Photo: pkingDesign

The mother of all views of the Golden Gate Bridge has to be the ride up and over Conzelman Road on the Marin headlands west of the bridge.

On Saturday morning, cyclists get the first shot at a group ride – without cars – up Conzelman kicking off at 9 a.m.   The ride celebrates the reopening of Upper-Conzelman Road as part of the initial phase of construction improvements along the Marin Headlands.

“This is really to say thank you to the bicyclists who have been so patient and wonderful during construction in this popular riding area,” said Alexandra Picavet, spokeswoman for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.  “We know many people love that ride.”

People will gather at 8:30 a.m. on the Northwest Bridge parking lot, where Conzelman intersects with Alexander Avenue at the north end of the bridge.   The park service will stop auto traffic at 9 a.m. to give bikes a 30 minute head start to shoot up to Hawk Hill overlook where there will be food, some free bike accessories and information booths about the next phase of improvement projects.

Keep in mind this ride is just as tough as ever, even with improvements.  It is steep and not for the novice rider trying their wheels for the first time.  The steep, single-lane downhill at Hawk Hill will give any newbie the shakes.

It is possible to see some of the fresh construction as far away as San Francisco.  A swath of bare mocha-colored hillside can be seen from across the bay, marking the major erosion protection portion of the project.

Picavet said decades of erosion compromised the road and created gullies 20-feet deep and 40-feet wide in some spots.  The federal Highways Administration restored the slope and the bare land was hydro-seeded with slurry of wood fiber and native plant seeds.  The seeds are protected under jute mats and will sprout next spring, she said.

This is only the first phase of four years of projects to rehabilitate 11 miles of historic roads and trails along the headlands.  In February the Northwest Bridge parking lot will be reconfigured and closed for 90 days.  And in April another section of Conzelman Road near McCullough Road will be closed for reconstruction to add a bike path, and realign the coastal trail to be a true coastal path closer to the ocean.

Bicycle tourists visiting Sausalito on rental bikes. Photo: Bike and Roll.

This picturesque city north of the Golden Gate Bridge has been jammed each summer season by a growing number of tourists who rent bicycles in San Francisco, ride across the bridge to shop and eat, then return to San Francisco by ferry. The numbers are estimated to run as high as 2,500 a day during the peak season, causing lines at the ferries, riding on sidewalks and clogging areas with bikes leaned against meters or left in parks while visitors meander the shops and restaurants.

"Bike rentals doubled a few years ago and caught us unaware and that was the year we hit a 10-year high in bike accidents,” said city Police Chief Scott Paulin.  The city has responded by increasing bike parking for the tourists - many of the racks donated by private bike rental companies - and adding controversial directional signs.   

Instead of adding fees, the 2010 bike parking plan calls for 400 bike parking spots, up from the current 105, which will require the removal five auto parking spaces near the ferry dock. The city will also reconfigure bike racks to move them away from the pedestrian promenade at the water’s edge.

The plan is temporary and could be changed if it isn’t working, Chief Paulin said. The added racks and traffic reconfiguration will cost the city about $8,000 and will be completed by May.

"If we are adding enough racks for 300 more bikes, can we reduce racks in other areas?" asked Linda Pfeifer, a councilwoman who expressed concerns about encouraging more bike parking downtown.

"Where are we going with this,” she asked of parking numbers. "We had 50 one year, then 100 and now 400. Where is this going, to 1,000?"

Councilman Mike Kelly argued that the additional parking, "is a great interim step. This is a really good thing. People are getting out of their cars and riding bikes. We’ve got to remind them that in Sausalito we are not decrying that but welcoming it."

And if the numbers of peddling tourists continue to clog the streets, can the bike rental companies be encouraged to bring trucks to pick up the bikes and drive them back to San Francisco, asked Councilwoman Carolyn Ford.

Jeff Sears, owner of Blazing Saddles bike rentals said that the trucks wouldn't be "the greenest thing to do.," but he said the companies are considering a service to truck bikes back to San Francisco.

Herb Weiner, a councilman who supports the increased bike racks, said the Golden Gate Ferry will add one more evening ferry April 7 between Sausalito and San Francisco to handle the growing crowds of bike riders waiting to head back by boat.

In the end, the increased number of racks prompted Ford and Pfeifer, who oppose bike parking in a nearby plaza, to ask that existing racks be removed from the Bank of America plaza, offsetting some of the additions near the ferry dock. But the effort failed on a 3-2 vote.  

Outside the meeting, Yoshi Tome, owner of Sushi Ran, shook his head over Ford and Pfeifer’s votes. "They just don’t get it. This is a new era," he said. "Bikes are the way to go. More and more people want to ride."

Photo: Bike and Roll San Francisco

As for the potential one-dollar tax to be imposed at the point of bike rental, that discussion "is still in the infant stage," according to Sausalito City Manager Adam Politzer. There has only been one meeting and "this is a negotiated activity. The council is not talking about imposing a fee."

To put the potential tax on rental bikes in perspective, the typical parking space might generate about $3,500 a year in fees and fines; the tax on rented bikes would generate that amount in two days. The charge would come at the point of rental, not at the parking site.

The proposed tax has pleased city merchants, but locals frustrated by bicycle traffic complain that rental bikes clog sidewalks and add to commute times for ferry riders camped out for hour-long waits as the bikes are off-loaded from the boats.

Last year the rental companies, ferry operators and city staff, along with the Marin County Bicycle Coalition (MCBC), worked to add ferries at non-commute times and racks for 420 bikes donated by the rental companies. But that didn’t appease critics. The council is likely to be split, 3-2, in favor of the added parking, but it’s unclear what will become of the one-dollar fee negotiation.

"Rental bike traffic has increased every year," said David Hoffman, MCBC spokesman. "We’re trying to accommodate all points of view and come up with a solution the city staff, bike rental companies and residents can live with. The problem is some in the city leadership and some local residents are not satisfied with the progress," he said.

Next month’s council discussion may also deal with recently added signs directing cyclists to bike parking, warning them not to park on sidewalks, and directing them to ride single file through town.

"The reality is cyclists will not be going away. This is a paradigm shift and it will be real and a significant portion of the city traffic. The city has to think about how to accommodate the new shift," Hoffman said.

Deb Hubsmith of MCBC addressing Public Works Asst. Chief Craig Tackaberry (far left). Photo by Tom Murphy.

The nearly half-mile-long Alto Tunnel was just one of three bike route improvement plans outlined in a newly released study, part of the Nonmotorized Transportation Pilot Program.

The other two routes are well known to any cyclists who've ridden north of Mill Valley. An existing path over Horse Hill skirts Highway 101 and twisty Camino Alto climbs 450 feet of hill above the tunnel and is a popular segment of weekend training loops for many riders. Improvements on these two routes would cost roughly $5 million each.

But some cyclists shy away from Camino Alto because of its narrow lanes, speeding cars and afternoon traffic jams.

Cyclists have dreamed of reopening the Alto Tunnel as the last barrier to a nearly flat connector between the two towns and a key link to a greenway stretching from the Golden Gate to Cloverdale.

The 16-foot-wide tunnel would link existing bike paths on both sides of the hill. Southern Pacific Railroad sealed the 2,172-foot passageway in 1971, dooming its redwood supports to rot in the stagnant, moist darkness. A cement plug filled 125-feet at one end in 1975 and in 1981 a southern portion collapsed, leaving engineers to guess at the true difficulty of reconstruction.

"Opening the Alto Tunnel has been a long-time goal because it represents the last link in what could be a 90-mile bike trail from Cloverdale to the Golden Gate Bridge," said Andy Peri, a spokesman for the Marin County Bicycle Coalition (MCBC).

Photo by Tom Murphy.

"One of our big concerns is the assumptions in the cost estimates," Peri said. In addition, the estimate of riders drew numbers on the Corte Madera side and Mill Valley side then halved them. "Why not use a range of numbers in the report, or include a recent study that found bike ridership has doubled in the last decade?" he said.

Liz Muller, whose Corte Madera home is atop the tunnel, said reopening the tunnel would "totally change the neighborhood. People like to walk their dogs and chat and you can't do that with bikes zipping by." She worried about years of construction noise and the risks of a tunnel collapse during construction.

But the head of MCBC, Deb Hubsmith, challenged the cost estimates. She said the report used Cal Park Hill Tunnel costs as a baseline, even though Cal Park, also a rail tunnel is twice as wide and will reopen in 2010 as a shared path with a commuter train line.

The lower range of the Alto Tunnel cost should be $22 million, not $40 million, she told Craig Tackaberry, assistant director of Marin County Dept. of Public Works. She also argued that the report fails to outline the estimate cost of $11.5 million the county may need to spend to stabilize the tunnel to protect nearby homes, whether it is reopened or not.

Blake Rothfuss, tunnel engineer from Jacobs Associates, defended his calculations. He said no one has been inside for 38 years, but he relied on an engineering report from that time, known costs for removing ballast from the current Cal Park Tunnel project and tunnel renovations in the Pacific Northwest with similar rock formations.

The county is accepting public comments on the draft feasibility study until January 11th and may choose to complete one, two or all of the projects, adopt partial improvements or shelve them.

Photo: Garmin Sliptstream

“I’m still crooked on a bike,” Zabriskie said during his Larkspur talk, a fundraiser for the bike safety charity Yield to Life, which he founded. Yield to Life attempts to humanize cyclists in the eyes of motorists and encourage drivers to give riders space on the road. 

He joked that when crowded by cars during rides he often thinks about the use of Tazer guns, but instead insists he just gives drivers a friendly wave.  He says he still wonders whether the Salt Lake City driver was thinking of him “as life, as a living, breathing person, rather than an obstacle in her way.”  If she had waited a split second for him to pass he would not have spent months in a wheelchair nor needed to use a walker during rehabilitation.

Zabriskie also spoke about lighter issues, saying that he’s a Battlestar Galactica fan and watches it to unwind, that German cyclist Jens Voigt, racing with Team CSC, knows more about American pop culture than anyone and that Zabriskie is inspired by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 1970s movie “Pumping Iron.”

Of Lance Armstrong, a former teammate from his US Postal days, Zabriskie said this year, with Armstrong’s return to racing, “He was like an uncle. He was the most relaxed I’ve seen him. He was the nicest I’ve seen and he talked to everyone.”

Zabriskie is the only American to win three stages of all three grand tour races consecutively: the Tour of Spain, Tour of Italy and Tour de France.  But says he still considers what he might have accomplished if he had not been struck.

As for the 2009 racing circuit, he described for the Larkspur crowd the lead up to a highly controversial Stage 14 in this year’s Tour de France. George Hincapie, a hugely popular American rider for Columbia-HTC, had a sufficient lead to take the yellow jersey for the stage, a first in the twilight of Hincapie’s career.  Zabriskie was among those in his Garmin team ordered to the front to pull back the break-away and with it, Hincapie.

Zabriskie said, “I saw a woman killed that day on the road, cut in half by a motorcycle. I was upset. At the end of the race I was told to go to the front and pull. I was not paying attention to George. We were not attacking his lead. I felt bad when I found out [Hincapie had lost his shot at the yellow jersey]. I cried. George had a few words for me, but we’re ok now.”

Zabriskie said that he plans to ride the Tour of California in May 2010, even though it conflicts with the Tour of Italy. His entire interview will be podcast by the event sponsors at Marincyclists.com.

The Bicycle Works grand opening celebration August 9. Flickr photo: cproppe

Less than a month after the grand opening Aug. 9, "Spokey" Godfrey and Jelani Bertoni have more than 70 members and provide classes on basic bike maintenance and repair free to members, and $10 to the public.

They set up in the old Breezer Bikes storefront, nestled on a busy bicycle corridor between Fairfax and San Anselmo. And the non-profit co-op bills itself as "a community hub for culture and technology."

Membership is $100 a year, giving members free use of bike tools daily between 11 a.m. and 7p.m., space to work and free advice from Godfrey and Bertoni. In addition, classes on an array of topics from basic how-to-change-a-flat to more sophisticated efforts are free to members, or $10 for the public.

"We wanted a non-profit workspace that allowed people to come together to work on bikes. A key issue is just giving people a place to have a good time," Godfrey says. "It's amazing to me to see the hunger in people to learn how to do this."

Photo by Tom Murphy.

On Monday afternoon, with some reggae playing in the background, co-op member Andrew Abballo of Fairfax had his mountain bike up on a work stand converting it to a single speed bike. And a woman came in to ask about her son volunteering.

Nearly 15 people showed up for the first class offered on conversion of bikes to accommodate electric-assisted motors.

Godfrey says they have arranged for a Boy Scout troop to come in to earn a bike repair merit badge.

Bertoni got interested in the notion of bicycle co-ops while he was at the University of California, Santa Cruz where he regularly used the bike co-op on campus of The Bike Church, a non-profit community bike shop in downtown Santa Cruz.

"I want to help make it easier for people to get around and to make the world a better place, one bike at a time," Bertoni says.

There are other bicycle co-ops in the Bay Area, including Berkeley's Missing Link and San Francisco's Bike Kitchen.

In the long-term, Godfrey says he and Bertoni hope to include a small café in the space and will retail some bicycles. Any profits from sales will be plowed back into the co-op for the benefit of members.

Flickr photo: crook inc

Cyclists know all too well the frustration of traffic lights that only change when cars activate a ground sensor, but are not tripped when bicycles arrive.

Traditional traffic signals come in two versions: fixed time lights for which everyone waits and demand-activated signals that use sensors that recognize when a car is waiting, usually through an electromagnetic sensor embedded in the pavement. As most city-dwelling bike riders know, if you hit a demand-activated light you either wait until a car arrives, press the pedestrian "walk" button to activate the signal or blow through the intersection on red. It's a safety issue for the county and groups that pushed the change, including the Marin County Bicycle Coalition.

The bike-friendly signal project will use three different types of sensors to spot waiting bicyclists, according to Pat Echols, Marin Public Works Senior Civil Engineer. Depending on the space and mechanics of a given intersection they will use an electromagnetic pavement sensor, similar to the ones for cars, or a wireless pavement sensor that uses microwaves to detect the bikes or lastly a real-time video camera that tells the traffic signal's computer that it sees a bicyclist waiting, according to Echols.

The video cameras do not take photos and are not used for traffic enforcement, but solely for spotting bikes or cars to activate a signal change, he said. These demand-to-activate sensors as they are known, may begin going in as early as this fall if all the approvals can be wrangled from each city and the state, according to Echols. But it is a tight window of time and the installation work may not start until next spring. But they are coming. Once underway the project should take two months to complete.

The County set aside $922,000 for the project, out of a $25 million federal pilot project to promote bicycling and walking in Marin County. Currently $20 million in projects (PDF) have been identified.

The lights include four intersections in Corte Madera, two in Fairfax, two in Larkspur, one in Marin City, two in Marinwood, three in Mill Valley, 10 in Novato, three in San Anselmo, two in San Rafael and two in Sausalito.

The California Highway Patrol was more accommodating.

It turns out most bicycle-involved collisions on the bridge between 2005 and 2007 were on the bicycle-exclusive west side and the most frequent time is the homebound commute period from 4p.m. to 5 p.m. Erin Komatsubara, a CHP spokesperson, found 14 collisions involving bicycles on the bridge and of those 10 were on the west side, which does not allow pedestrians. And while her statistics don’t break out workdays from weekends, the 4-5p.m. timing suggests commute times when people zip home at high speed and may ride with a mix of slower moving tourist riders.

Despite news reports linking the rise of bike rentals to a rise in bike crashes, the CHP numbers show declines in collisions until 2008. CHP reports seven collisions in 2005, but a drop to three in 2006 and four in 2007.  

Rayne Madison, who commutes daily to San Francisco across the bridge said, “If there are a lot of pedestrians on the bridge I ride slower and call out to them well in advance of passing them. I have had close encounters with runners who are wearing headphones and workers opening the doors in the towers unexpectedly,” she said. She complained about early morning “hammerheads” who ride fast, two abreast, and are more concerned with speed than anything else.

Tom Murphy, who commutes across the bridge said, “The bridge police are telling cyclists to share the paths with pedestrians, and that’s fine. But where’s the effort to tell pedestrians to stay to the right as they walk so that cyclists can get though safely?”

Donna Domino, who bikes the bridge for pleasure on weekends said, “Yes, the tourists on bikes are busy gawking but they’re tourists, for heaven sakes, and a lot of bikers think they’re Lance Armstrong. I think bikers should be more patient with tourists. I’ve been one and I’d probably be doing the same thing if I were traveling and there was a cool place to see on a bike.”

Amalia Pittier of Caracas, Venezuela spent a sunny day riding a rented bike across the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito with her two traveling companions, stopping to buy lunch and spend money shopping for gifts they will take home to family and friends. Little does this tourist know she's at the center of a local controversy because she and her friends are among the estimated 250,000 visitors annually who rent bikes to ride over the bridge for a day of sight-seeing before they climb on an evening ferry for the return trip.

Pittier said she and her friends Manuela and Herman had no trouble on the ride, though they found the bridge a "little crowded."

Recent us-versus-them toned newspaper reporting ridiculed visiting cyclists as "a plague of locusts" in the San Francisco Chronicle and Marin Independent Journal.  The stories whipped up heated responses from readers, both pro and con, but didn't shed much light on the issues.

The basic grievances are the bike tourists park bikes in doorways, scatter them in the parks and even ride on the sidewalks.  In addition,  scores of tourists overwhelm the Golden Gate Transit ferry service during rush hour while commuters cool their heels in San Francisco waiting up to 40 minutes for a boatload of bikers to disembark one by one. Riders have to haul their bikes up a set of narrow stairs, single file, and then roll them down the gangway.

But Sausalito garners benefits from the dollar-flashing foreigners. Sausalito, the primary destination of bike renters, was the only town in Marin County to have an increase in sales tax revenue in 2008, according to Daryll White of Bike & Roll, a San Francisco rental shop.

Flickr photo: jme_castro

Currie said the transit district is currently investigating a plan to overhaul the docks in San Francisco, including changes that would eliminate the need to carry bikes up ferry stairs before disembarking.  The entire project would take two years, she said.