San Francisco Chronicle – S.F. has a smart plan to improve Market Street. Waymos aren’t part of it
See original op-ed by Austin Milford-Rosales at SF Chronicle
On April 1, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency board voted 4-3 to cut Muni service by pulling several bus lines off of Market Street starting in late June. Mayor Daniel Lurie’s recent appointee to the board, Giants executive Alfonso Felder, was the deciding vote.
Just over a week later, Lurie announced that Waymo driverless vehicles will begin serving passengers on Market Street around the same time and will access it for training even sooner. He pitched this as a way to “improve” accessibility as part of his broader vision of revitalizing downtown. Unfortunately, this idea ignores Market Street’s recent history and the broader realities of efficiently and safely moving people in San Francisco.
Market Street was the busiest street in pre-pandemic San Francisco, with hundreds of thousands of transit riders and tens of thousands of pedestrians daily. It was also open to general vehicle traffic, which made it one of Muni’s slowest transit corridors. To help address travel time and safety concerns, the Better Market Street project engaged hundreds of people, businesses and community groups over nearly a decade to envision and plan a new, better central corridor. In January 2020, the first phase of the project banned private vehicles on Market Street, including ride-hail vehicles such as Uber and Lyft, and built over 100 new loading zones on adjacent streets to provide pickup/drop-off locations for people using ride-hail.
Since the completion of the first phase of Better Market Street, transit times are nearly 14% faster on the car-free segment. This has allowed for more efficient use of limited resources throughout the Muni system and recovery of 79% of pre-pandemic ridership for the impacted bus lines, ahead of Muni’s overall recovery rate. Muni hit a record satisfaction rating last summer, driven by significant increases in reliability. An analysis of Muni’s data shows that 23% of its bus ridership is on routes that use car-free Market Street, and the improvement in reliability from the lack of cars no doubt played a significant role in that accomplishment and positive rider sentiments toward Muni overall.
Adding Waymo cars to Market Street would be a significant step toward undoing this progress. Waymo is increasing vehicle miles traveled, contrary to state climate goals, and thus increasing congestion. Human-driven ride-hail cars in California spend 40% of their time driving with no passengers, while Waymo’s autonomous vehicles do this at a 55% rate. A city analysis found that ride-hail accounted for 50% of increased congestion from 2010 to 2016. This congestion slows down everyone’s ability to move about the city, except for the places where ride-hail services are banned: bus-only lanes and car-free Market Street.
Right now, bikes and limited commercial vehicles can travel relatively unimpeded in the outer lanes while buses use the inner bus lanes, with occasional curbside stops for the buses. By allowing a meaningful number of cars on Market, that balance will be thrown off, with bikes and trucks blocked for every pickup/drop-off served by a Waymo — and Waymos blocking buses when they merge into bus lanes to overtake slower cyclists. In addition, the first responders who rely on open lanes on Market will see increased response times due to the Waymos and the traffic they cause.
This is all assuming perfect driving behavior, but Waymo vehicles have an extensive history of blocking buses and first responder vehicles when malfunctioning, waiting for passenger pickups and encountering unexpected users in the road. While Waymo proponents love to compare autonomous vehicles to human drivers on safety, the real comparison is Waymos to no cars at all — and no cars wins every time.
Even if the planned service cuts go into effect, 19% of Muni’s nearly 500,000 daily rides will be on buses that roll down Market. Another 15% are on buses that cross Market and benefit from the clear intersections. Muni serves more rides on lines that run on (or cross) Market in two days than Waymo does citywide in a month. At 10 times the price of a bus fare with 5% of the capacity, Waymo vehicles have no hope of making up for the transit service they replace and delay.
Mayor Lurie seems to believe Waymo represents a bright and shiny new future for transportation, but no future is inevitable. We cannot sacrifice the public good for the benefit of a private newcomer. Instead of striking a deal with Waymo to provide access, fixes for Market Street must come in the form of stable funding for Muni and continued execution of the Better Market Street plan. Providing Waymo with monopoly access to Market would be a huge handout of public space that provides a significant competitive edge to Waymo while reducing the benefits of car-free Market Street for buses, first responders, cyclists and taxpayers who want Muni to provide the greatest impact per dollar spent.
Preserving and expanding current levels of Muni service while continuing to support pedestrian safety and bicycle access is the best way for Mayor Lurie to revitalize downtown.
Austin Milford-Rosales is a transit and vision zero advocate who lives car-free in SoMa.
See original op-ed by Austin Milford-Rosales at SF Chronicle
