A Better Market Street for San Francisco
From the Ferry Building welcoming those across the Bay, out towards the sweeping vistas of Twin Peaks, Market Street is one of the most quintessential places in San Francisco. As the city has grown and evolved, so have our transportation needs on this busy street. Now, we have an opportunity to remake the street for the multimodal transportation of today and tomorrow.
Market Street’s history goes back to the earliest days of San Francisco. Market Street is one of the widest streets in the city and has always had the makings of a grand thoroughfare. It was the site of the first horsecar powered railway lines in San Francisco, one of the City’s first public streets to be lit by electricity, the birthplace of San Francisco’s theatre district, and has served as a popular route for parades and celebrations.
Over the years, Market Street has changed to reflect the character of the space around it, but always serving as the spine of the city. As a testament to its central place in the minds of many San Franciscans, many plans have been devised over the years to re-imagine and re-invigorate the corridor. The Better Market Street initiative is one that has real potential and momentum.
“If you plan cities for cars and traffic, you get cars and traffic. If you plan for people and places, you get people and places.”
— Fred Kent, Founder of Project for Public Spaces
Better Market Street is an initiative led by San Francisco’s Public Works Department, in coordination with the Planning Department and the Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA). The proposed project would redesign 2.2-miles of Market Street between Octavia Boulevard and Steuart Street. The project includes:
- Eliminating all private automotive traffic on Market Street from Steuart Street to Van Ness Avenue (westbound) and 10th Street to Main Street (eastbound)
- Creating new sidewalk-level bikeways
- New pedestrian walkways with greater accessibility
- Widening transit stops and boarding islands down the center of Market Street to access Muni-only bus lanes
- Activating public plazas along the corridor with public art, increased seating, and interactive installations
Better Market Street’s streetscape improvements and plan to go car-free will:
- Provide faster and more reliable public transit service
- Make it easier and safer for people on foot, bikes, scooters, and riding transit
- Enhance the public realm experience
- Re-establish Market Street as the cultural, civic and economic center of San Francisco
Working Together to Create Safe Streets in San Francisco
Over the last few years, Lyft has supported a variety of initiatives to rethink the design of streets in San Francisco. In the summer of 2015, we were the only rideshare operator to support turn restrictions on Market Street, restricted pickups and drop-offs on Market from 3rd Street to 8th Street as part of the Safer Market Street project, and worked to communicate these changes to the Lyft driver community. The following summer, we worked with the SFTMA’s Vision Zero team to include Vision Zero informational materials in our Driver Onboarding kits.
Since then, Lyft has worked on pilot programs in partnership with the SFMTA to coordinate on traffic circulation and efficient rideshare loading at major events such as Outside Lands, Giants games, the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, and the upcoming opening of the Chase Center.
Working with Supervisor Ronen, Lyft developed a pilot program on Valencia Street where we tested moving pickups off of the popular cyclist route and onto side streets. From this pilot, we learned that geofencing technology alone did not solve the problem, and have continued to advocate for additional infrastructure like protected bike lanes on the corridor.
Our research suggests that the best solution for improving safety and traffic efficiency along major multimodal corridors require a combination of physical infrastructure changes, curb management, and geofencing — which are all being considered in the proposed Better Market Street project.
Lyft Supports the Better Market Street Project
Every day on Market Street, over half a million people walk, 75,000 people ride Muni, and thousands of people ride bikes, scooters, and skateboards, making it the busiest cycling corridor in the City. Yet Market Street is part of the City’s High Injury Corridor — the 13% of city streets that account for 75% of severe and fatal collisions citywide. It’s time for that to change.
We support the Better Market Street project because it is deeply aligned with Lyft’s vision: reorienting our cities around people, not cars. We imagine our streets designed for everyone: wide tree-lined boulevards for strollers and people on foot, protected lanes for riding bikes and scooters, dedicated travel lanes for reliable public transit service, in close coordination with dedicated loading zones along side streets for pick-ups and drop-offs. This project will address the infrastructure, safety, and mobility needs along the corridor in a thoughtful, comprehensive way.
As a supporter of the Better Market Street project, Lyft commits to:
- Work with advocacy groups like People Protected Bike Lanes, WalkSF, the SF Bicycle Coalition, and the SF Transit Riders Union on direct action to keep the Better Market Street project on track — starting with making Market Street car-free. As a first step, we’ll be joining the rally Wednesday, May 1, at Market and Montgomery Streets.
- Raise awareness about the Better Market Street project to the Lyft community through rider and driver communications.
- Work with the SF Public Works Department, SF Planning Department, and SFMTA to use Lyft data to design curb management solutions for pickups and drop-offs along the corridor.
- When Market Street goes car-free, use in-app tools like geofencing to direct riders and drivers to dedicated loading zones.
We know there’s much to be done to improve street safety beyond Market Street in the Bay Area. To help support the City’s Transit First Policy and Vision Zero goals, Lyft is committed to sharing the road by making “Look for Cyclists” window clings available to our drivers, teaching passengers to use the Dutch Reach, and rolling out street safety notifications in the Lyft app. Lyft is also supporting the upcoming Bike to Work Day on May 9, and sponsoring the Victoria Manalo Draves Park Energizer Station in SOMA.
We are excited to continue to put our civic muscles to work in support of causes we believe in. With Better Market Street, San Francisco has the potential to re-invent Market Street to once again become a true icon for the Bay Area.
