Making a Better Market Street
Just about everyone who visits San Francisco's grand Market Street is awed by its hustle and bustle, the myriad modes of transportation, and some of the most beautiful architecture in the city. But just about everyone also agrees that Market Street has much bigger potential as a space that accommodates its users in more efficient and human terms. Parts of the street are in disrepair; whole blocks contain more boarded up facades than functioning businesses.
Streetfilms was able to talk to many advocates who would like to see a different configuration of Market Street -- folks who have already invested in making it better, and passersby who use it as a daily commuting option. It's fair to say not all ideas are universally accepted among all stakeholders, but hopefully their thoughts can serve as a springboard to a bigger discussion on what to do when Market Street is finally re-examined and re-paved.
Leah Shahum: We think
there’s no bigger bang for your buck for bicycle safety, pedestrian
safety and transit improvements than fixing Market Street. We
think it’s the number one corridor that we can really see improvement
to sustainable transportation. [00:30] Want to reach out
to businesses along the way, to neighbours, to other stakeholders, and
make this a people first street.
Marty Castleberg: It’s
like the centre of the funnel of this city. If you see the way
the city’s laid out, it’s not a square. All the streets lead
into Market Street. Everything comes here. So it’s an
incredible asset.
Carolyn Diamond: You
know making Market Street come back to where a destination point rather
than a pass through point would be, you know, a goal for all of us.
[01:00] You know, we want to say proud to be on Market Street,
we’re proud to be part of, you know, the revitalisation of its public
spaces and it’s thoroughfare.
Lainie Motamedi: Right
now there’s a lot of friction for car drivers, bicyclists as well
as Muni all trying to access Market Street at the same time in a very
congested way. So there’s a lot of, I’d say, frustration.
Tom Radulovich: There’s
some plazas, there’s some parks. They don’t really work well
now. We need to get those in good shape so that these can be [01:30]
the sort of nodes, the sort of jewels along Market Street.
Leah Shahum: How do we
lessen the amount of car traffic here? How do we reduce the speeds?
How do we civilise the sharing of space? And how do we prioritise
those walking, biking and taking transit? I think it’s not only
a different street in terms of transportation, but you’d see a really
different street in terms of the life and the business. You know
there’s lots of parts of Market Street that are really failing frankly,
that are underdeveloped, underserved.
Kirsten Steele: I would
love to see Market Street be car free. [02:00] As it is
right now there’s so many more people that are using Market Street
than cars and there’s a limited amount of space and so right now the
cars are kind of squeezing everybody else to the sides. You have
these really skinny mediums to wait on the bus that are often really
crowded.
Speaker: I think everything
in the world should be people friendly. San Francisco is a very
progressive city and I think there should be more provisions for pedestrians.
Speaker: The curbs aren’t
even so I go over a lot of bumps. [02:30]
Speaker: It would be nice
to have a couple of benches we could chill on that…
Speaker: But then I would
see people sleeping on the benches and I don’t think they want that.
Speaker: Sometimes like
the buses take longer to get down the block than it would if you just
walked down the block, so that’s really frustrating at times.
Speaker: They get very
crowded. Standing room only a lot of times.
Kirsten Steele: One thing
that really bugs me I guess is when I’m biking and there’s a bus
that pulls over and you have to squeeze by.
Carolyn Diamond: If you
walk through United Nations Plaza, it’s really big and there’s big
buildings on [03:00] either side of you and stuff, and you walk in the
middle of it, you kind of feel like you’re in the middle of nowhere.
You know, it’s not to scale.
Tom Radulovich: Where
you’ve got great buildings sometimes you’ve got really terrible
public spaces. This is Hallidie Plaza, it’s a sunken plaza from
the 1960’s. It was built when Bart went in. It’s really
the front door to San Francisco for a lot of people, but as you can
see, it doesn’t work at all as a public space. It’s completely
barren, there’s nothing to do and the city’s war on seating hasn’t
helped at all. [03:30] Alright, so here we are in Mint Plaza.
This is actually not on Market Street, but it’s an example I think
of what could happen. As you can see it’s been beautifully designed.
It’s at street level, it really invites people in, but the people
who maintain this, which is the Martin Building Company, they put these
chairs out for anyone to enjoy, so you can come here with your coffee.
The great thing about these chairs is they move. When the sun
changes position you can lift up your chair and follow the sun.
Michael J. Helquist:
We go out the first Saturday of each month [04:00] and identify, circle
and report all the potholes we can find. Last December when we
were here, this was actually bouncing when a car came over it.
The city came out, they filled it in. Two months later it looks
like this, it’s worse than before. So many of these defects
that we have in the street are definitely a hazard for cyclists, it
can flip you once your tyre gets caught in them. But they’re
also a hazard for pedestrians and for cars, it’s a huge wear on cars.
Lots of times cars will veer in one direction [04:30] or another to
avoid this, who knows what they’re going to hit in the process.
Marty Castleberg: We’re
going through an incredible change. We’ve got more bikes coming
past Van Ast, downtown, and Market Street now than we do cars to commute
to work in the morning. And that tells me something about the change
that’s being forced upon it and we can’t treat this, this street
as a catchall for everything that we want to do. We have to really
rethink what we can do and what we can’t do.
Tom Radulovich: Let’s
make it a street that people really, really want to come to. [05:00]
We’ve made a terrific investment in public transit, getting people
here, but once you’re here, there’s not a lot to do.
Speaker: A little bit more
green, a little bit more softening of the edges, a little bit more encouragement
for people to be sitting out, talking to each other.
Carolyn Diamond: It’s
got to have political will and you’ve got to have someone to manage
it. But you can invest the community more in it, you know we’re
talking about put a movie night out there, put music out there, entertainment
out there, family night, invest the schools and put your [05:30]…
the senior ball out there and tent it.
Leah Shahum: It’s really
critical that we think about Market Street now. The Street is
scheduled to be ripped up and repaved completely in the next couple
of years. We need to do it right this time. We can either
rip this street up and put it back the way it is, which is severely
broken, or we can put it back better. We can make this a grand
promenade that, you know, San Francisco can be proud of.
