Parking-Free Street Revamp Boosts Sales, Will Expand

by Aaron Bialick
Friday, June 12, 2015

Two years after the city gave Fisherman’s Wharf a people-friendly redesign on two blocks of Jefferson Street, business is booming. Despite merchants’ fears that removing all car parking on the blocks would hurt their sales, they now say it had the opposite effect....
...In June 2013, the two blocks of Jefferson between Hyde and Jones Streets were made safer and calmer with wider sidewalks, textured pavement to calm motor traffic, and the removal of curbside car parking. One-way traffic was also converted to two-way.

Since then, sales on the street have risen. TheFisherman’s Wharf Community Benefit District surveyed 18 of the 33 businesses on those blocks, and they reported month-over-month gross sales increases between 10 to 21 percent on average

“People are staying longer and spending more money,” said Troy Campbell, executive director of the Fisherman’s Wharf CBD. “Drivers are a little more cautious, I would say.”

Removing car parking to widen sidewalks provided more room for crowds and made storefronts more visible, said Campbell. “You look down the street, and you don’t have a string of cars that are part of the landscape. The businesses become the landscape.”

“A lot of the merchants came back to me and said, you know what, I thought losing the parking was going to be a problem, but I feel like people can actually see my windows now, and they’re engaging with us more.”:

More at: http://sf.streetsblog.org/2015/06/12/fishermans-wharf-parking-free-street-revamp-boosts-sales-will-expand/

Impromptu Shared Space Calms Soho Intersection

by Ben Fried on March 5, 2009 courtesy of StreetsBlog.org

...Reader Tim Koelle sends this report of a busted traffic signal gone terribly right at the intersection of West Broadway and Grand yesterday morning:
I watched for an hour while cars, trucks and pedestrians shared this space quietly... with civility! Little honking, no aggressive driving, no traffic cop. Why? Because the light was out.
No one had to speed up and honk to make the green light on time; no one honked or changed lanes to take advantage of the narrow window of time the light granted them. Everyone came to a stop, looked around (wondering why the light was dead, and what they should do), and proceeded slowly thru.
Instead of a line of cars waiting for the light to change, alternate sides vying with each other for the few precious moments allowing them the right to pass thru... no one had to wait very long. And in fact the alternate sides traded back and forth, almost at a one-to-one ratio. No one had to wait, so no one got stuck in a line, so no one sped up, so no one honked, so there was no need for aggressive driving! Even pedestrians got their due... [more, with comments]

It reminds me of when a power cut in Downtown Ashland happened just at evening rush hour, shutting down all the traffic signals.
Everybody just quietly took their turn - bikes, pedestrians and cars all watching each other, rather than waiting for the eye-in-the-sky to tell them to GO !
I have also heard reports of early morning commuters stopped and waiting at red lights on Lithia Way - for the non-existing cross traffic. Do we actually need traffic signals in Ashland?
Comments welcome.