Some streets could do with a diet, and Cesar Chavez Street used to be one of them.
If you visit the corridor today, you’ll see that its belt has been tightened with a “road diet.”
A road diet is a transportation planning technique where the number of travel lanes or width of the road is reduced to make the street slower and safer.
Cesar Chavez was designed for rush hour traffic. Its six wide, freeway-like traffic lanes encouraged high vehicle speeds and created an uncomfortable experience for people wanting to cross it or ride a bike on it.
In reality, San Francisco didn’t need Cesar Chavez Street to act like a freeway and the surrounding community agreed. As part of a two-year outreach and design process, May 2008 to May 2010, the community worked with city agencies to identify ways to make Cesar Chavez Street safe, pleasant and attractive for all who travel on it.
In an interagency project led by San Francisco Public Works, the road was repaved, the sewer system upgraded and the whole environment made safer for all modes of travel. The SFMTA pitched in with the road diet (removing one lane in each direction), and also added landscaped median islands, installed bike lanes and added more pedestrian safety measures, such as sidewalk bulbouts.
Now we are excited to share that initial reports show that the road diet is working. We are seeing a 400% increase in bicycle ridership on Cesar Chavez based on counts taken before the project (August 2009) and after the project (August 2014)!
As we continue to keep an eye on the corridor, this new data shows us how a new, slimmer Cesar Chavez Street is welcoming to the surrounding neighborhood as well as to new friends biking through the area.
