difficult to allocate space for automobiles, all in one fell swoop.

While the legislation at issue here aims to block certain conversions of living space into garage space, there is a distinct, but related discussion also worth having, which is the mirror image: the conversion of existing garage space into housing units.  Both discussions are valuable, because both potentially lead to legislative solutions that promise a less auto-dependent, more vibrant city.

The pilot study for the intersections at 8th/Market and 6th/Market is only the first step in a long-term plan prepared by the SFCTA, which consists of a variety of changes — incremental ones like those that began today, along with more ambitious recommendations — that will eventually transform Market Street into a premiere urban space and improve its functionality as an important corridor for transit riders, pedestrians, and bicyclists. Although cars are not planned to be banned outright, a combination of forced southward turns and restricting turns onto Market at key through-traffic intersections will substantially reduce auto traffic, by making Market an even less desirable street for motorists than it is now.

I stopped by the intersection of 8th and Market today, at about 9:00 a.m. At that time, the new operation proceeded pretty smoothly. Only a couple drivers were confused and attempted to steer straight through the intersection; but traffic control officers were there to guide motorists to turn south on 8th, while keeping the crosswalk safe for pedestrians. The Chronicle noted that bicyclists outnumbered motorists on inbound Market. Judson True of the SFMTA and Leah Shahum of the SF Bicycle Coalition were on hand to do interviews, field questions, and generate interest and goodwill toward the Better Market Street project.

New signage has been posted in advance of the intersection, putting motorists on notice about the required southbound turn. Drivers lined up in the southernmost lane of Market Street to turn right, opening the adjacent lane for buses, bicyclists, and taxis:

Meanwhile, on eastbound Market Street immediately east of 8th Street, the street had occasional moments of peaceful emptiness during the morning rush hour:

We were reminded about the purpose and value of remaking Market Street in the first place — and even a small, low-cost, incremental measure like forcing motorists to execute a right turn was noticeably effective. The lack of cars cleared away space for the comfortable and unhindered movement of Muni vehicles and bicyclists:

A transit boarding island on Market Street.

The current design of Market Street is suboptimal for all modes. Throngs of buses and F-Market historic streetcars crawl at a snail’s pace, delayed by motorist queues that block bus and streetcar access to boarding islands. Surface transit riders exiting Muni vehicles fight their way onto the crowded, narrow boarding islands. The unfortunately-named “safety zones,” located between the sidewalk and the islands, commonly see collisions; legitimately “calming” the safety zones is critical to improving safety on Market Street, but previous attempts to do so have fallen flat. Meanwhile, there is no space marked for transit or bicycles for the full length of the street, even though bicycles and transit riders together comprise 55-70% of east-west trips. Market Street, particularly below Van Ness, is primarily a transit and pedestrian street. But the street’s diagonal sweep through central San Francisco, and its high concentration of destination points, has made it an increasingly attractive bicycle corridor. Automobiles contribute about 20% (or less) of east-west trips — but there are enough of them to contribute more than 20% of the problem.

What’s clear is that there is significant room for improvement. Perhaps less clear is what the best solution is. Too often the Market Street problem has been phrased as an “all or nothing” ultimatum: either automobiles are entirely eliminated from the full length of the street, or no movement at all is made toward progress. Should we insist that cars be banned entirely, so that other modes would enjoy dedicated lanes in which to move freely, and then redesign the streetscape to accomplish that goal? Or might imposing that level of orderly efficiency sanitize what one expects to be an inherently messy, chaotic urban space? Should all modes instead just take a chill pill, share the space, and acknowledge the need to coexist with others? Can’t we just all get along?

The San Francisco County Transportation Authority is hoping that we can — provided that we implement some traffic restrictions that even merchants are supporting.  The TA previously released a Strategic Analysis Report (SAR), the latest in the series of reports that investigate “Transportation Options for a Better Market Street.” The TA Board has now just adopted the final SAR (link to 5 MB externally-hosted PDF), approving the SAR’s recommendations for how to fix Market Street. Those recommendations, in a nutshell? Incremental improvements that do not strictly divide street space into modes, but rather, aim to manage shared space.

The overall flavor of the plan is not to ban automobiles completely, but to engineer traffic flow in a way that reduces motorists’ ability to use Market Street as a long-distance corridor. The plan would remove cars off of Market; but notably, it would not divert much new traffic to Mission Street, which is itself an important transit street served by regional bus routes and the suite of 14-Mission services. Instead, the TA’s preliminary studies suggest that traffic restrictions on Market would emphasize that Howard and Folsom are more appropriate as long-distance driving routes, and traffic on those streets might increase 6-10%.  Traffic restrictions forcing cars off of Market Street would be coupled with traffic calming, and improved transit and bicycle facilities. The changes would be phased in over the course of the next decade.

In the near future, within 9-18 months, the SAR recommends that a few relatively inexpensive changes (costing less than $1 million) be piloted at the intersection of 8th Street, Hyde, Grove, and Market. In addition to a potential pedestrian bulbout, drivers headed inbound on Market would be forced to turn right onto 8th, and southbound drivers on Hyde would be restricted from turning left onto Market. This would reduce traffic volumes near Union Square by about 20%-30%. It would also create an auto-free zone immediately east of 8th Street, permitting an extension of the bicycle lane.

Additional improvements would be timed with the resurfacing of Market Street planned for the year 2013, and further long-term changes could be implemented between 2013 and 2018. The long-term changes include additional traffic restrictions on lower Market, which would solidify Battery/1st, Montgomery/New Montgomery, and Kearny/3rd as straight cross-through points. The SAR also identifies a handful of more construction-intensive recommendations that carry a rough cost estimate of $150-200 million, including: painted bike lanes at intersection approaches that would allow bicyclists to move safely to the front of the intersection; midblock boarding islands, widened by at least two feet to be ADA-compliant; and improved transit and bicycle facilities extending at least as far east as 4th Street.

It is an urban planning mantra that walking and transit are flip sides of the same coin. Transit riders begin and end their trip on foot; so streets that create a secure and enjoyable pedestrian experience are an important component of eliminating car trips and reducing automobile dependence. Even motorists have to be pedestrians for a portion of their trip — which only highlights the fact that the pedestrian experience is the lowest common denominator, worthy of both investment and careful thought. Many older Bay Area neighborhoods that first came into existence around transit routes naturally get the basics right, without undue effort. These are places like our urban CBDs, and neighborhood commercial districts on the streetcar lines that once blanketed San Francisco and the inner East Bay — but also select suburban locations like the older Peninsula downtown districts that sprung up at railroad depots. By contrast, other Bay Area locales that were designed with the express purpose of catering to automobiles are pedestrian wastelands — characterized by dark, uninviting freeway overpasses; long suburban blocks punctuated by strip malls, parking lots, curb cuts; narrow, interrupted or even nonexistent sidewalks; and, generally, little to no active street environment. These latter places present the greatest challenge, and they require that a calculated planning effort be applied to create walkability out of auto-oriented design. In the summer of 2008, the title of America’s most walkable city was bestowed upon San Francisco, and many of the city’s beloved neighborhoods deserve the title. Other neighborhoods — the long, bland industrial blocks and wide traffic sewers South of Market come immediately to mind — do not, although citywide blueprints for active and complete streets are a work in progress.

A vigorous debate has unfolded in the past few weeks over infrastructure spending in the federal stimulus package. Transit advocates, frustrated by the less-than-stellar past eight years, desperately seek any sign that our urban (for a change) President-Elect will effect a policy shift by robustly allocating the promised funding to transit projects — only to be disappointed by Obama’s repetitious chant favoring the expansion of roads and bridges. The conversation is, as usual, one that zeroes in on automobiles and mass transit, pitting them against each other. Less discussion has been devoted to infrastructure for a less glamorous form of transportation: walking. But a healthy, successful city is comprised of healthy, successful streets; and a high-quality, walkable street environment is the underlying link that unifies the transit and density discussion. In recognition of this truth, the Congress for the New Urbanism sent a proposal to James Oberstar, chair of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, who has already been receptive to devoting more stimulus money to transit. The CNU proposal advocates for a well-rounded use of the stimulus funds, focusing on network connectivity rather than individual corridor projects. Under the proposal, some portion of a city that has 150 intersections per square mile would qualify as a “network,” which means it would be eligible to receive federal stimulus funds — not to widen a freeway or to improve transit in a particular corridor, but to transform all streets in the designated network area into green, livable streets. These streets would be upgraded in accordance with good urban design principles, in order to enhance the pedestrian experience and increase transit ridership. The multimodal vision is similar to that embraced by California’s Complete Streets Act passed this year, but it would translate into more immediate results.

We cannot help but to admire both the simplicity and the creativity of CNU’s proposal. What makes the proposal so attractive is its grounding in sound urbanist principles. The CNU proposal leverages the power inherent in a street grid to disperse traffic throughout an open, integrated network of routes. This is preferable to funneling a high volume of cars onto a few wide arteries, which encourages many drivers to use the exact same route. As a result, these wide arteries attract congestion like a magnet, and when the roadway reaches capacity, there is the perception that it must be widened to further increase capacity, leading to a vicious cycle of induced demand. This is not just a transportation and environmental problem; it is also an economic problem. Businesses are generally not located on freeways and expressways; rather, they are located on city streets. Drivers that speed through a city via freeway or other wide arterial will have little to no contact with the actual city, and thus have fewer opportunities to enjoy and contribute to the prosperity of the city by patronizing its businesses. This pattern has led to the decline of many once-prosperous urban districts and corridors, including here in the Bay Area. It confirms our observation that the freeway/artery model is inferior to the grid model, in which traffic is dispersed throughout a network of streets. But shovel-ready freeway expansions are an unfortunately prevalent item appearing on state wish lists, and going forward with a road-centered stimulus based on such projects will bring the United States even more squarely in line with the undesirable freeway/artery traffic model.

City streets, unlike freeways, naturally support a variety of transportation modes; and they can support those modes even better if we implement complete street design principles that calm traffic, and prioritize a high-quality pedestrian streetscape above moving cars faster. By proposing that intersection-dense street networks qualify as a single project unit for the purposes of stimulus funding, CNU’s proposal shifts investment away from freeways and toward our nation’s neglected city centers. Under the proposal, any street in a qualifying network could be enhanced with stimulus money. Note that this does involve spending money on the roads themselves. Roads should be kept in good working condition. Given that some money must be spent on road networks, it is preferable to invest in city streets, because funds can be applied both to repaving and to creating complete streets that are friendly and accessible to all users no matter their travel mode. The result will be increased concentration of human and economic activity in our cities — in the exact areas where trips are generally shorter, and where it is often easier to walk, bike, or take transit than it is to drive. And as noted above, a high-quality pedestrian experience is absolutely central to the success of this vision. Attractive, walkable, complete streets encourage people to shift to other modes and reduce their automobile usage, and they carry great economic benefits for cities. But even more fundamentally, they form the basic infrastructure needed for effective circulation — and to ensure that our streets retain plentiful non-automotive capacity that will accommodate future growth.

This is not to say that it is not critical to maximize the stimulus money that goes toward transit — it certainly is. But the elegance of CNU’s proposal is that moves beyond the roads-versus-transit struggle that has dominated the stimulus conversation, by emphasizing that a sensibly-crafted road stimulus can nonetheless resonate with the objectives of a transit-focused stimulus, while still improving road infrastructure. The proposal concedes that there are benefits to road construction projects — but it calls for the right type of road infrastructure investment in the right places, by leveraging the energy, vitality and efficiency inherent in cities’ street grids. If you like CNU’s proposal, you  might consider getting in touch with your Congressional representative and encouraging them to integrate the CNU network designation into the stimulus package. And while you’re at it, please add your voice in support of Transportation for America, which has been taking a leading role on our behalf in pressing Congress to adopt a sustainable stimulus.

An idyllic complete street; courtesy AARP.

If you live in California, contact your State Senator to express support for this bill, and pass the word onto others so that they can do the same. Mailed or faxed messages are preferred instead of telephone or email if possible, but communicate the message however you can before next week. Let’s get this bill through the Senate, onto the Governor’s desk, and signed into law. You can write a personalized message, or you could just adapt this template, conveniently provided by the California Bicycle Coalition:

Honorable [your State Senator's full name]
State Capitol, Room [your State Senator's room number]
Sacramento, CA 95814
Fax: [your State Senator's fax number, if sent via fax]

Senate Floor Alert
Re: Support AB 1358 (Leno)

I join the California Bicycle Coalition in urging you to vote YES for AB 1358, the Complete Streets Act, because it will require cities and counties to design roadways that make bicycling and walking safer, more feasible modes of transportation. As non-motorized transportation modes, bicycling and walking can help solve a variety of the problems California faces: traffic congestion, poor air quality, the threats from climate change, and worsening public health. It is imperative that roadway design enables motorists, bicyclists, and pedestrians to travel safely. AB 1358 will result in roads that serve all users, not just motorists, as is now too often the case.

Thank you for supporting this landmark legislation to help make California cities more livable.

Sincerely,
[signature, followed by your printed full name and address]

Market Street, as it once was: car-free.

The Bay Area gets no more transit-rich than Market Street. Besides frequent local and regional underground rail service, the surface of San Francisco’s main boulevard features a lively and hectic mix of historic streetcars, bus lines converging from neighborhoods all across the City, and bus stops both on the curbs and island platforms — complete with constant pedestrian flow and people jumping across the so-called “safety zone,” which is the lane that separates bus boarding islands from the sidewalk. In some sense, Market Street has not changed all that much from what it must have been like in the early 20th century. The automobile has replaced horse and carriage, and there is only one pair of surface streetcar tracks used by the F-Market & Wharves line, instead of the two pairs we once had (the other pair was rebuilt below ground). Rather than being inundated by streetcars, as in the image at right, the Market Street of today is inundated largely by buses, punctuated by the occasional splash of color from an F-Market historic streetcar. But what has not changed is that fundamentally, Market Street is still best suited to pedestrians and transit riders; dense transit and pedestrian traffic, combined with highly restricted automobile turns, make Market Street a taxing experience for drivers. But really, San Francisco’s main boulevard could be made a more successful place for everyone, no matter what their mode of transportation is. Current conditions are not especially friendly for cyclists, though that would certainly improve if only we could free up pavement now used by automobiles. Market Street is transit-rich, but congestion prevents transit from being truly functional, at least at peak travel times. And although pedestrians enjoy generously wide sidewalks, auto-pedestrian collisions, most of which occur in the unaptly-named “safety zone,” suggest that we must go further to maximize pedestrian safety.

In the image directly at left, the backed up lane to the right of the streetcar boarding island (the “safety zone”) is also the bicycle lane between 4th and 5th Streets — a lane that cyclists happen to share with cars and buses. Space is at a premium, so the trade-off for wide sidewalks and boarding islands (which are needed to allow for two lanes with transit activity) is a narrower bicycle lane. The space freed by banning cars could be used for a permanent, well-marked bicycle lane. And how about transit? A primary pillar of the SFMTA’s Transit Effectiveness Project, which is currently preparing for the environmental review phase, is that key corridors should be given transit preferential treatment. But what corridor in San Francisco is more key than Market Street? It is hard to envision a greater commitment to transit preferential treatment than banning private vehicles. Over a dozen Muni routes travel along the surface of Market Street — some for only a few blocks, but many for much longer than that — and it is precisely these routes that begin their runs on or very close to Market. Traffic delays get buses off their schedule right from the get-go (yes, we’re told that Muni actually does keep a schedule hidden away at headquarters), and the delays then propagate throughout the whole length of the run. This harms reliability and on-time performance rates, causes buses to arrive in bunches, and annoys riders in the process. Giving transit space to breathe on Market Street will not only keep buses throughout the City on schedule; it will also create an environment that could support more frequent service on primary routes, which is another pillar of the Transit Effectiveness Project.

Someone is no doubt ready to cry out in retort: traffic congestion is just part of city life, right? What city’s main downtown thoroughfares aren’t clogged at rush hour? Don’t cars add to some of the noise and chaos that makes the big city, well … the big city? In calming and civilizing Market Street, might we inadvertently destroy its heart and soul? There is actually a very fair point lurking behind these retorts. Some experiments with creating car-free zones have been quite successful: Copenhagen’s Strøget is a famous example. Others, particularly those in the United States, have become unsuccessful “dead zones.” In the less successful cases, cities have terminated the experiment, permitting the return of automobiles. Many of these car-free zones were quite small and not particularly ambitious; Market Street is distinguishable from these examples in many ways: including its size, its transit, and its already established importance as a major employment and retail center for the City and the Bay Area.

State Street in Chicago. Courtesy Flickr user mss2400.

But we would be remiss not to mention State Street in Chicago (pictured at right), which, like Market, is a major downtown transit street. State Street’s once-bustling retail district lay at the heart of downtown Chicago, but like so many other urban centers, State Street experienced decline in the 1960′s and 1970′s with the advent of suburban shopping malls. It was partially in response to this decline that State Street was pedestrianized in 1979, in an attempt to create a distinctive district that would draw shoppers back to the urban center. But the once-lively boulevard only sank further into neglect. The experiment with a car-free State Street failed, and in 1996, the street was redesigned to accommodate four lanes of vehicle traffic. The formerly wide sidewalks were kept purposely narrow to help reduce the feeling of emptiness on the street. There are obvious parallels between Market Street and State Street, but does the failure of an auto-free zone in 1979 Chicago automatically imply the failure of a similar experiment in 2008 San Francisco? In 2008, while plenty of people still seek the American dream of raising a family in a suburban house with a yard and a car, there has been a resurgence of interest in urban centers and an increased appreciation for the convenience of a city lifestyle. But in the 1970′s, the American dream was alive and well; urban centers all around the country, including State Street before it was pedestrianized, were decaying. And unlike the expensive shops lining nearby North Michigan Avenue’s Magnificent Mile, State Street featured the type of mid-level retail that became increasingly prominent in suburban malls, which meant that State Street lacked a unique experience to draw suburbanites to the city center. Despite the apparent similarities between State Street and Market Street, the differing contexts suggest that there is still reason to believe that the car-free experiment could be more successful in San Francisco than it was in Chicago.

Even if cars are banned from Market Street, drivers would still be able to cross the street at each intersection, and Market Street itself would still be open for all transit vehicles, bicyclists, and pedestrians; very likely also commercial deliveries and taxicabs. It is really these users that give Market Street most of its activity and energy, so banning cars may just remove congestion without removing street energy. Moreover, the major parking garages around downtown and Civic Center are located off of Market Street itself, so the experience of parking an automobile downtown would not change appreciably. This suggests that the merchants of a car-free Market Street would not suffer from decreased visitors and pedestrian traffic. (Remark: Personally, I would like the parking experience downtown to change appreciably, by becoming more difficult. But the point here is that the commonly raised parking excuse loses credibility in this instance.)

If private cars are not ultimately banned, there are still ways to make Market Street safer and more successful through better enforcement of double parking and smart street design (traffic calming, transit preferential treatment). Restricting through-traffic, by forcing all vehicles to turn off of Market at certain points, is another promising method, although it does impact pedestrians and bicyclists. A 2004 SFCTA study found that forcing all eastbound vehicles to turn right at 8th Street would decrease traffic volume at 4th Street by 35%; similarly, forcing eastbound vehicles to turn right at 4th Street would decrease traffic volume at 1st Street by 30%. Forced right turns would at least reduce traffic volume and would discourage motorists from using Market as a long-distance through traffic corridor. Long distance drivers would instead be encouraged to use Mission, Howard, or another parallel street. Still another course of action might be to ban autos, as an experiment, from smaller segments of concentrated activity, like 1st through 5th Streets, rather than the entire length from The Embarcadero to Octavia, as was proposed by Supervisor Daly. Implementing these sorts of solutions, while not as “pure” as a completely auto-free Market Street, can still go a long way toward improving both transit flow and safety for pedestrians and cyclists.

The real point here is that Market Street is a special place that deserves careful thought and attention. Even if private cars have not yet been banned, it is good that the City continues to have this conversation in search of a solution to the Market Street puzzle. And while we do not necessarily want to get into the habit of quoting Supervisor Daly, he does have a good point that when discussing San Francisco’s main boulevard, we should “go for the gold” — because even if we do not get the gold, we might at least get silver or bronze. Rock on, Chris, rock on.

Local criticism notwithstanding, the building, while quite a bit larger than most in the area, is not necessarily inappropriate for the neighborhood. The height is certainly consistent with the surroundings. The building also visually clarifies subdivisions, giving the impression of multiple smaller storefronts, on a scale more in keeping with the narrow storefronts lining most of College Avenue between Broadway and Alcatraz — though this effect could be more pronounced than it is in the rendering. Yes, there will admittedly be a “huge corporate Safeway presence about it,” but that will be rather difficult to avoid as long as the site is occupied by, well … Safeway. The current site may not seem corporate simply because the offensive Safeway is behind the parking lot, set back from immediate view — but that hardly justifies maintaining a parking lot as the prominent feature of this intersection. It will be encouraging to see this site rebuilt in a way that activates the street and improves the pedestrian experience. We can only hope that the building that is ultimately constructed will not look quite as cookie-cutter suburban as that rendering.

UPDATE (15 June 2008): David, from the Brooklyn Avenue blog, has brought to our attention in the comments a critique of the Safeway. The critique alleges that this two-story structure will essentially destroy Rockridge as we know it:

It’s a parade of structures of varied heights, allowing Sun to reach the street and giving a small-town-in-Oakland feel.

But Safeway’s current proposal will destroy that feeling in my view. It calls for a building that does what’s not cool: hugs the street and looms over it. It would drastically alter Rockridge and make it seem more like a retail downtown suburb in Oakland with constant traffic problems.

Reading this, you might guess the building in question was twenty stories or more, and I’m not sure how “looming over the street” fits with “suburb,” since your average suburban building does the exact opposite. But please note that this observation is about a two-story building. Incredible.

San Francisco is arguably one of America’s most walkable cities, with its dense, lively downtown complemented by a multitude of compact, bustling commercial districts that provide pleasant strolling experiences. But it also has its fair share of boulevards, like outer Geary and 19th Avenue, whose designs are rigged to maximize automotive throughput — at the direct expense of the pedestrian experience, which ranges from drab and noisy, at best, to downright dangerous, at worst. These boulevards may be wide, but they fall considerably short of grand. Solutions range from reducing speed limits on 19th Avenue to landscaping and dedicated bus lanes and stations on Geary that provide a sense of place and a pedestrian oasis in the median. In contrast to 19th Avenue, the Mission District boasts thorough transit access and a collection of comfortably walkable commercial strips, but there is room for improvement, as the bland landscape of Cesar Chavez (pictured above) demonstrates — with its long, multi-lane, infrequent pedestrian crossings; ample space for cars but narrow sidewalks; inadequate transit and bicycle amenities; and no greenery in sight.

Help is on the way, in the form of a State HCD grant to the tune of $745,000 dedicated to Mission District streetscape improvements, to be applied in the large area bounded by Division/14th Street on the north, Highway 101 to the east, Cesar Chavez/Mission to the south, and Dolores to the west. The streetscape in much of this area is actually already pretty good — many streets are of comfortable width and feature largely continuous streetwalls with attractive architecture and active storefronts in commercial strips. Dolores itself is one of the City’s most beautiful streets. But the area’s auto-dominated streets are in desperate need of improvement — streets like Cesar Chavez, which will have its own redesign scheme under the larger plan, though of course without the dedicated BRT lanes I would eventually like to see built here. The plan draws on a well-documented array of features to improve Mission District streets, including: curb bulbs to narrow the width of pedestrian crossings and to slow auto traffic at intersections; improved transit and bicycle amenities; ample and accessible sidewalks; and more street lighting and greenery.

The development of the Mission Streetscape plan will continue into 2009, and the Planning Department is looking for public input. Folks who are interested are encouraged to attend tonight’s meeting, which will be the first workshop of many:

Wednesday, May 28 (6:30 pm to 9:00 pm)
Cesar Chavez Elementary School
825 Shotwell Street (at 22nd Street)

Finally, on a related note, you may also want to check out one of the community meetings that are being held through mid-June to obtain public comments on the draft Better Streets plan. Better Streets is a more abstract plan that seeks to sensitively customize street design according to the street’s primary uses. The goal is to create a blueprint of pedestrian- and transit-oriented street design that could be implemented in neighborhoods across the City, largely drawing on the same sorts of techniques that would apply in the Mission Streetscape plan area.

While on the subject of Market & Octavia, an additional topic we cannot neglect is the 55 Laguna redevelopment of the UC Extension site (pictured in the above two images), which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In December 2003, the UC Berkeley extension relocated off the 55 Laguna site, which lies near the geographic heart of the Market & Octavia Plan area. The AF Evans 55 Laguna development has been the subject of separate but concurrent discussions at City Hall.

A controversial issue was the need to rezone the site from public to a designation appropriate for a mixed use neighborhood. The project was protested and appealed on several bases — including compliance with CEQA, the National Historic Preservation Act, and NEPA on the basis of potential HUD funds for the affordable housing component — expressing concern that the demolition would constitute a substantial adverse change that would cause the site to lose historical preservation tax credit and to be de-listed as historically significant resource. But while the appellants disapproved of the project’s current incarnation, their contentions did not unearth any true inadequacies in the EIR, and so the requisite zoning amendments eventually passed through committee and onto the full Board, where they were first passed last week — creating a special use district bounded by Laguna, Haight, Buchanan, and Hermann Streets to facilitate the 55 Laguna project. This replaces the site’s public zoning, but merely zoning a parcel as public is no guarantee that the land will actually enjoy vibrant public use, as this site clearly demonstrates. The UC Extension’s blank walls have had a deadening effect on the surrounding neighborhood, giving the institution the feel of a fortress.

Fortress or no fortress, total demolition of this historic resource would be a highly significant loss; but the project plan is a far cry from total demolition. Although the plan calls for the demolition of Richardson Hall Annex and Middle Hall Gymnasium (the oldest building on campus), 83% of the historically significant square footage — located in Richardson Hall, Woods Hall, and Woods Hall Annex — will be retained and reused in the complex, which will also include seven newly constructed buildings. Unique features like the WPA-era Reuben Kadish mural, which was added in 1936, will also be incorporated into the new plan site. Meanwhile, the deadening retaining wall would be opened up to provide a retail frontage onto the street. Perhaps best of all, surface parking and chain link fences will be replaced with public amenities and a major housing component that received a booster shot of affordability from Mirkarimi: over 400 new rental units, of which 36-37% are affordable at 50% of AMI, including the Openhouse project, an eight-story building with close to 90 affordable units welcoming to LGBTQ seniors. In terms of public amenities, there will be about 5,000 square feet of commercial space, a 12,000 square foot community center in Woods Annex, and 35,000 square feet of public open space that includes a garden and a park bridging the two halves of Waller Street. Although Mirkarimi has expressed a desire for it to relocate in the near future, the UCSF Dental Clinic and its associated parking will also remain on the site.

On balance, the 55 Laguna project — which will inject higher density, active street uses, and publicly accessible amenities within immediate reach of Market Street transit — harmonizes well with the spirit underlying the Market & Octavia Plan.

Renderings courtesy AF Evans.