The final Chinatown Broadway Street (re)Design is set to be unveiled this Wednesday.
Stretching from the Broadway Tunnel to Columbus Avenue, the goal is to improve pedestrian conditions while developing plan that is “safe, gracious and lively.”
Improvements as mostly rendered above include sidewalk widening, bulb-outs and curb ramps; new benches, street lights, and signal lights; public art installations; and trees!
∙ The Chinatown Broadway Street Design Project [sf-planning.org]
This is great, that stretch is so bleak right now. The Divisadero Street greening made a huge difference. More!
Ha ha, this is funny, it will put in a few trees and repaint the crosswalk, an afternoon’s work for a guy with a shovel and a paintbrush. Wait and see how much it will cost!
Not only are there many trees and a newly painted crosswalk, but there also appear to be many new and replaced light poles and different sidewalk concrete configurations. That will be quite the afternoon’s work for that “guy with a shovel and a paintbrush” — hope he is paid well if he can get all that done in an afternoon.
Oh, sorry, you’re right, you were probably good at “Spot the Difference.” Looks like there will be a bit of sidewalk work and a different colored light pole.
And yes, although he’ll only work hard for an afternoon, the millions he’ll make will feed him and his progeny for a lifetime. Now maybe I’m wrong, maybe it’s just a few thousand dollars for this “greening” but I’ve become jaded, I think this will run into the millions.
UIL,
All those maxed out campaign contributions to every local politician don’t come cheap.
Can we quit bitching about SF becoming more pedestrianized, greener, brighter, safer and cleaner.
As CH said, it’s a pretty large improvement if its at all in light with the Divisadero upgrades… let alone any of the others that have been happening in the rest of the city center.
Waste of money
SF, the city that knows how…to whine.
Pretty impressive for one guy to be able to do concrete work, install numerous new lightpoles (with new power wiring), add benches, and plant scores of trees, along several city blocks, all in one afternoon, all by himself, with just a shovel and paintbrush.
Where has this guy been hiding all this time? We could use him in some other places.
Next we’ll put him on the Van Ness BRT, he should be able to knock that out in a couple of days at most, with his shovel and paintbrush.
After that, perhaps the Central Subway.
Actually, it’s even more, he also has to kill the nice trees that are already there.
Can’t believe the complaints. I can only assume that complainers don’t realize how densely populated Chinatown is – if the cost is counted in (US$) / (SF citizen’s lives improved), I’m sure it’s well spent money.
Broadway St.?
This project will improve the street for those on foot though it could be a money sink as well.
For the past nine months or so I’ve passed a corner that is being remodeled. The goal of the remodel seems to be to reduce the corner radius, slowing traffic and reducing the distance that pedestrians need to cross. The project moves at a glacial pace though seems to be implemented “by the book” with soft hit posts installed and removed and then reinstalled at different micro-phases of the project. It is almost as if they went for the contractor who could satisfy all of the regulations in place without questioning the merit of the regulations.
That corner project still creeps towards completion. They must have spent several thousands on the temporary fixtures like striping and soft hit posts alone. It might consume an entire year by the time it is done.
There should be a rule that no streets project should take 100x longer nor cost 100x more than what an equivalent Chinese crew could accomplish. It is possible to safely create quality work while paying the builders well without falling over the edge of over-specification.
Hopefully that’s not the case here.
I will miss watching all those cars hitting that curb with the rear wheels as they make a right onto Stockton st.
Looking forward to seeing the rest of the improvements. Be nice if they could get a radio signal through the tunnel while they are at it.
I also hope they fix the odd angle from broadway heading west into the tunnel. Oh, and the comment above was supposed to be Powell st, notbstockon.
How about painting/cleaning that hideously ugly public clinic building and sculpture right above the tunnel?