Realizing an Urban Vision

The Lower Polk Community Benefit District, working with the Lower Polk Neighbors, brought together neighbors, city agencies, and business owners to harness the power of collective interest – working to find the confluence of hopes and aspirations for a better, safer and more invitingly pleasant Cable Car Turn-Around, and focusing those interests on making their collective vision a reality.  By mobilizing the various local and City coalitions, the collective expects to optimize the LP-CBD’s ability to tap into future funding sources to actualize over time these street improvements and pedestrian enhancements. This is what IA set out to do when The California Cable Car Vision Plan, was commissioned by the Lower Polk Community Benefit District in October 2019 to embark on a neighborhood-led collaborative design process that would result in a new vision for the California Cable Car Terminus.

Polk Plaza Concept

A critically important new focus is on the intersection at Polk Street: The Polk Plaza. The Plaza will be at the actual intersection of Polk and its four cornered enclosure. At this first stop (In Bound) or penultimate West bound (outbound) stop, a distinct pattern and color is meant to differentiate it from the Van Ness Platform area. The plaza’s signage and graphics are proposed to expand on and elucidate the cultural life and unique mercantile mix of this community and its distinct neighborhood that extends south to Civic center and North towards Fort Mason and the Bay.

Here, bulb outs would allow and encourage street performers and a more gracious lingering, a hub and way-finding for those entering the Polk Corridor. At the Plaza, protected from the noise and traffic of the busier Van Ness Gateway, street musicians and sidewalk food stands might make better use of the slower more leisurely paced Polk corridor foot traffic. To this end, the plan and guidelines provide an integrated tool kit of strategies and graphics to communicate a visual and material link between the Cable Car line and the Polk Street Corridor.  The existing stop at the Polk intersection is envisioned to be the pedestrian privileged extension of the larger Transit Hub to the west at Van Ness. This location would be the logical place to disembark for those not continuing on to transit points north or south or West.  We propose a Polk -centered Plaza that would allow tour buses to park and unload or reload their camera classed cargos. Here, the bike paths and enhanced crosswalks would clearly signal a place for people, where cars are guests to be tolerated and accommodated, but not prioritized. This would be a place to begin exploring the Neighborhood and its restaurants and famous bars, or, a starting point to walking down to the Civic Arts Center along Polk. All without compromising the main thoroughfare of commuters as they might proceed on to the Rapid Transit Options further west at the main turn-around on the same block.

A Great Cable Car Terminus and Polk Plaza Benefiting the Whole Community

The intent of this vision plan, and the illustrations included within, is to describe a possible future. It recognizes that this change will take coordinated efforts of multiple agencies and a large capital investment that is beyond the capacity of any one of the many community voices that have helped create and propel its direction.  The total vision described here concentrates on the Van Ness Station point, but has implications for change that extend to blocks west and east that will enable that infrastructural change.  Traffic will need to be organized through striping and right turn lane only signs, or directive signaling for trucks and other special vehicles, one block west of Van Ness for those traveling east to allow for the enlargements of the terminus platform proposed here. At this Polk Street Gateway, bulb-outs and traffic calming intersection upgrades and super graphics are used in conjunction with furnishings, lighting, bollards and other described amenities to create a very different and exceptional intersection.  The intent, as illustrated here, is to ensure that the other circulation systems, be they vehicular, bicycle, or pedestrian, will all arrive on this block to understand it clearly as a pedestrian oriented precinct.

The public realm is the place where we need to be making these major investments on behalf of the people. It is the goal of this Vision Plan process to allow the people to speak in one voice towards actualizing change in those areas of the public realm that most directly affect them and have the greatest chance of doing the most widely distributed good.  These are expensive things to realize and expensive places change, but first we must know how to ask for what we want and need.  It is the hope of this Vision Document that that voice is clear and the goal is well defined – such that it might next be actualized.