Market Street Fact Sheet

Fact Sheet: Car-free Market Street is ripe for reimagining – but cars aren’t the answer

Mayor Lurie announced today that Waymo will be allowed to operate on Market Street. This is a disruptive change to car-free Market Street, which has improved Muni travel times by up to 14% and reduced traffic collisions on one of San Francisco’s most dangerous streets by 40%.
This decision comes just a week after Muni service cuts on Market Street were approved by the City. Starting this summer, the 5-Fulton, 6-Parnasus, and 9-San Bruno will no longer serve Market Street during most of the day, and the 31-Balboa and 21-Hayes will also be cut short.
Private vehicles were removed from Market Street in January 2020, following a decade of planning for the Better Market Street Project. The city’s transit spine has since been reserved for people riding buses, streetcars, taxis, bicycles, scooters, and other small mobility devices.
Some business leaders are calling for private vehicle traffic to be restored to the street because they claim that it will aid economic recovery. Yet there is no data to support the claims that adding traffic back to the street will improve retail or office vacancy, tourist visits, or sales tax receipts.
Adding cars back to Market Street will slow Muni down, requiring the SFMTA to increase buses and drivers on Market to provide the same level of transit service that currently exists. As the city faces service cuts this summer and a $322M deficit next year, we can’t afford to give up the gains in service efficiency that have already been made.

Market Street is the spine of the Muni system, a densely visited pedestrian space, and a highly trafficked route on San Francisco’s bicycle network. Pre-pandemic, there were 250,000 daily transit boardings, and 85,000 pedestrians per weekend day. 35,000 people currently ride a bike on Market Street every month.
Before 2020, Market Street was among the slowest corridors in the Muni system, and one of San Francisco’s most dangerous streets for people walking and biking.
Better Market Street was a megaproject that reimagined Market Street as a transit, pedestrian, and bicycle corridor, planned over 10 years with input from hundreds of community stakeholders, groups, and businesses. The project was dramatically scaled back during the pandemic to reduce costs, and only the first out of 3 phases was funded and completed.
In January 2020, private vehicles were banned on Market Street, while commercial vehicles of all kinds are still allowed to operate. As part of the planning process, Uber, Lyft, and privately owned rideshare vehicles were considered for inclusion, but ultimately not allowed because it is impossible to distinguish between a rideshare vehicle and a private vehicle.
Over 100 new passenger commercial loading zones on side streets were added near Market in anticipation of car-free Market Street. These new zones were designed to provide adequate space for more passenger loading activities to occur off of Market Street.

Transit travel times are up to 14% faster on the car-free section of Market Street. Because not as many buses and operators are needed on Market Street, Muni has deployed operators and buses to other parts of the city to reduce crowding on popular routes such as school routes. Prior to the changes in 2020, Market Street was among the slowest corridors in the entire Muni system.
Ridership on Market Street bus lines has recovered at a faster rate than for Muni as a whole. Bus lines that serve the entire car-free area have seen a 79% recovery of pre-pandemic ridership.
Last year, Muni received its highest-ever rider satisfaction rating, in part because Muni service is now more reliable than ever before.
Muni delivers 410,000 trips every day in San Francisco. While Waymo’s specific ridership data is kept secret, recent reporting suggests that in one day Muni moves more people in San Francisco than Waymo does nationwide in two weeks.

Historically Market Street was one of the most dangerous streets in San Francisco, especially for people walking and biking. Even today, Market Street is still on the city’s High Injury Network, the 12% of streets where 68% of traffic crashes occur.
From 2016 to 2019, there were an average of 82 traffic collisions resulting in injury each year on the section between 10th St and Steuart St.
After private vehicles were prohibited in 2020, there has been a sustained 40% decrease in traffic collisions on the corridor – an average of 46 collisions per year.
35,000 people ride a bike each month on Market Street. Adding private vehicles to the street would effectively eliminate the use of Market Street as a safe route for people on bikes east of 7th Street, undermining the city’s newly passed Biking and Rolling Plan.

Mid-Market has struggled with foot traffic and street conditions for decades. The “Twitter tax break” was passed in 2011 to help revitalize the area by attracting new investment. Yet a 2019 SF Chronicle story cited the poor street conditions as a prominent reason that businesses were considering leaving the area.
The city should focus on activating public space to improve street conditions and bring back foot traffic. The UN Plaza and Civic Center activation project continues to bring vibrancy to revitalized public space near Civic Center. The newly announced competition for Market Street from the Urban Land Institute and Civic Joy Fund provides opportunities to develop a new, forward-looking vision for Market Street’s public spaces.

For More Information, please contact:

Robin Pam, co-founder, KidSafe SF

Christopher White, Executive Director, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition

415-295-2355

Dylan Fabris, Community and Policy Manager, San Francisco Transit Riders

415-689-6669

Jodie Medeiros, Executive Director, Walk San Francisco

415-596-1580