51–60 of 89 posts
So many things wrong with this, but let's call out one of the most obvious: > But a bus will kill a pedestrian just as easily as a car will, which is why Market Street remains empty of pedestrian traffic No citation, just pure nonsense. As a pedestrian and cyclist: bus drivers are great. They have higher licensing standards, their income is tied to maintaining a license, they're well trained and professional. Meanwhi…
My dream is that the San Francisco Centre mall would be transformed into a huge place dedicated to having fun: restaurants, bars, gaming centers, roller skating, play spaces, live music and so on.
I spend a decent amount of time in SF and don't find it particularly unsafe (for a 40-ish woman). Definitely a little subjectively more sketchy than most places I frequent in NYC, but there just isn't any reason to be there, so nobody is there. That is kind of how that stuff goes.
People always seem to make things about crime, but I think overreaction is what killed retail. I went to Safeway to buy some toothpast and I had to have an employee pick out the toothpaste and escort me to the front of the store to buy it. I wanted to buy more stuff, but the employee didn't seem that interested in obliging that, so I just got everything else on Amazon and made a note to not visit again. That's why retail is dead. It's not bike lanes. It's not crime. It's that it sucks.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If a car owner loses their license, they keep driving without a license. It's also much harder to lose their license. CDLs are much easier to lose and your employer knows if you have one or not, so it's directly tied to your income.
Then they get picked up by an ALPR scan and have their car impounded? Seen it happen many times.
You don't need a valid drivers' license to renew a car registration in most areas.
In most US cities the cops won't even pull you over if you don't have a license plate, much less track you down and impound a vehicle.
So many things wrong with this, but let's call out one of the most obvious: > But a bus will kill a pedestrian just as easily as a car will, which is why Market Street remains empty of pedestrian traffic No citation, just pure nonsense. As a pedestrian and cyclist: bus drivers are great. They have higher licensing standards, their income is tied to maintaining a license, they're well trained and professional. Meanwhi…
There’s evidence for the original comment likely being incorrect. NYC turned a major street into a “busway”. So cars can enter, but they have to make the first right, so they don’t use it as a thruway. Pedestrian traffic in that area has exploded. Injuries and deaths have plummeted. As a pedestrian crossing the street is incredibly safer if there’s a massive bus driving at a steady speed (bus drivers won’t speed to c…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then they get picked up by an ALPR scan and have their car impounded? Seen it happen many times.
An ALPR doesn't know who's driving. You don't need a valid drivers' license to renew a car registration in most areas. In most US cities the cops won't even pull you over if you don't have a license plate, much less track you down and impound a vehicle.
But sure, some cities won’t even do felony warrant service.
My dream is that the San Francisco Centre mall would be transformed into a huge place dedicated to having fun: restaurants, bars, gaming centers, roller skating, play spaces, live music and so on.
0: https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/images/4/46/Julie%2C_Astra%2...
The article really wants to blame reducing automobile traffic, but I really think you could make Market St. a combined speedway / parking lot (whatever it is that car drivers think is ideal) and it wouldn't bring business back. Remote work dominates what happened to our cities. Same-day online shopping delivery is what most people do instead of physically going to stores. So I don't think anyone is surprised that dow…
I think pretty much everyone agrees though that peoples habits have just changed with work from home. The cost of having to wait on an employee has been externalized to people shopping for a living in batch orders, and those people don't mind waiting given that we're only paid for minutes that we're actively on an order (Prop 22).
So yeah, retails not completely dead, just serves a different audience now.
One of the primary reasons for removing cars from Market Street was keeping buses and street cars moving. There was a huge citywide program to make buses faster, and many routes converge on Market St and travel some portion of it. The routing, including overhead lines, makes use of all four lanes. Cars slowed things down tremendously. Advertising the move as an anti-car policy was just convenient politics. To a lesse…
I remember I found an old video I took on a Sony action cam (useless device, it fogs up) and while all these places are still pretty bad, nearby Alemany does have green paint which is better than nothing. https://youtu.be/cYoJ4S7G5tc?t=98
It used to be a main thoroughfare, packed with cars in bumper-to-bumper traffic. But after the city decided to pedestrianize it, by banning cars, adding bike lanes, and converting much of the street into outdoor cafes, it's not the same place.
There's no more chaos and now it's a quiet and pleasant street. It's quieter, safer, and more peaceful than before. But it's lost that chaotic and vibrant energy that made it so famous.
