CAN-DO Meets Tonight, Walking and Biking Downtown on Agenda

More evidence that less parking can mean more customers and more sales!

Replacing car parking with sidewalks in Fisherman’s Wharf boosted sales; revamp will expand http://t.co/wEAM5B5Csu pic.twitter.com/kW2M2M06q4

— Streetsblog SF (@StreetsblogSF) June 13, 2015

The downtown neighborhood association, CAN-DO meets tonight the 16th, and one of the items in the agenda is a motion

To adopt as Annual Goals for 2015-16: 1) Support initiatives that increase bicyclist and pedestrian safety and access to downtown.

And calmer, safer streets for people on foot and on bike will also mean more people lingering downtown and shopping downtown.

The place to start will be the Downtown Mobility Study. (Additional commentary and notes here.) It has plenty of ideas on improving downtown streets. Sure, the concepts are in many cases less than ideal and represent a lot of compromise, but one great thing would be just to fund and implement our existing study instead of just talking about it or admiring it gathering dust on the shelf. Just do it!

10 year vision:  Sharrows on Union and Winter, bike lanes on
High and Church, two-way conversion on Cottage

The Urban Renewal Agency and Downtown Advisory Board are together leading on several of the projects, many clustered in 2018 or so, but things could be even faster.

Union, Winter, and State Street bikeways;
Two-way conversion on High and Church

Encouraging downtown residents, merchants, and property owners ask the City to accelerate implementation of the study would be terrific!

And then, once we tame High/Church and Court/State, then maybe we can start thinking about real core of the problem: The Liberty/Commercial couplet, which has been pointed out before has more lanes downtown than I-5.

More people, fewer cars!

CAN-DO meets Tuesday the 16th, at 6:00 p.m. at First Christian Church on 685 Marion Street NE.