By Eric Jaffe
CityLab
There are all sorts of things a city can do in the service of safer streets, from reducing speed limits to making room for bike lanes to handing out gift cards to law-abiding drivers. San Francisco just added another strategy to the list: restricting turns.
The move is part of a package of changes called the Safer Market Street plan—a subset of San Francisco’s broader Vision Zero initiative—that recently won the unanimous approval of city officials. Under the new rules, private cars will have limited chances to turn onto Market Street for a mile-long stretch between 3rd and 8th streets. SFMTA documents show that a total of 14 turns will be eliminated from the grid:
The idea is to reduce the number of conflict points between drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists on the busy corridor, and in doing so improve safety. In recent years, Market Street has been home to four of the city’s 20 worst intersections for pedestrian injuries, and the two worst crossings for bike collisions. At 5th and Market, for instance, there were 20 accidents involving cyclists and walkers between 2012 and 2013.
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