This is what you know to understand the collapse of San Fran.
“Vehicular trips to downtown San Francisco are down 41% from 2019, the report indicated. The sluggish recovery has prompted some city officials and community leaders to reimagine how downtown spaces are used, a long-term move that Inrix transportation analyst Bob Pishue said is necessary to bring people back to the area.”
Then you have this, “Transit ridership in San Francisco is still 45% below pre-COVID levels, which researchers calculated to be the fourth-worst drop out of the cities named in the report. However, ridership in May was 2% higher than the end of last year.
People are not using their cars, not going on government buses, that explains the closed businesses, the support for criminals and mentally ill over employers and decent citizens. San Fran is collapsing—the numbers prove it.
Study: Downtown SF had worst traffic drop of 20 biggest in US
- By James Salazar, SF Examiner , 7/26/23 https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/business/downtown-sf-traffic-drop-post-covid-worst-of-20-major-cities/article_71eee976-2be7-11ee-bb48-bb92fa4b06f3.html
- No American downtown has lost more car traffic since the pandemic than San Francisco, a new report from the transportation analytics firm Inrix found.
Vehicular trips to downtown San Francisco are down 41% from 2019, the report indicated. The sluggish recovery has prompted some city officials and community leaders to reimagine how downtown spaces are used, a long-term move that Inrix transportation analyst Bob Pishue said is necessary to bring people back to the area.
“Revitalizing downtown, that’s not something you do in a year or two years. That is a strategy for a decade-plus, so it remains to be seen,” said Pishue. Some experts initially believed that downtowns would recover by last year, but Pishue added that “if you were to ask me over the next two, three years, I bet it stays pretty close to the same.”
Researchers aggregated data from more than 300 million vehicles and devices across 20 different metropolitan areas to evaluate return to office patterns. Eighteen of 20 downtowns named in the report sit well below their number of pre-pandemic vehicle trips, with only Phoenix and San Diego having more traffic than in 2019.
Transit ridership in San Francisco is still 45% below pre-COVID levels, which researchers calculated to be the fourth-worst drop out of the cities named in the report. However, ridership in May was 2% higher than the end of last year.
San Francisco had the third-highest shift to working from home between 2019 and 2021, with 37% of workers making the jump. A 2022 report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed that workers in computer, mathematical and legal occupations had the largest ability to shift to telecommuting at more than four times the rate of a typical U.S. worker.
Inrix found that workers in the information, finance and professional services (IFPS) make up 42% of The City’s workforce. Of those people, nearly two-thirds (64%) opt to work from home, the highest of all 20 downtown metropolitan areas researchers examined.
The group of union workers announced they secured a partner to help fundraise, though Anchor is moving toward selling off its assets next month
“I think the world we live in now is less focused on office buildings. It’s just to what degree do we sort of divorce from that,” said Pishue.
Even with the rise of telecommuting, downtowns remain pivotal to cities’ economic output, and that of the region and state.
City officials have stated that San Francisco accounted for more than a quarter of the Bay Area’s $250 billion gross domestic product. Prior to the pandemic, downtown supplied more than two-thirds of San Francisco’s jobs.
In 2021, downtown businesses generated half of San Francisco’s sales tax revenue and 95% of The City’s business tax revenue, which funds services such as public safety, transportation and cleaning.
Pishue said continuing to reach those benchmarks will require major cities to reevaluate their central business districts. While office buildings are still important to San Francisco’s future, he said there should also be cognizant efforts to make downtown a recreation hub that invites people from all over The City and Bay Area to spend their time and money.
“If you can go downtown, go to work for a few hours, go hit some arts and entertainment, go back to work then have a little nightlife there, I think that’ll actually have a pretty significant effect,” said Pishue.
