Bikers make their way down Market Street in San Francisco on Wednesday, March 20, 2024. Mayor Daniel Lurie has allowed Waymo vehicles to travel on previously no-automobiles Market Street. 

On April 1, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency board voted 4-3 to cut Muni service by pulling several bus lines off of Market Street starting in late June. Mayor Daniel Lurie’s recent appointee to the board, Giants executive Alfonso Felder, was the deciding vote.

Just over a week later, Lurie announced that Waymo driverless vehicles will begin serving passengers on Market Street around the same time and will access it for training even sooner. He pitched this as a way to “improve” accessibility as part of his broader vision of revitalizing downtown. Unfortunately, this idea ignores Market Street’s recent history and the broader realities of efficiently and safely moving people in San Francisco.

Market Street was the busiest street in pre-pandemic San Francisco, with hundreds of thousands of transit riders and tens of thousands of pedestrians daily. It was also open to general vehicle traffic, which made it one of Muni’s slowest transit corridors. To help address travel time and safety concerns, the Better Market Street project engaged hundreds of people, businesses and community groups over nearly a decade to envision and plan a new, better central corridor. In January 2020, the first phase of the project banned private vehicles on Market Street, including ride-hail........

© San Francisco Chronicle