San Francisco Transit-First & Better Market Street
Core idea
Mode shift policy; corridor redesign
Why it matters
Transit-first policy pioneer
Description
San Francisco's Transit-First policy, adopted by the Board of Supervisors in 1973, established a formal commitment to prioritise public transport, walking and cycling over the private car in the allocation of street space and city resources. Decades later the Better Market Street programme translated that policy into a corridor redesign of the city's principal thoroughfare, restricting private vehicles, rebuilding the streetscape and giving priority to transit and cycling. Together they represent a policy framework and its physical expression at the scale of a whole city and its central spine.
Significance
The 1973 policy was among the earliest formal declarations by a major American city that the car would no longer be the default beneficiary of street design, anticipating the mode-shift agendas that became mainstream decades later. Its slow and contested implementation, culminating in the Market Street car ban of 2020, has made San Francisco a case study in the gap between adopted policy and street-level change.
What shaped it
Plans it influenced
Sources
- https://www.sfmta.com/blog/san-franciscos-transit-first-policy-turns-50
- https://www.sfcta.org/policies/transit-first-policy