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Originally Posted by ajiuO
SF has both BART and MUNI. They both run under ground on the main part of market street but are actualy above ground quite a lot.
I'm glad someone brought SF up... They should be an example for any city.
There is no reason this can't be managed... Even if they need to add 2 blocks of track to take the stress of a single intersection... Which I don't think they would need to do.
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True enough. SF has both a regional metro (BART) and a local light rail/cable car system (MUNI). All lines go down town. True, some go under ground, but many stay on the surface. If you have ever been to down town SF you know what I`m talking about - there is almost more heavy vehicle traffic than automobile - bus, train, cable car, trolley, etc. There are so many buses that at any given moment you can look around you and count at least 15 within sight. You could think of SF`s Market St. like Salt Lake`s Main. Salt Lake could quadruple it`s heavy vehicle traffic and have nowhere near as much traffic as SF. Then there`s the fact that the SF streets are WAY smaller than Salt Lake`s wide avenues. SF`s mayors have adopted a public transit oriented development approach to down town SF. They put automobile traffic as their lowest priority to encourage more mass transit.
Quote:
A car-free endorsement: If the responses from mayoral candidates are any indication, there's a good chance Market Street could be closed to cars in the very near future. The idea, of course, isn't a new one, but it has gotten renewed attention in recent months. A number of candidates at a Monday forum on architecture and planning agreed that closing Market to private cars would speed transit, make bicycling safer, and be an all-round good thing for the city.
Closing Market to car traffic could speed public transit along the busy boulevard, traffic experts say. More than 20 transit lines run down the street, with 125,000 boardings each day, said Paul Rose, spokesman for the Municipal Transportation Agency.
On average, each bus travels 4 to 8 mph, about the speed of a brisk walk.
Removing cars would make the streetcars and buses that rumble down Market speedier, said Jeffrey Tumlin, who studies transit with Nelson\Nygaard, a local consulting firm.
Most cars driving down Market are confused tourists or locals orbiting for parking, so closing Market wouldn't have huge impacts on car traffic, he said.
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Just as SF has many other major thoroughfares besides Market St in the down town area, Salt Lake has many others beside Main (3rd West, State St, West Temple, etc.) Shutting off traffic to an already pedestrian and public transit oriented corridor wouldn`t make many disruptions in down town SF just as I imagine it wouldn`t in SLC. And it improves train efficiency. SF has more than 20 transit lines running down Mraket St and Salt Lake couldn`t squeeze in 4 or 5? SLC`s Main is probably even wider than SF`s Market.
Personally, I don`t think it would piss off drivers too much. You don`t drive down town to jump on an expressway. You expect lots of lights and traffic. If you wanted to avoid lots of traffic and intersections you would take another route going around down town or just take mass transit.
If you want a city more comparable to SLC, here`s a map of Denver`s system:
You can see that they have centralized their system with a "grand central station" but the lines soon dissipate after leaving the central station to improve efficiency. Either way you cut it (Denver or SF) you would have a central corridor. I like the Denver and San Francisco models a lot better. UTA had the potencial to do the same in SLC but didn`t. It`s really too bad that it didn`t. Ideal, I think, would be a line going from the U to the airport following North Temple, then the other 3 lines (daybreak, sandy, and west valley) going all the way to the "Hub." That way all 4 lines would go through the Main St corridor from Galavan to the Arena with only the U-Airport line diverging at the Gateway to head down North Temple.
Other examples of centralized systems:
Portland:
Someone mentioned Calgary:
From what I can tell, SLC stands alone with only two lines going to the central station.