They call it a “radical agenda” and attack it with a ferocity more typical of, say, anti-vaxxers or parents against circumcision. “It’s going to kill business,” 90-year-old Rita Paoli told the Examinerin 2013 — and, sure enough, her kitchen supply store, City Discount, shuttered last year. But who’s really to blame?
“They” refers to Save Polk Street, a merchants’ group protesting the SFMTA’s $12 million plan to renovate the Polk Street corridor. As part of Mayor Lee’s Vision Zero plan — part of which entails a five year, $17 million initiative to make city streets more user-friendly for both pedestrians and bicyclists — the city will remove 110 parking spaces along Polk Street and demarcate a dedicated bike lane. This is welcome news for a street that one member of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition deems“one of the most dangerous” in the city (there were 53 pedestrian and 69 bicycle collisions on Polk between April 2006 and March 2011). But the storeowner army of Save Polk Street argues that fewer parking spaces will mean fewer customers.
This is where knives get drawn.
According to a 2013 survey from the SFMTA, 85 percent of people on Polk Street don’t arrive via car (which is comforting given the neighborhood’s collective blood alcohol level). The majority comes on foot, while a solid contingent bikes or takes public transit. Rita Paoli bluntly framed the predicament for business owners like herself: “Go pick up a few dishes. Just weigh them. You try and carry them.”
Arguments about whether fewer parking spaces really mean fewer customers are nothing new. A study in Portland found that while drivers spend more money per store visit, walkers and bikers visit businesses more often and visit a wider range of businesses: bars, restaurants, and corner stores. Kelly Clifton, a researcher behind the study, told CityLab, “It’s not just a phenomenon born of the need to carry things. Walkable (and bikeable) communities by definition facilitate a more frequent interaction between patrons and businesses. This means these bikers and pedestrians are also more regular customers.”
One thing that’s not debatable: Polk Street is a high injury corridor, with the intersections between Turk, Geary, and Broadway being particularly savage. A “body-count clock” installed on the street last year retroactively tallied 122 injuries between April 2009 and March 2014. San Francisco in general has seen an uptick in the number of pedestrian and bicycle collisions since 2007, with more than 900 injuries now reported annually.
The SFMTA will hold a public meeting tomorrow at 10 a.m. in City Hall to discuss the Polk Street plan. Check out Walk First for more information about the city's pedestrian danger zones and (the no longer updated) Bay Citizen for a map of bike accidents.
[via SF Examiner; Photo courtesy of ThinkStock]
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