The primary driver appears to be economics (vis a vis the pandemic and slow recovery afterwards), which has very little to do with the author’s primary target (cyclists and buses).
A more sensible null hypothesis would be that cyclist and bus traffic follow the same rough pattern as car and pedestrian traffic, i.e. economics is always the leader for whether people show up in a given public space. That would explain why NYC and most European cities haven’t seen any real negative consequences to aggressively pedestrianizing and re-allocating their streets away from single-occupant car traffic.
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.
Meanwhile the average SUV driver is a homicidal maniac. I'll walk or bike a bus-only corridor any day.
US cities already are far too car-centric. Giving up what tiny progress we've made isn't the answer.
> bus drivers are great. They have higher licensing standards, their income is tied to maintaining a license, they're well trained and professional
Also speaking as a cyclist: do you even expect them to be responsive to your presence? I've learned to think of them like they're trains. Their path and timing isn't influenced by my presence in the slightest.
If a car driver changes lanes right at me, I think, that careless asshole! But if a bus comes over into a lane I'm riding in, or if it pulls away from a stop and forces me to hit my brakes or enter another lane, I don't even register it as a mistake anymore. It's just the way buses work and something I have to be ready to react to. Thankfully their lateral movements are slow and smooth.
I'm sure that bus drivers are safer, but it absolutely does not feel safe to bike on Market if you end up between two buses. Recently a woman died because her scooter (?) tire got stuck in the streetcar tracks and she got run over by a truck. It does not feel safe to walk or bike next to vehicles that heavy, and the street should be redesigned for better separation.
Is this responsible for the lack of pedestrians? Probably not - that's because of the lack of businesses and the homelessness problem, but the street being physically the same as when it carried cars is a big deal.
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 catch a light, or jump a red), is significantly safer.
Noah Smith is like Gell-Mann amnesia personified. He's good at writing columns such that he sounds like he knows what he's talking about, until he opines on something you happen to be familiar with, and you realize he's completely full of shit and that his main talent is the ability to rapidly pump out a Wikipedia-skim-tier opinion on whatever happened to draw his attention that day. Would strongly recommend putting him on your mental ignore list.
I had a contract with a company in the SF Bay Area back in 2011-2012. I spent 50% of my time in the Bay Area, despite living in Florida. I often stayed in a San Francisco hotel and walked to a commuter bus that would take me to corporate headquarters.
I visited SF on other occasions in 2015 and 2022. The contrast between 2011 and these dates was staggering. In 2011, I did not have to step around human feces in the street. There was and is always a significant presence of homeless people -- who don't bother me -- but at least back then, I felt pretty confident walking at night through any part of the city, even the Tenderloin. In 2015? It was pretty bleak. Crime was up, and folks were much more aggressive. In 2022, I had my head on a swivel. I'm used to significantly more, uhh, vigorous urban areas, and SF started pinging my situational awareness in 2022 like it didn't eleven years earlier.
Don't get me wrong: SF is a kitten compared to Chicago, Detroit, or Baltimore. But, it's sad that it has descended so far. It is still a charming city that I'd love to visit again, but some of that charm has been lost.
Duelling opinions! (Not really -- downtown SF has had a lot of trouble in the last few years, though as Noah notes, it's been feeling a bit better lately).
However, the trajectory isn't quite that clear, at least over a longer timeline and across the whole city. Back in the 1990s, a lot of downtown was very dodgy feeling, though mostly a block or so away from Market. Market itself varied across its length -- by the time you got to Van Ness it was becoming sketchier. Its status dipped and weaved as the city's fortunes shifted -- not necessarily corresponding exactly to economic success, but by 2011 downtown I think it was fairly "back'.
Other neighborhoods did not do so well during that time, to my memory. The strange thing about 2011 was that San Francisco survived the 2008 crash fairly well economically, so on the surface it was doing well, especially by comparison, but underlying it was a big upswell in the problems that would overtake it in 2015-2022. I'm not sure they were visible everywhere in the city.
I guess what I'm trying to say here is that San Francisco is a heavily boom and bust city, with lots of neighborhood variation in fortunes -- I think plenty of people would argue that Market's upturn has come at the expense of pushing problems out to the periphery. But I wouldn't disagree that it's still digging itself out of the COVID hole, five years on, and despite a lot of potential tax income from the current boom.
I have no doubt that SF has its ups and downs. My comment was based on my subjective experience. I'm sure we've all seen the Hollywood accounts of SF in the Dirty Harry movies. It was once bad enough to get such an impression.
I was just sad to see SF in a bust, because I genuinely enjoyed it in 2011. I can only hope that this slump resolves and that the folks who are down and out on the streets get the help they need.
2022 and 2026 SF are radically different. Just read all the raves about the current mayor. Maybe about 5% of SF has crime issues. Unfortunately that 5% is near all the convention centers and big hotels so travelers impressions tend towards the negative.
>A note to my fellow San Franciscians: I’m sorry. I know. There’s always some story in the East Coast press about how our city is dying. San Franciscians hate—HATE—these pieces. You’re a stooge and a traitor for writing one. When I set out reporting, I wanted to write a debunking-the-doom piece myself. Yet to live in San Francisco right now, to watch its streets, is to realize that no one will catch you if you fall. In the first three months of 2023, 200 San Franciscans OD’d, up 41 percent from last year.“It’s like a wasteland,” the guard said when I asked how San Francisco looked to him. “It’s like the only way to describe it. It’s like a video game — like made-up shit. Have you ever played Fallout?”
>I shook my head.
>“There’s this thing in the game called feral ghouls, and they’re like rotted. They’re like zombies.” There’s only so much pain a person can take before you disintegrate, grow paranoid, or turn numb. “I go home and play with my wife, and we’re like, ‘Ah, hahahaha, this is SF.’”
When I first moved to SF I'd go for dinner and then watch movies there with friends. Became a bit of a ritual.
After those options disappeared, I'd still go regularly to peruse the Bloomingdales and Nordstrom, among other small stores.
When those disappeared I'd still visit regularly, to get some exercise (I lived nearby) or visit the food court.
Seems it's simply too large for anyone to want to take another chance on it. And yet it feels insane that a mall in the center of a major city is sitting there, abandoned while politicians discuss turning it into a soccer stadium.
I was there in the late 1990's and it was all vibrant. Sketchy in obvious places but vibrant. People didn't like tech workers then. Now it's mostly tech.
I used to spend some time on Market St in the late 90s and it's not that different than it is now. I'm pretty sure they allowed cars back then. Union Square is radically changed but Market was always a street that lacked what the GenZers refer to as aura. You have all these 5 or more story buildings that feel pretty empty. Wide sidewalks with people speed walking to work. OP would like it to be more like the Mission. But those streets have the requisite low rent needed for small artisan stores to flourish.
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.
In the decade I spent traveling to the Bay area to do consulting work I never visited San Francisco. I did go to a conference in the 90s that had me Downtown and I recall it being pretty dead other than us conference goers.
I am French. When working for a large US company, I visited SF several times between 1998 and 2008. It was usually great, especially in the earlier years.
Then I went to visit with my kids in 2019. Oh man, what a change. The city felt really, really different. Even the guy who was giving us a tour had some nostalgia in his voice.
Downtown SF has not had lively nightlife in most living memory, but the commuter crowd filled it up and gave it some bustle. That era ended with 2019 and all the activity has shifted to the neighborhoods, which always had the better activity destinations.
The primary driver appears to be economics (vis a vis the pandemic and slow recovery afterwards), which has very little to do with the author’s primary target (cyclists and buses).
A more sensible null hypothesis would be that cyclist and bus traffic follow the same rough pattern as car and pedestrian traffic, i.e. economics is always the leader for whether people show up in a given public space. That would explain why NYC and most European cities haven’t seen any real negative consequences to aggressively pedestrianizing and re-allocating their streets away from single-occupant car traffic.
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.
Meanwhile the average SUV driver is a homicidal maniac. I'll walk or bike a bus-only corridor any day.
US cities already are far too car-centric. Giving up what tiny progress we've made isn't the answer.
> bus drivers are great. They have higher licensing standards, their income is tied to maintaining a license, they're well trained and professional
Also speaking as a cyclist: do you even expect them to be responsive to your presence? I've learned to think of them like they're trains. Their path and timing isn't influenced by my presence in the slightest.
If a car driver changes lanes right at me, I think, that careless asshole! But if a bus comes over into a lane I'm riding in, or if it pulls away from a stop and forces me to hit my brakes or enter another lane, I don't even register it as a mistake anymore. It's just the way buses work and something I have to be ready to react to. Thankfully their lateral movements are slow and smooth.
I'm sure that bus drivers are safer, but it absolutely does not feel safe to bike on Market if you end up between two buses. Recently a woman died because her scooter (?) tire got stuck in the streetcar tracks and she got run over by a truck. It does not feel safe to walk or bike next to vehicles that heavy, and the street should be redesigned for better separation.
Is this responsible for the lack of pedestrians? Probably not - that's because of the lack of businesses and the homelessness problem, but the street being physically the same as when it carried cars is a big deal.
too bad they scrapped the original Better Market plans for protected bike lanes
I have a near total opposite view as a cyclist in France. Buses are extremely dangerous in cities, and are way louder than cars.
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 catch a light, or jump a red), is significantly safer.
Seattle and SF did the same. The streets are now horror shows.
NYC is just an exception, because it has so much pre-concentrated urbanistic misery that adding a bit more is not noticeable.
>their income is tied to maintaining a license
So are car owners. Most jobs don't allow for remote work.
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.
Yeah I came here to post that, such a nonsensical statement
Noah Smith is like Gell-Mann amnesia personified. He's good at writing columns such that he sounds like he knows what he's talking about, until he opines on something you happen to be familiar with, and you realize he's completely full of shit and that his main talent is the ability to rapidly pump out a Wikipedia-skim-tier opinion on whatever happened to draw his attention that day. Would strongly recommend putting him on your mental ignore list.
When you operate in the attention economy, you have to keep pumping out slop to keep visibility in the algorithm.
I had a contract with a company in the SF Bay Area back in 2011-2012. I spent 50% of my time in the Bay Area, despite living in Florida. I often stayed in a San Francisco hotel and walked to a commuter bus that would take me to corporate headquarters.
I visited SF on other occasions in 2015 and 2022. The contrast between 2011 and these dates was staggering. In 2011, I did not have to step around human feces in the street. There was and is always a significant presence of homeless people -- who don't bother me -- but at least back then, I felt pretty confident walking at night through any part of the city, even the Tenderloin. In 2015? It was pretty bleak. Crime was up, and folks were much more aggressive. In 2022, I had my head on a swivel. I'm used to significantly more, uhh, vigorous urban areas, and SF started pinging my situational awareness in 2022 like it didn't eleven years earlier.
Don't get me wrong: SF is a kitten compared to Chicago, Detroit, or Baltimore. But, it's sad that it has descended so far. It is still a charming city that I'd love to visit again, but some of that charm has been lost.
Duelling opinions! (Not really -- downtown SF has had a lot of trouble in the last few years, though as Noah notes, it's been feeling a bit better lately).
However, the trajectory isn't quite that clear, at least over a longer timeline and across the whole city. Back in the 1990s, a lot of downtown was very dodgy feeling, though mostly a block or so away from Market. Market itself varied across its length -- by the time you got to Van Ness it was becoming sketchier. Its status dipped and weaved as the city's fortunes shifted -- not necessarily corresponding exactly to economic success, but by 2011 downtown I think it was fairly "back'.
Other neighborhoods did not do so well during that time, to my memory. The strange thing about 2011 was that San Francisco survived the 2008 crash fairly well economically, so on the surface it was doing well, especially by comparison, but underlying it was a big upswell in the problems that would overtake it in 2015-2022. I'm not sure they were visible everywhere in the city.
I guess what I'm trying to say here is that San Francisco is a heavily boom and bust city, with lots of neighborhood variation in fortunes -- I think plenty of people would argue that Market's upturn has come at the expense of pushing problems out to the periphery. But I wouldn't disagree that it's still digging itself out of the COVID hole, five years on, and despite a lot of potential tax income from the current boom.
I have no doubt that SF has its ups and downs. My comment was based on my subjective experience. I'm sure we've all seen the Hollywood accounts of SF in the Dirty Harry movies. It was once bad enough to get such an impression.
I was just sad to see SF in a bust, because I genuinely enjoyed it in 2011. I can only hope that this slump resolves and that the folks who are down and out on the streets get the help they need.
I actually love SF and would love to visit again.
2022 and 2026 SF are radically different. Just read all the raves about the current mayor. Maybe about 5% of SF has crime issues. Unfortunately that 5% is near all the convention centers and big hotels so travelers impressions tend towards the negative.
From a May 2023 article on the decline of the city <http://web.archive.org/web/20230510153958/https://www.curbed...>:
>A note to my fellow San Franciscians: I’m sorry. I know. There’s always some story in the East Coast press about how our city is dying. San Franciscians hate—HATE—these pieces. You’re a stooge and a traitor for writing one. When I set out reporting, I wanted to write a debunking-the-doom piece myself. Yet to live in San Francisco right now, to watch its streets, is to realize that no one will catch you if you fall. In the first three months of 2023, 200 San Franciscans OD’d, up 41 percent from last year.“It’s like a wasteland,” the guard said when I asked how San Francisco looked to him. “It’s like the only way to describe it. It’s like a video game — like made-up shit. Have you ever played Fallout?”
>I shook my head.
>“There’s this thing in the game called feral ghouls, and they’re like rotted. They’re like zombies.” There’s only so much pain a person can take before you disintegrate, grow paranoid, or turn numb. “I go home and play with my wife, and we’re like, ‘Ah, hahahaha, this is SF.’”
I found it notable that no one in the Reddit discussion <https://np.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/13dvrjs/san_francis...> mentioned the Fallout comparison despite the fact that, well, this is Reddit. I think it hit too hard.
"Don't get me wrong: SF is a kitten compared to Chicago..."
You shouldn't watch so much Fox news, it's warping your view.
That's based on actually working in these cities and interacting with people. I don't watch Fox News.
I do miss that mall.
When I first moved to SF I'd go for dinner and then watch movies there with friends. Became a bit of a ritual.
After those options disappeared, I'd still go regularly to peruse the Bloomingdales and Nordstrom, among other small stores.
When those disappeared I'd still visit regularly, to get some exercise (I lived nearby) or visit the food court.
Seems it's simply too large for anyone to want to take another chance on it. And yet it feels insane that a mall in the center of a major city is sitting there, abandoned while politicians discuss turning it into a soccer stadium.
I could dream up so many ways to use that space
I was there in the late 1990's and it was all vibrant. Sketchy in obvious places but vibrant. People didn't like tech workers then. Now it's mostly tech.
I used to spend some time on Market St in the late 90s and it's not that different than it is now. I'm pretty sure they allowed cars back then. Union Square is radically changed but Market was always a street that lacked what the GenZers refer to as aura. You have all these 5 or more story buildings that feel pretty empty. Wide sidewalks with people speed walking to work. OP would like it to be more like the Mission. But those streets have the requisite low rent needed for small artisan stores to flourish.
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 sure wish this quiet street was filled with lively motor traffic :)
Democrat Heaven! Way to go, Democrats! You are doing a great job creating a thriving city!
In the decade I spent traveling to the Bay area to do consulting work I never visited San Francisco. I did go to a conference in the 90s that had me Downtown and I recall it being pretty dead other than us conference goers.
I was there this morning and it was poppin'
Also like 3rd street promenade in LA. Is there a list of downtown or vibrant walkable areas that died during pandemic?
I wish they'd turn it into a long thin park. Keep just enough space for buses and maybe cut into the sidewalks a bit for greenery.
I am French. When working for a large US company, I visited SF several times between 1998 and 2008. It was usually great, especially in the earlier years.
Then I went to visit with my kids in 2019. Oh man, what a change. The city felt really, really different. Even the guy who was giving us a tour had some nostalgia in his voice.
I won't be back soon.
Unmentioned elephant: Work. From. Home.
Downtown SF has not had lively nightlife in most living memory, but the commuter crowd filled it up and gave it some bustle. That era ended with 2019 and all the activity has shifted to the neighborhoods, which always had the better activity destinations.
The article mentions remote work multiple times, as part of the Doom Loop