In safety move, turns onto Market Street to be limited

Pedestrians make their way across Market Street as a car turns from 5th Street onto Market on Wednesday, June 10, 2015 in San Francisco, Calif. Pedestrians make their way across Market Street as a car turns from 5th Street onto Market on Wednesday, June 10, 2015 in San Francisco, Calif. Photo: Lea Suzuki, The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Lea Suzuki, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 13 Caption Close In safety move, turns onto Market Street to be limited 1 / 13 Back to Gallery

The push to divert private cars off of congested central Market Street will accelerate in August when drivers traveling between Eighth and Third streets will no longer be able to turn onto the main thoroughfare.

On Tuesday, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Board of Directors is expected to approve a package of simple changes that transit officials say will help cut back on accidents on a street that is one of the city’s busiest and most dangerous.

“This is focused very clearly on safety,” said Tom Maguire, director of the Sustainable Streets Division of the SFMTA. “This is about how we can get out this summer and find ways to save lives this summer.”

That stretch of Market Street is a noisy, teeming river of pedestrians, bikes, buses, trolleys, taxis, trucks and skateboarders. While it makes for a lively and entertaining urban boulevard, it is also dangerous — it contains four of the city’s top 20 intersections for pedestrian injury collisions and the top two intersections for bicycle injury collisions.

In 2012 and 2013, 162 people were injured along the stretch. Of those crashes, 58 percent were people walking or biking being struck by cars. Roughly half of these collisions happened at or near an intersection.

The package of traffic improvements, known as Safer Market Street, is one of 24 priority safety projects that the city has promised to complete by February 2016 as part of Vision Zero, an effort to eliminate traffic deaths by 2024. Fifteen of those projects have already been completed. Three more are scheduled to be finished by the end of July.

“Our approach to Vision Zero is not to wait to save lives when we have tools to prevent these collisions and we know how to implement them,” Maguire said.

Major traffic reduction

The changes will reduce traffic volumes on Market Street by 30 to 50 percent, according to the SFMTA. Recent traffic studies have counted 970 private vehicles on Market Street at peak rush hour, between 4 and 6 p.m.

The reduction of traffic turning onto Market Street will cut down the chance of someone getting seriously injured or killed by a turning vehicle, say SFMTA officials. It will mean smoother and faster sailing for city buses, which are often delayed in getting to “transit island” drop-off points because private cars are pulled over dropping off a passenger. It will help commercial trucks deliver goods more efficiently.

As part of the project, the SFMTA is also adding eight white passenger loading zones, four parking spaces for the disabled and a new yellow commercial loading zone. Red-painted transit-only lanes will be extended from Eighth to Third streets, about doubling their length.

The SFMTA is also coordinating with providers of navigation tools to ensure the turn restrictions are reflected in GPS and online map services.

Motorists would still be free to cross Market Street. Taxis — but not Uber or Lyft — emergency vehicles, paratransit vehicles and commercial vehicles like delivery trucks will be exempt. Currently private vehicles heading east are forced off of Market Street at 10th Street and Sixth Street.

The traffic changes come as Market Street is undergoing a wholesale transformation. Strip clubs have closed and bike shops have opened. American Conservatory Theater took over the Strand Theater. Two stylish cafes — Chai Bat by David Rio and Equator Coffee — have opened near Sixth and Market. Two historic buildings, 1095 Market St. and the old Renoir Hotel, are being renovated into boutique hotels. The Hall, a gourmet food hall, opened.

Meanwhile, some of the businesses that had objected to reductions in private automobile access, like Kaplan’s Army Navy Store at 1055 Market St., have closed.

So far there has been little opposition from Market Street property owners and merchants, said Carolyn Diamond, executive director of the Market Street Association. For years small merchants along Market Street objected to any plan that would reduce the access of private cars, but that has subsided.

“I’m not hearing a lot of objections,” she said. “Some people are tired of fighting it. They have been fighting it for years, and their feeling is ‘they are going to do it anyways, so we might as well get in the tent.’”

To help drivers adjust to the traffic changes, automated signs will alert drivers to the changes during construction. Parking control officers will be at the relevant intersections to guide traffic for the first two weeks after implementation. The San Francisco Police Department will immediately begin to enforce violations, which may be subject to a $238 fine.

Susie McKinnon, executive director of the North of Market/Tenderloin Community Benefit District, said at first she was worried that the changes would push more traffic into the Tenderloin, but she is now convinced that it won’t.

“We support any initiative to increase pedestrian safety — this is definitely a hot spot in terms of accidents and fatalities,” she said.

‘Really simple approach’

Nicole Ferrara, director of WalkSF, which advocates for pedestrians in San Francisco, called the changes “a really simple approach that will have an immediate impact.”

Charles Rathbone of Luxor Cab Co. said the changes are good news for cabbies. They will free up congestion on one of the city’s most important streets and force unregulated car services such as Uber and Lyft off of Market Street.

“You are talking about tens of thousands of vehicles between Uber and Lyft,” he said. “We have serious congestion issues.”

Eva Behrend, a spokeswoman for Uber, disagrees: “Market Street is a major artery of the city, and cutting off riders and driver-partners from accessing this thoroughfare will increase gridlock around town, with no improvement to safety.”

J.K. Dineen is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: jdineen@sfchronicle.com

Twitter: @sfjkdineen