The battle over remaking Polk Street has been apocalyptic, but eight blocks east there seems to be a consensus. Stockton Street’s 10-foot-sidewalks are packed beyond capacity, overwhelmed with stalls and stands in the run-up to Lunar New Year (February 19). As the Chroniclereports, people are clamoring for more pavement, even if it means eliminating an entire traffic lane from Chinatown’s already congested artery.
North of the three-lane tunnel, Stockton is a two-way, four-lane street (including occasional parking lanes) with three very busy bus lines. Beyond mere shopper overcrowding, a pedestrian safety map for the city’s Vision Zero agenda shows Stockton and its cross streets clustered with skulls-and-crossbones (deaths) and red x’s (serious injuries). Big trouble in little China, indeed.
Last year’s widening of Castro between 17th and 18th is the obvious template for a more pedestrian-friendly route through the city’s densest neighborhood. But as the Chron notes, it’s not just Castro that got bigger. Cesar Chavez did too, and “other pedestrian improvement projects are planned or underway on Polk Street, Taraval and Irving streets in the Sunset District, Palou Street in the Bayview District and other busy commercial corridors across the city.” And with those come secondary improvements such as trees, modern lighting, benches, and bike racks—all things that need to be approached sensitively in an enclave like Chinatown.
The main problem is that you can’t get something out of nothing. Unlike Cesar Chavez, which was built practically at freeway scale, or Castro Street, which was painted with ambiguously gigantic lanes, Stockton Street is already narrow. There’s little wiggle room for carving out more sidewalk space without rerouting lots of vehicular traffic too. And while that might be a good idea, it's not simple to execute, as District 3’s new supervisor (which represents Chinatown), Julie Christensen, essentially admitted: "The challenge is that when you change one thing, there's a ripple effect. Even if you can't afford to implement a whole plan, it's important to have that whole plan."
Moreover, the Castro project wasn't without controversy. Just because something is more pedestrian-friendly on paper doesn’t mean it’s going to please everybody. For instance, Jane Warner Plaza at 17th, Castro, and Market is scheduled to go under the knife again only months after its completion.
However, there seems to be agreement between the city and local merchants, and other sections of Stockton have proved flexible. The Central Subway (connecting Chinatown to the 4th Street Caltrain station) has rendered the area around the Apple Store a construction zone for years, and the blocks immediately adjacent to Union Square became a pedestrian plaza during the holidays without the sky caving in. As long as this tourist-heavy precinct is treated as the residential neighborhood it is, a better Chinatown is certainly possible.
[Via SF Chronicle; photo courtesy of Roger/Flickr]
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