CEQA offers flexibility to localities, and once the City adopts a new standard, there is a high bar on the part of plaintiffs to challenge it if the City puts forth substantial evidence that it captures environmental impacts and does not conceal anything.

Delaying transit is defined as an impact by state law, it is not necessarily part of LOS analysis per se.

Delaying autos is a social impact.

The clock is ticking on your relevance, Rob.

-marc

Typical know-it-all screed from Marc. I just don't believe you bike people can dump LOS---which measures the amount of time traffic takes to get through intersections---without something plausible to measure traffic to take its place. And "trips generation" is unlikely to fill that bill. CEQA is a state law, and you can't simply dump the only serious way to measure the impact projects will have on traffic just because bikes don't burn fossil fuel.

The notion that installing bike lanes on busy streets by taking away street parking and traffic lanes is environmentally neutral is ridiculous, since that can easily make traffic a lot worse for everyone, including Muni passengers.

Marc talks about how the city was warned through the CAC process about proceeding without dealing with CEQA, but I didn't learn about that dissent until long after the litigation was underway and we say evidence of it when we assembled the administrative record with documents that told us about it. Why didn't he and Greg Hayes publicize their dissent? This was always one of the big problems with the Bicycle Plan process: even many progressives had no idea what was going on as the Plan was pushed through the process without proper review.

Any citizen has the right to go to court to compel compliance by government with the law when the executive runs amok. The courts must be made available to check excesses of the executive and legislature. Simply because government did not follow the law and your, our, project got delayed has no bearing on whether or not executive should be mandated to follow the law by the courts.

It is incumbent upon the City to act prudently and follow the law. They were warned about CEQA implications by many of us on the Bicycle Advisory Committee back in 2002 when this plan was originating. The BAC was dissolved in part, because the Powers That Be, The City Attorney, The MTA Bicycle Program, The Planning Department office of Major Environmental Analysis and the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, did not want to hear of LOS or CEQA because they were convinced of the righteousness of their mission if not CEQA.

Between the Bicycle Coalition and the BAC Chair Emily Drennan, the decision was made to silence any discussion of LOS reform and a dangerous conditions inspection system. One major regret of mine is signing onto the letter requesting dissolution of the BAC, that was a big mistake. We were right, they were wrong and they still don't realize how wrong they have been and the cumulative implications of that error. Cycling in San Francisco will suffer over the long term unless those responsible learn the lessons of their failure and are made to own their outcomes.

The City could have taken several steps between 2002 and 2004 to change the rules locally so that the Bicycle Plan would have been exempted from CEQA review. They could have changed section 31 of the San Francisco Administrative Code to provide the local equivalent of a statutory or categorical exemption. They could have directed the Planning Commission to direct the MEA to change their local guidelines and standards to functionally exempt removing auto lanes for bicycle or transit lanes from environmental review. But the City Attorney is so conservative that, unless your issue is same sex marriage, caution is never thrown to the legal wind.

It wasn't until 2005 when Gonzalez was gone and Mirkarimi came in that we wrote the resolution urging the Planning Commission to change the standards and that sat idle for a whole year. Even still, the Transportation Authority is just finalizing the ATG standard which we can expect to be stuck in litigation for years on end. I believe the injunction came down in the middle of budget adoption in 2006, and I urged supervisors to find $1m in the budget to dedicate to jump starting an EIR, but that did not happen and the EIR did not get started until, what, mid 2007?

But with full knowledge of the CEQA implications with the LOS standard in place, the route which was chosen was the General Rule Exclusion which has a very low bar to challenge in court and was successfully.

Whenever anyone whines that it is insane that bicycle lanes should be delayed because of environmental impacts when bicycles are pro-environment, we need to just laugh at them, in public, point at them too, to humiliate such purveyors of disingenuous snake oil. CEQA is what it is, and group think is not going to change that, raising and deploying political power to change the law or to marshall resources to quickly comply with it will.

This was a self-inflicted wound, and in reality the blood is on the hands of those who would posit themselves as leaders of San Francisco cyclists.

The Octavia boulevard plan likewise arose from the liberal/progressive and enviro nonprofit coalition. That the North Mission and SOMA got slated for a fresh freeway is bad enough, but the planning and engineering of a touch down at Market Street obviously failed to consider the problem adequately. Another self-inflicted running sore.

Now, we've got five years until CalTrans wants to replace the upper deck of the US 101 stub from I-80. Where is the organization arising to compel removal of the freeway back to those parking lots at Potrero and Division?

-marc

You, Rob Anderson, are responsible for San Francisco's inability to legally meet cyclists' most pressing and obvious safety needs--nobody else pushed for an injunction that outlaws peaceful change during the cycling revolution. Only you did. You. The resulting injuries and deaths at well-known problem spots are your fault.

Say what? My question is, Why are cyclists and motorists sharing a green light at this intersection? Why not do what the city's did at Fell and Masonic?

To me, the concept of a highway touchdown in the middle of a densely populated urban area is preposterous and nonsensical no matter how many cameras are installed or policemen posted. Therefore all other solutions to this right-turn dilemma sound like stop-gaps until we can remove the actual problem: the highway. Though a better stop gap in my mind would be a giant cement barrier on the market/octavia highway entrance, or a moving barrier (like those found at RR crossings) which opens only when the southbound octavia light is green and market street traffic is stopped.

Still, it does tell you to do something stupid and illegal. They may want to know their Liability and Risk.

As for a 'shared-lane' concept, I suppose we could always do an experiment. For three years, we could have a shared lane (with or without a legal Right). Then -- count up the casualties, and declare a "winner". (I only say this cuz I don't regularly use that intersection).

Why is there not more visual obstruction btw Market and the freeway on the eastbound side? You know, maybe some really large pieces of plywood. They could even paint on them "Hyway 101, turn Right at the bottom of the hill."

I don't suppose a 'bike bridge' over the intersection would work -- too steep on the downhill section from Octavia to Valencia I suppose. Too bad the lane couldn't go UNDER the freeway from Elgin onto McCoppin and Valencia. (Let the VCs take the lane on Market).
-FP

The only way to effectively combat the reckless cheaters is through 24/7 enforcement. Unless we want to put a cop there (on overtime), we need photo-enforcement.

Tragically, the blood of those 18 accidents lies with State Senator Leland Yee. How does he sleep at night? Someone needs to reintroduce the bill and put these victims' accounts in Yee's face.

As Jason says, the true solution is to remove the freeway back to Potrero. The stub serves no purpose, only blight and hazard.

If you haven't been in the city much, and get directions from Google Maps or your in-car GPS nav system, you are told to enter the freeway there. If you get there and see that it's no turn, you might freak and say screw it, I'm not getting lost in this city and make the illegal turn.

This could be fixed (well, "made better" at least) with signage pointing the way to the acceptable entrance of 101.

There's no accounting for pricks. They've always been here and always will. A right-turn camera is the best solution; please write scathing emails to State Senator Leland Yee.

There are larger questions that are important here. Why was this car driver even getting on the freeway? Why was BART or Caltrain not the better choice? Why did she have to go so far that she even needed a freeway--why wasn't her job or her activity closer by? The answers are obvious--public transport isn't convenient enough, gas is too cheap, we don't do enough to encourage people to live near where they work. But these are the fundamental issues that are deeper and more troubling, and if we don't solve them we are going to have a terrible time adapting to peak oil and preventing global warming.

As to making this intersection safer, a camera that catches the license plate of anyone making a right turn and a follow-up $1000 fine should do the trick.

But I'm puzzled as to why MTA is still suggesting a shared lane. Doesn't that imply that cars will be turning right? They're not considering allowing right turns, are they? And if not, I actually don't understand why a shared lane would be safer.

*sigh* confused.

Have the Central Freeway touch down at Van Ness, much as it does at Octavia now. Meanwhile, extend Fell and Oak to merge with Van Ness. For the bicyclists, use the Muni station at Market/Van Ness to create some kind of underpass-type bike lane.

Long term, 101 should be tunnel under Van Ness.

Or, well, not ALL parties, because it seems like while bike lanes sometimes lend themselves to novel hazards, such as this one, they DO reduce the psychological barrier to entry that novice cyclists feel. While I generally feel more comfortable being a part of traffic, rather than separated from it, I can very much understand that other cyclists would not.

What does anyone know about how well or not the stretch of Howard between 8th and 9th works? If you're unfamiliar with it, it works like this: the bike lane disappears and the right lane becomes a turn-only lane onto 9th. The second-from-the-right lane is a turn-okay lane and there are about a million sharrows painted onto it. I've never seen anything go wrong here, myself, but I do find the dance to be a stressful one. I'm sure drivers do, too, and that makes me also wonder if the gray-area here somehow makes the whole mess safer in the end. Any ideas?