San Francisco Bike Blog

Jan Gehl was a very engaging speaker (announcement post). The presentation was held in Theatre 39, and about sixty people showed up (estimate). The crowd listened attentively as Gehl went through slide after slide of cities transformed. The meeting did not have the level of enthusiasm I expected — I think a lot of the folks who were most excited to see Gehl speak went to see him the previous night.

There was nothing particularly shocking in the presentation, but a couple of factoids stood out:

1. A Fisherman’s Wharf Community Benefits District (FWCBD) said during his ‘question’ that Fisherman’s Wharf was the second largest tourist attraction in California, right after Disneyland.
2. At peak traffic times at the Wharf - both car and pedestrian traffic - pedestrians outnumber cars by up to 15 to 1. However, cars are still granted about the same amount of space as pedestrians. Gehl suggested a better balance was needed.

I was sitting in the front row, next to a couple of older folks, man and woman, who I could tell were not quite right. They came in very late and immediately started chatting to each other in non-whispering voices. I decided against suggesting they quiet down because I was pretty sure that it would just cause a scene. I may have been correct — during the Q&A session, the woman got up and started rambling. I headed out the door as soon as she got the microphone because I could tell we were in for a treat — I figured it was the perfect time for a bathroom break. After the show I met someone who told me she was talking about all sorts of stuff, and asked Gehl how he proposed to deal with San Francisco’s tsunami problem.

The city employee choosing questioners from the audience for Gehl managed to avoid calling on the male half of the rude couple, but for whatever reason he relented at the end and allowed the rude gentleman to speak, so the audience were treated to a short tirade from the man about how Gehl was going to turn the Fisherman’s Wharf into a ‘Disneyland of the North’.

The Fisherman’s Wharf Community Benefits District representative got up and lectured everyone about nothing in particular, and then, suddenly, at the end of his monologue, he asked his question - how did Gehl feel about zoning? Not any particular type of zoning - just ‘zoning’. Gehl was wise to the fishing expedition and deflected it. The Fisherman’s Wharf Community Benefits District is, I believe, the main group that opposed the uber-sensational and uber-successful Sunday Streets. Even though Wharf businesses would benefit generously from an overhaul to the Wharf area, we can probably expect them to throw their considerable weight around. But who knows - I think the Livable Streets movement probably has the capacity to overcome even its most bitter rivals.

There were a few folks that talked about fishing. One gentleman suggested the Wharf needed to get back to its fishing roots — it needed a fish market — because this gentleman used to go down to the fish market at the Wharf when he was a kid. I guess one could make the argument that Jan Gehl has at least some indirect influence over the types of businesses that operate in the Fisherman’s Wharf area, but that’s not what he’s been hired for. He’s a streetscape guy - architecture’s relationship to human beings - that kind of thing. He’s big into diversity of businesses and uses, but it struck me as odd to be demanding a fish market from Gehl. Of course, it seemed a couple of people applauded the fish market idea. One women got up a bit later and said she was some kind of fisher or boat driver, and she wanted more boats or fish or something. She invited Gehl out for a ride around, and he said he would, but ‘not tomorrow’ (Thursday) - another time. She suggested Friday. He managed to get away by suggesting, probably truthfully, that the City and SPUR and Livable City and other folks had booked his schedule full. I suspect he will eventually take that boat ride - as long as she appears to be stable. [Personally, I would not get on that boat.] Another guy said people like to fish, but that people don’t fish down at the Wharf anymore. Or maybe they do. I have no idea. I was totally blindsided by The Great Fish Debate of 2008. For his part, Gehl said he believed a fish market would be a great idea.

One woman said she was a bicyclist and said that highly-trafficked Jefferson Street was ‘a dead end, anyway’ — it should be ‘closed to all (automobile) traffic’ except for some truck deliveries at certain times of day.

Someone asked Gehl to speak to the awesomeness of street performers. He said, effectively, ‘Yes - but not too many, and not performing the same thing all day in the same place.’ Gehl suggested that street performers at many properties were actually highly organized affairs, with buskers being scheduled for 30 minutes at a time at various locations around the tourist area. This ‘corporatization’ of street performers was not desirable, he said.

Gehl suggested that Fisherman’s Wharf should maintain some of its ‘messiness’ - that was part of its charm.

One person asked about ‘traffic and pedestrian’-type counts - i.e. how did people get down to the Wharf? About 25% drive, which is the biggest single mode of transport, and the remaining 75% get there by tour bus, regular bus, trolley, biking, walking, etc.

Gehl will be back in the mid-November timeframe to drop his first set of proposals.

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