San Francisco bans most cars from Market Street

You mean to tell me calif hasn't banned all cars yet ? WT hell, the rest of the nation looks to you for guidance.

What's that Elon Musk up to out there anyway ?  

Sweet, more tent space for the homeless meth fiends,

its fine honestly, anyone who lives in or near sf knows to avoid market st anyway, the lanes were confusing as fuck, pedestrians take fucking forever to cross, its a mess. probably better this way. that whole area, from embarcadero up to the loin and across to van ness is much better traversed on foot anyway. i havent driven on market street in probably almost 10 years.

i think the ban is just a major section of market near either union square or embarcadero, not even the whole thing. streets north and south of market are set up like a grid, just slightly offset from each other, with streets south of market running diagonally and streets north of market running straight north/south, so there are major streets just a block or two away that run in the same direction and will take you to the same places. might cause extra congestion in rush hour, since the streets that run parallel to market have less lanes, but outside of rush hour i cant see this having much more impact than just confusing tourists.

The only people who  drove down Market in the last 15 years were lost tourists. 

still can't drive in GG Park on the weekends --  neener neener

^That's a good thing 

It's from 10th street to the Ferry Building, and the cross-streets are still open.

I was worried it was going to extend further, since I use the Octavia exit to Market to Franklin to get to the SFJazz venue and other places, but I can still use Market for that.

Cabs can still use it but not Uber/Lyft cars, and I guess they're going to add more buses & trolly's. Still, I'm not really sure what the true point of it is, since as others have said not many people use that stretch of Market to drive.

I guess maybe it's just another way for San Francisco to "make a point."

It's to cut down on deaths. 

>>What's that Elon Musk up to out there anyway ?  

Yesterday, he toured a 3-D printing facility where my friend works.  They do a lot of super-geeky, high-tech stuff for SpaceX.

if youre an adult who has not yet learned how to look both ways and safely cross the street, you probably are not long for this world anyway.

the needles and poop trope is pretty overblown, but there are a few areas where that kinda stuff does happen. a good section of the mission and the tenderloin do live up to the hype, but thats like 10% of the city...the rest of the city is really nice, super clean, etc.

the needle issue is actually due to an error made in the administration of needle exchange programs, where instead of being a needle exchange, they are just giving them out willy nilly. a nice example of classic SF over liberalizing, it seems like some city officials thought that by not requiring dirty needles to be exchanged for clean needles, they would be able to reduce the spread of blood borne disease even further by reducing a barrier to obtaining clean needles - having to keep and turn in your dirty rigs.

and they are probably right - there are probably more junkies using city provided clean needles than there would be if the city required a true exchange to obtain needles.

and as anyone with experience with junk could tell you, the junkies nodding on the corner now have an unlimited supply of needles and no incentive to clean up after themselves.

it would be easy to look at the situation and revert to standard conservative thinking, that to get rid of the needles the city needs to stop giving them out, needle exchange experiment failed.

id recommend they look at some of the nordic countries like sweden that have centers where drug users can take their drugs and inject them using a clean rig under the supervision of nurses/medical professionals, with narcan on hand. in the areas where these programs are in place, the numbers on overdose deaths have dropped more than just about any other tactic used to cure opiate OD's the world over.

you still get to curb the spread of blood borne disease by giving people free needles, you drastically reduce overdose deaths, and the needles never see the street because they do not leave the facility.  

the poop thing tho, idk man. theres no easy answer and in those small areas like part of the mission and the loin, the poop trope is very real. id guess a large percentage of it is due to very favorable weather for homeless people combined with the city's insistence on people not doing drugs in restrooms, so they just dont install public restrooms. because poop on the streets is fine but god forbid someone whose life is utterly and irrevocably destroyed find some solace in a shot of tar on the floor of a portapoty.

so you'd rather they do it openly on the street? and then shit in the gutters?

offering designated areas for drug injection could allow for the placement of more public restrooms in problem areas without the need for as much management and maintenence. at the same time tho i think they should just let people do drugs in the bathrooms.

as an adult its easy to find a restroom but when i was a teenager out in SF, no business would allow us to use the restroom without buying something, so i ended up pissing all over the streets - alleys, flower beds, the BART tracks, whatever. it used to blow my mind that people would always complain SF smells like piss, but its impossible for someone who does not look like a respectable adult or have extra money to find a place to pee.

I use the public restroom at People's Park, Berkeley quite often.

It's not a pretty picture...

The new trend around here are the animals piss in the elevators of the metro train stations.  

Market St ? Just Get To The Warfield to SEE Phil ...... 9~25~03_______ ! anyone have a link to this show ?

Who uses transit elevators besides socialists? 

Wondering how this is going over with the locals?

We're fine with it and it is long overdue. This proposal and similar ones have been bandied about for years now.....decades even.

racket is going to not claim social security when eligible out of principle....