A proposal to study traffic patterns in San Francisco's Castro district may have wide-reaching impacts for vehicles using Market Street trying to access Duboce Triangle and westside neighborhoods in the city. Drivers coming from Twin Peaks could face new restrictions on how to access streets in the Duboce neighborhood.
Currently, vehicles headed eastbound on Market Street toward downtown are prohibited from turning left at Castro Street. They can turn left at the next block, Noe Street, or at Sanchez Street, where there are dedicated left-hand turn lanes for vehicles.
The traffic pattern has long raised complaints from Duboce Triangle residents, as it funnels all eastbound Market Street traffic headed to the Haight, Alamo Square, and other neighborhoods on the city's westside through their leafy, historic neighborhood nestled between the Castro and the Lower Haight. During the COVID pandemic, they worked with city transit officials to designate a part of Noe Street as a Slow Street, meaning it should not be used as a thruway by vehicles passing through Duboce Triangle.
Now, some in the neighborhood want to see such pass-through traffic be rerouted onto Castro Street by allowing left-hand turns onto northbound Castro Street at Market Street. At the same time, the city would restrict the left turns from eastbound Market onto Noe and Sanchez streets.
Such a change to the neighborhood's traffic pattern has been gaining traction, with it part of a Duboce Triangle Slow Streets Study set to be voted on February 11 by the Board of Supervisors sitting as the San Francisco Transportation Authority. The county transit body's Community Advisory Committee voted January 22 in support of the $250,000 study.
Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman — a gay man who as District 8 supervisor represents the Duboce Triangle neighborhood — told the Bay Area Reporter that "we're at a point of studying and evaluating options" as to how the speed and volume of traffic into the Duboce Triangle neighborhood (flanked by Castro, Market, Waller and Webster streets) can be reduced.
"One thought is it would be good to allow cars traveling eastward [toward downtown] on Market Street to make a left onto Castro, which is currently prohibited," Mandelman said in a phone interview. "Right now they have to go to Noe or Sanchez [streets] and turn left there."
Mandelman is "sure people will have super strong feelings" about either side of the issue.
Doing so would require tweaks to the Market and Castro intersection. As currently configured, there are two lanes for vehicles headed eastbound. There is also a third lane dedicated for Muni buses and vehicles making a right-hand turn onto Castro Street.
For cars coming in the other direction, there are dedicated lanes for vehicles turning right or left onto Castro Street, with the traffic signal timed to allow left hand turns. In the middle are two lanes for westbound traffic headed to Twin Peaks and Forest Hill, with the rightmost lane allowing vehicles once they cross the intersection to turn into the Castro Gas and Food Mart or veer right onto 17th Street headed up to Corona Heights.
A wide pedestrian crosswalk runs across Market Street from the entrance into the gas station on the northbound side of Castro Street to Harvey Milk Plaza on the southbound side. As part of a new elevator being built at the public parklet above the Castro Muni Station, the sidewalk adjacent to Market Street is to be expanded into the roadway to provide better pedestrian access from Castro Street to the elevator stop onto Market Street.
Bob Bush, the vice president of Duboce Triangle Neighborhood Association, stated to the B.A.R. in an email that, "DTNA has long supported allowing a controlled left turn from eastbound Market Street traffic onto northbound Castro Street so that Noe was not the first available legal left turn for that traffic to head north."
But Bush thinks that "eliminating a left turn from eastbound Market onto Noe Street would pose a significant inconvenience for Duboce Triangle residents returning home from Stonestown or the zoo or other sites west of Twin Peaks."
They would have to take the new left turn onto Castro and then turn right onto Beaver or 15th streets. Or they would need to turn off Market Street onto residential streets through the Castro to access either Noe or Sanchez streets in order to cross Market and reach their homes in Duboce Triangle.
"The consideration of eliminating a left turn from Market onto Noe Street has to my knowledge not been presented or discussed within the DTNA or with residents of the Duboce Triangle," he continued.
The request for the study initially came out of Duboce Triangle residents' complaints about a lack of community engagement from the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency about the future of the Slow Street in their neighborhood, according to DTNA President Jon Moscone, a gay man who is the son of former mayor George Moscone.
Moscone claimed, "SFMTA said they performed a series of meetings. Most people didn't know about them."
An SFMTA spokesperson didn't immediately return a request for comment January 28 for this report. The agency currently has an interim leader due to the departure of gay former director of transportation Jeff Tumlin at the end of December; Mayor Daniel Lurie must name his permanent successor.
Moscone said he had hundreds of signatures on a petition asking for real engagement with residents.
"They did the kind of minimum engagement where they let people know about it and then it all came apart," Moscone said. "I personally am grateful they [Mandelman's office] listened for the need for a real process that includes data, a holistic vision, and people's lived experiences. I'm excited by that prospect. ... Rafael [Mandelman] had been very pro the idea 'Lets look at what it's like around the triangle. What can we do to mitigate things.'"
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