SPOILER ALERT: Our long-delayed, recently “transformed” Masonic Avenue has wide sidewalks AND narrow sidewalks.
In some cases, quite narrow. Check out the intersection with Fulton:
So with the red line I’m guessing where one private propertah parcel ends and the public sidewalk begins. See? It’s a driveway, and you’re allowed to park your ride on your driveway AFAIK.
Hey, what’s stopping a local property owner from parking vehicles even closer to the Masonic roadway? IDK, maybe the fear of getting keyed by passersby?
Or maybe the SFMTA wants peds to walk on the other side of the bench, milling through all those waiting for a delayed #43 Masonic? Again, IDK.
Anyway, see if you can figure out where the sidewalk borders on private property on this block.
Let’s look in the other direction, to the south:
See where the private shrubbery starts and stops?
Note that there seems to be plenty of room for the aesthetic, nonfunctional median.
Apparently, they did a lot of pipe work underground. So why wasn’t this project a quicker cheaper pipe project instead of something for a myriad of interests?
Here are some of those interests:
I want art!
I want exotic trees from the baking hot Great Valley, for a more SoCal look!
I want a median, to remind me of my tree-lined driveway to my summer place in Burgundy!
I want my own new traffic signal for my lightly-traveled Terrace – I don’t care if it needlessly impedes, 24-7, north-south traffic composed of pedestrians, bike riders, car drivers, and bus passengers!
We want an entire signal phase so that vehicle traffic can turn left ahead of pedestrians and into our shopping mall. We’ll even chip in a quarter million to get our way on this issue!
I want goofy-looking, custom wooden benches with powder-coated metal elements of this particular shade of blue!
It all ends up looking like this, like The Homer:
IMO.