By Susan Vaughan
When it comes to transit, Mayor Daniel Lurie sure is shortchanging residents of the Sunset and the Richmond.
In response to a looming budget shortfall (over $300 million), the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency has cut service from our western neighborhoods to Market Street – the 21 has been eliminated, and the 5 Fulton, the new 6 Hayes/Parnassus, and 31 Balboa no longer operate on Market Street. Those buses now turn around when they reach Market Street, forcing travelers from the avenues to change buses.
But Lurie sure isn’t shortchanging private, for-profit transportation services that want to make bank on Muni’s distress.
In October 2019, the SFTMA Board of Directors approved plans to make Market Street from 10th Street to Steuart Street car-free (with the exception of locally regulated taxicabs and paratransit) in order to make buses move faster and to create safer conditions for pedestrians and bicyclists. Those plans went into effect in January 2020, and as the City has recovered from the pandemic, and ridership has increased, statistics indicate the plans are working – Muni operates more quickly, and there are fewer collisions between private cars and pedestrians and bicyclists.
But in April, Mayor Lurie announced his intentions to essentially undo Better Market Street with his invitation to Waymo to operate on Market Street. Uber and Lyft immediately demanded access to eastern Market Street also. And now it looks like their Uber Black and Lyft Black services will have access. Let’s be clear: this is the privatization of transit for private gain.
There are so many other reasons this is bad, but I am an environmentalist. We’re in a climate emergency, and for those of us who want to reduce our greenhouse gas footprint (which should be all of us), one of the best ways is to take the bus. Transportation is responsible for 44 percent of San Francisco’s greenhouse gas emissions – but public transportation emissions (ferries, Caltrain, Muni, BART, SamTrans, Golden Gate Transit, and AC Transit) were only one percent of that 44 percent in 2020.
Additionally, the California state government and the California Public Utilities Commission – the agency responsible for the regulation of Uber, Lyft, Waymo, and other transportation network companies – have never demanded environmental studies on the impact of these private, for-profit services on air quality, congestion that might slow down Muni, their competition with public transportation for passengers, and their exacerbation of our climate emergency. State law, in fact, forbids San Francisco from restricting the numbers of these vehicles that operate on our city streets – we don’t know how many Ubers, Lyfts, and Waymos operate here. And remember, these private, for-profit services are just the beginning. Elon Musk has already announced his intention to bring Tesla robotaxis to San Francisco, and others – Amazon’s Zoox, for example – are sure to follow.
Mayor Lurie is doing this without a public process. In fact, prior to the implementation of Better Market Street, the plans went through environmental review. There were public hearings where people could give public testimony. Lurie is dispensing with environmental review – and democracy – in making his decision to undo Better Market Street.
Some other issues: these services are lousy for the disabled. They can’t replace wheelchair service lost to budget cuts for those who depend on it, and if you have two hands on crutches, you can’t operate a cell phone to get in and out of an autonomous vehicle (believe me, I’ve been there). Also, our public transportation fare and taxi fares are regulated in public processes. Ubers, Lyfts, and Waymos? Unregulated. They can charge as high as the sky, and when demand is high, Uber and Lyft do. Taxis and buses can’t do that, making them affordable to a much wider demographic.
Uber and Lyft are just exploitative and polluting corporations who don’t deserve our business. Remember, these two companies brought Proposition 22 to California, eliminating all kinds of labor protections for drivers. The words that I have for them aren’t printable here – so use your imagination and take the bus!
Make your voice heard: sign the petition to Keep Market Street Moving, and send an email to your supervisor, Mayor Lurie, and the SFMTA Board of Directors to let them know you oppose undoing Better Market Street:
Mayor Daniel Lurie: daniel.lurie@sfgov.org
SFMTA Liaison: Alicia John-Babtiste: alicia.johnbaptiste@sfgov.org
Chair, SFMTA Board of Directors: Janet Tarlov: Janet.Tarlov@sfmta.com
President, SF Board of Supervisors: Rafael Mandelman: mandelmanstaff@sfgov.org
District 1: Connie Chan: ChanStaff@sfgov.org
District 2: Stephen Sherrill: SherrillStaff@sfgov.org
District 3: Danny Sauter: SauterStaff@sfgov.org
District 4: Joel Engardio: Joel.Engardio@sfgov.org
District 5: Bilal Mahmood: MahmoodStaff@sfgov.org
District 6: Matt Dorsey: DorseyStaff@sfgov.org
District 7: Myrna Melgar: MelgarStaff@sfgov.org
District 9: Jackie Fielder: FielderStaff@sfgov.org
District 10: Shamann Walton: waltonstaff@sfgov.org
District 11: Chyanne Chen: ChenStaff@sfgov.org
Susan Vaughan is a Richmond District resident and a member of the Keep Market Street Moving coalition.
Categories: Commentary
Richmond Review/Sunset Beacon 
Hello Everyone,
I just noticed that an important link — the one to where you can send emails to Mayor Lurie and others — isn’t functioning. Hopefully this one will work:
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/keep-market-moving-letter
Sue
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Susan Vaughan argues that keeping cars off Market Street is progress. But from the perspective of residents, visitors, and businesses, it’s been a disaster.
Tourists hauling luggage don’t want to be dropped blocks away from their hotels. Prospective tenants don’t want to walk through encampments and open-air drug markets just to view a storefront they might lease. And let’s be honest: for seniors, people with disabilities, or parents with strollers, the anti-car experiment is more than inconvenient — it’s downright ableist.
The truth is, people value convenience. That’s not laziness, it’s human nature. If it’s too hard to reach a shop, a restaurant, or a hotel, people go elsewhere. That’s exactly what we’ve seen downtown. Market Street’s decline cannot be pinned solely on COVID or economic cycles. Banning vehicles has driven away customers and accelerated the retail downturn.
If San Francisco is serious about reviving its downtown, it needs to make Market Street welcoming and accessible — not double down on policies that keep people, and business, away.
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Yes, of course we value convenience. And as long as it is cheap, a lot of people will pay for it, no matter the long-term environmental and socio-economic consequences. Not me. I took Amtrak across country and back this summer, but when my train was almost 5 hours late into Chicago, I got a hotel and flew out the next day because I had missed my connecting train to DC. Union Station in Chicago has lousy signage, but eventually a police officer told me how to get to the Chicago blue line – which took me to my hotel. I was pushing my luggage to the blue line after two days and two nights on the train with cranky, previously broken leg. Part of my summer adventure!
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Thanks for sharing your story, but just because you’re able to live a certain way doesn’t mean everyone can. Fun travel stories are one thing. Daily life is another. Working parents, caregivers, seniors, people with disabilities — anyone with real responsibilities — don’t have the option of treating hardship as an “adventure.” Convenience isn’t a luxury. It’s accessibility.
Take one example: a single mom in the Outer Richmond used to shop locally. But since the Upper Great Highway closure, she’d rather drive across the Golden Gate Bridge to Marin — paying bridge tolls — because it’s faster and more convenient than shopping in San Francisco. Tell me how that’s good for the environment. When people would rather leave town to do their errands, that’s not helping the planet — it’s hurting local business and driving up emissions.
I myself never shop in the city anymore, and I’m not alone. What’s happening in the Sunset and the Richmond is the same thing happening on Market Street.
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You are absolutely correct that not everyone can live the way I do. But I truly do think most people can drive less than they do.
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But see, that’s the blind spot in your take. People aren’t just “over-driving” for fun — they’re driving because life responsibilities demand it. Work, education, caregiving, medical appointments… these aren’t optional. Seniors, parents, people with disabilities, and anyone with mobility challenges rely on cars to meet basic needs. I live in the Sunset, and there are Safeways and Trader Joes much closer to my home, but I never shop there — the lots are always full on weekends, and Stonestown is another stop. Instead, I do all my shopping at Daly City Westlake, where the experience is far easier for me. I have a chronic illness and simply cannot walk to my neighborhood shops. Why have you no empathy for people who literally need cars?
And let’s not forget the economic fallout. Anti-car policies aren’t just inconvenient — they’re driving customers, tenants, and commerce out of the city. People avoid neighborhoods that are hard to access, shop elsewhere, and that hurts local businesses. Tell me how lecturing people about “driving less” helps the city, the economy, or the environment when it’s making life harder for those who can’t simply adapt??
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If you can come to City Hall on Tuesday, September 2 at 1 p.m. to give testimony in opposition to Mayor Lurie’s desire to invite, Uber, Lyft, and Waymo to operate on Market Street, here is a link to RSVP: https://luma.com/yid2sb28?source=email-sfmtab-20250829
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SF has a long and storied history of allowing private equity to cannibalize off public transport funding and infrastructure that those self-touted ‘disruptive’ industries literally profit from only because we allow them to do that. Allowing without oversight Waymo et all spying machines that are documenting (AI of course) all visible public interaction that they increasingly (for/by private ownership and thus private profit without recourse of law) leverage for 3rd party EULA-buried purposes, we are slow walking into a police state. FLOCK camera systems that record license plates etc, they create a private database of information that is not subject to the public scrutiny of law enforcement. In fact by partnering with law enforcement and skipping disclosure, they have bypassed public oversight entirely.
I wish the faux-futurist crowd that revels in quoting Europe’s favorable statistics would consider their much more substantial and fully-toothed privacy laws first.
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