Streetsblog San Francisco

On a sunny Sunday afternoon in the Mission, an energetic crowd filled a room with about half a dozen bikes propped up on stands. Among the crowd was Juana Teresa Tello, who was there to get some pro bono guidance on how to fix up a two-wheeler that will help her get to work, to school, to the grocery store, and around San Francisco.

The SF Bicycle Coalition's Chema Hernández Gil (right) works with community groups to organize "Bike Build Convivios." Photo: Natalie Gee, Chinese Progressive Association

“It’s exciting. It’s me learning a skill, an interest, and getting a new mode of transportation around the city,” said Tello, who works as a community organizer with local social justice advocacy group POWER. “It’s a community-led process, where you’re recycling bikes, you’re learning to fix them yourself so we can do this on our own.”

“It’s a learning curve,” she added.

The event, called “Bicis del Pueblo” (“Bikes for the People”), was one of the new “Bike Build Convivios” organized by the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition and community organizations like People Organizing to Demand Environmental & Economic Rights (PODER). At the second event last Sunday, several dozen people showed up at the Eric Quezada Center for Culture and Politics at Valencia and 16th Streets to learn how to fix up a bike and ride it safely.

Interest has been so intense the organizers have a hard time keeping up. “We actually don’t have enough bikes for everybody,” said Chema Hernández Gil, community organizer for the SFBC.

The SFBC and other organizations collect bikes that are donated or recovered by the police and unclaimed, and volunteer bike mechanics at the Convivios walk participants through the process of fixing it up, Hernández Gil explained. “We have these bicycles, we want to get them refurbished and into the hands of members of these community groups — people who need a way of getting from point A to point B, to work, to school,” he said.

Hernández Gil joined the SFBC last October as a bilingual community organizer to help bolster its efforts to reach out to Spanish-speaking residents. The Bike Build Convivios are one part of the organization’s campaign to create more programs in partnership with organizations in non-English-speaking communities. The SFBC also teaches bicycling classes and prints its Family Biking Guide in Spanish and Chinese, and the Convivios include an “Intro to Safe Biking” workshop in English and Spanish. Hernández Gil said the events will continue in the following months in neighborhoods including Civic Center, Excelsior, and Visitacion Valley.

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BART will implement another trial to allow bikes aboard trains during rush hours, the agency announced today. Unlike the first trial, which tested the policy change during four Fridays in August, the new trial will run during the entire work week from Monday, March 18, through Friday, March 22.

Photo: SFBC/Flickr

The survey results from the August trial yielded some promising findings in favor of allowing BART riders to bring bikes aboard, provided they still abide by other rules against blocking doors and squeezing onto crowded train cars. While there were some mixed messages from the survey, overall 90 percent of BART riders said they didn’t notice a difference during the trial period.

“Our first pilot offered us great insight, but Fridays in August tend to be slow, and another round of testing and customer feedback is required before permanent changes to our bike access policy are considered,” said BART Board President Tom Radulovich in a statement.

Advocates from the SF and East Bay Bike Coalitions, which held outreach campaigns to encourage bike-toting BART riders to use courtesy during the August pilot, applauded BART’s initiative to take the next step on making the long-overdue change and pledged to continue their education efforts.

“We heard from countless bike riders on both sides of the Bay that the August pilot opened up regional commuting by bike for both experienced bike riders and those wanting to give it a try for the first time,” said SFBC Executive Director Leah Shahum.

Lifting bike blackout periods is one measure BART is pursuing as part of its Bike Plan, which aims to double bike-to-BART ridership within the next ten years. BART Board member Robert Raburn noted in a statement that the policy change is an important step in “expanding access and parking for bicyclists encourages riders to ditch their cars, freeing up car parking spaces for those who have no other option than driving.”

“BART is installing more bike lockers and racks monitored by security cameras, but when bike parking is filled the remaining option is to bring the bicycle on board,” he added.

Mayor Ed Lee has made it clear that he has no plans to take leadership on funding San Francisco’s vision for making bicycling a mainstream mode of transportation.

Mayor Lee will bike to City Hall on Bike to Work Day, but he refuses to make the necessary investments to put SF's bike infrastructure on par with other leading cities. Photo: Aaron Bialick

During a question-and-answer session at yesterday’s Board of Supervisors meeting, Supervisor Eric Mar asked the mayor how he will help fund the SFMTA’s Draft Bicycle Strategy, a compass to guide the city toward its official goal of having 20 percent of trips by bike by 2020. Essentially, as the Bay Guardian put it, Mar’s question “is simply asking the mayor whether he will put his money where his mouth is.”

But in the mayor’s tepid, convoluted answer (reprinted below), he never says that SF needs to invest more in bicycling.

In other words, Lee said “No.” He’s not going to put his money where his mouth is. All those feel-good statements about building 100 miles of protected bike lanes? Apparently, Lee has no intention of following through.

Instead of embracing calls to allocate a relatively modest sum to help put SF on par with cities like New York and Chicago — which are getting safer streets and better economic outcomes out of their investments in bike infrastructure — Lee asserted that the city is already doing enough to encourage bicycling.

According to the Bike Strategy, the “20 percent” vision would require an investment of $500 million in infrastructure like protected bike lanes — which would still amount to less than 8 percent of the SFMTA’s capital spending, according the SF Bicycle Coalition. With a smaller investment of $200 million — the scenario deemed most realistic by the SFMTA — the city could reach a bike mode share of 8 to 10 percent by 2018. Currently, the agency only has $30 million in funding secured for bicycle improvements during that time period.

To put the $500 million citywide network of safe bicycle infrastructure in perspective with other SF transportation projects, the 1.7-mile Central Subway costs $1.6 billion, the replacement of Doyle Drive with the Presidio Parkway costs roughly $1 billion, and BART’s newly proposed expansion of Embarcadero and Montgomery Stations would cost an estimated $900 million. As Bikes Belong’s Martha Roskowski noted during her San Francisco visit last week, “It’s a drop in the bucket of the ‘great big spending’ of the city. It’s really a question of priorities.”

But in his statement, Mayor Lee failed to even acknowledge the need for increased investment in bicycling — a turnaround from his occasional pro-bike rhetoric, and a huge disappointment to San Franciscans who took it to heart.

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Eastern Cesar Chavez Street. Photo: SFBC/Flickr

Of all her trips pedaling around during her San Francisco visit, one of Martha Roskowski’s most harrowing was the stretch between the SFMTA building at Market Street and Van Ness Avenue to a venue at Folsom and Second Streets, where she was slated to speak about making cities more bike-friendly. “It was my little moment of, ‘Oh my god I’m late,’ and ‘I’m going to die,’” she said.

Downtown San Francisco is “still a pretty scary place to ride a bike,” said Roskowski. “I mean, if you have local knowledge, and if you’ve got the map, and you know exactly where to cut through, you can navigate this city. But we really need to do better in our cities. We can do better.”

Martha Roskowski. Photo: Jonathan Maus/Bike Portland

Roskowski is the director of the Bikes Belong Foundation’s Green Lane Project, an effort to facilitate partnerships between six American cities implementing protected bike lanes. The project’s goal, she says, is to give these cities a boost by sharing best planning practices and research on the benefits of protected bike lanes. In short, the idea is to help “good” bicycling cities become “great,” she said.

At a forum last night hosted by the SF Bicycle Coalition, Roskowski shared her thoughts on San Francisco’s progress compared with the five other Green Lane cities: Austin, Memphis, Portland, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. Praising the SFMTA’s recently-released Draft Bicycle Strategy, she noted San Francisco’s grand vision, which is hampered by time-consuming planning processes and a lack of commitment to fund bicycling.

“I think of all of our cities, you guys have the potential to really change the course of this city,” said Roskowski. “If you’re willing to stand up and say, ‘Yes we will do it.’ It will take some money — in the grand scheme of money, it is not astronomical amounts. If you look at the Bicycle Strategy, and you look at what the investment would take to get to the Amsterdam/Copenhagen level, it’s a drop in the bucket of the ‘great big spending’ of the city. It’s really a question of priorities, and we the people drive the priorities of our communities.”

That sentiment was echoed by SFMTA board member Joél Ramos at the forum. During his study trip to Copenhagen last year, funded by Bikes Belong, Ramos described the striking sight of an elderly couple bicycling arm-in-arm in a protected bikeway on a major thoroughfare. ”We can completely change the paradigm of the cycling experience with these cycle tracks,” he said.

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The SF Municipal Transportation Agency has mapped out a course that could make San Francisco the most bike-friendly city in the nation. All it needs now, it seems, is the political leadership to step up and fund what SFMTA Director Ed Reiskin has called the “most cost-effective investment we can make in moving people.”

Image: SFMTA

The SFMTA’s Draft Bicycle Strategy [PDF], presented to the agency’s board yesterday, lays out three rough scenarios for improvements to the city’s bicycle infrastructure, based on the amount of funding the city provides. While it doesn’t lay out a specific plan for bike improvements, the strategy serves as a compass to guide implementation of a connected network of protected bike lanes, bike boulevards, bike parking, a robust bike-share system, and campaigns to promote bicycling as a regular means of transportation.

To reach the city’s official goal of 20 percent of trips by bike by 2020, the SFMTA estimates it would have to implement the most ambitious of its three proposed scenarios, called the “System Build-Out.” It calls for the construction of 35 miles of new bicycle facilities, upgrading 200 miles of the existing bike network to “premium bicycle facilities,” bike improvements at 200 intersections, 50,000 new bike parking spaces, and a bike-share program with more than 300 stations.

The cost of investment — an estimated $500 million for infrastructure, plus $14 million annually for other programs — would require a steep increase in bicycle funding compared to the dismal levels under the status quo. According to the SF Bicycle Coalition, the SFMTA currently only allocates 0.46 percent of its capital spending to bicycling, and under the “System Build-Out” scenario, that number would still be less than 8 percent.

“Even those levels are amazingly reasonable,” said SFBC Executive Director Leah Shahum. “Funding has not kept pace with the tremendous growth of bicycling in San Francisco. This doesn’t sync up with the city’s ambitious and rightful goals to grow bicycling and make it a better transportation option for more people.”

Image: SFBC

“There has been an historic under-funding of bicycling in this city,” she added. “I think there’s clear political and public interest to increase those levels.”

There is significant backing for an aggressive increase in funding for bicycling improvements. In a press release, the SFBC shared statements of support from sf.citi – the SF Citizens Initiative for Technology and Innovation, a tech industry group — and SF Building and Construction Trades Council Secretary-Treasurer Michael Theriault, who said he’s “convinced that the bicycle should become a common everyday way for San Franciscans and visitors to move around the city, as jobs and housing opportunities grow, and I support a comprehensive strategy to create more and better bicycling options.”

Several members of the Board of Supervisors also voiced support for significant increases funding to realize the goals in the Bicycle Strategy. “It is time to step up to commit to becoming a great bicycling city,” said Board President David Chiu. ”San Francisco has already proven that a large and growing number of people want to bike for transportation. Looking ahead, we need to invest appropriately to support these and far more trips by bike because it is a smart investment in a healthier, greener, more accessible city.”

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Photo: Octoferret/Flickr

The Great Highway, the motorway that divides Ocean Beach from the Outer Sunset and Richmond, is set to get some bike lane and pedestrian improvements north of Lincoln Way as part of a nine-month re-paving project started this week by the Department of Public Works.

The 6-foot painted bike lanes planned between Lincoln and Cabrillo Street would be an addition to the original SF Bike Plan [PDF], which only called for bike lanes north of Cabrillo and along the length of Point Lobos Avenue. Last Friday, the SF Municipal Transportation Agency gave preliminary approval at a public hearing to extend the lanes south to Lincoln past Golden Gate Park, and the project is expected to receive final approval from the agency’s board of directors at an upcoming meeting.

While much more remains to be done to create a safer, less car-dominated Great Highway (see SPUR’s long-term vision, which includes fewer traffic lanes and a two-way, protected beach-side bikeway), the bike lanes and pedestrian refuge islands will provide some improvements in the meantime.

SF Bicycle Coalition Executive Director Leah Shahum praised the SFMTA’s adjustments to the Bike Plan, calling it “a great example of city staff working together to layer bicycling, walking, and traffic calming improvements into a repaving project, so that the benefits are tripled.”

“If this project is approved by the SFMTA Board of Directors, we will have a much more ‘complete street’ along this section of the now-intimidating Great Highway, and all road users will benefit,” she said.

The road space for the bike lanes will be created by narrowing the Great Highway’s four traffic lanes. Point Lobos Avenue, which runs by the Cliff House, will go on a road diet under the Bike Plan, with two of its four traffic lanes replaced with median space and a buffered bike lane in the northbound direction. The southbound, downhill traffic lane is only slated to receive sharrows.

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Dangerous, illegal right turns from Market Street onto the freeway at the intersection with Octavia Boulevard — the location with the most pedestrian and bicycle crashes in the city — may become less frequent after a long-awaited state decision that allows the city to use camera enforcement. The decision was announced by California Attorney General Kamala Harris last week.

Photo: Bryan Goebel

The SF Bicycle Coalition has pushed for camera enforcement  to reduce injuries at this location since 2007. “We are excited about this long-awaited decision that will make San Francisco’s most dangerous intersection safer,” said SFBC Executive Director Leah Shahum in a statement. “Over the past ten years, more than 50 people walking and biking have been injured at Market and Octavia. We urge the city to install the crucial safety improvement quickly and help ensure the safety of people walking and biking through this intersection.”

Injuries at Market and Octavia have increased drastically since the Central Freeway opened in 2005. Drivers making illegal right turns from eastbound Market on to the freeway across a bike lane and crosswalk are the primary cause, according to the SF Municipal Transportation Agency’s 2009-2011 Collision Report [PDF]. Thirty people were injured from 2009 to 2011, the report says, and violations continued even after a concrete barrier and extra signage were installed to deter violators.

“There have been some physical improvements to Market and Octavia, but this enforcement mechanism will really make people think twice about making that illegal turn,” Shahum told the SF Examiner yesterday.

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Buildings in San Francisco would be required to include more bicycle parking under legislation being developed by the Planning Department.

Bike parking at AirBnB's office. Photo: SFBC/Flickr

The proposal [PDF] would set consistent guidelines for the number of bike racks required for different types of buildings — covering both on-street bike parking for visitors or in an enclosed area for residents and workers. The Planning Department’s Kimia Haddadan told the Planning Commission last week that the move would bring SF’s standards more in line with cities like Portland, Vancouver, and New York.

Providing sufficient space to lock bicycles will be increasingly important for the city to attain its official goal of 20 percent of trips by bike by 2020. “Clearly these bike parking amendments are a great way to show the ability for someone to ride to and from work, play, shopping, and whatever it might be,” said Marc Caswell, program manager for the SF Bicycle Coalition. “Bike parking is obviously a very important component to the bike network beyond simply bike lanes. With approximately 86,000 bicycle trips each day, and approximately only 3,000 sidewalk racks currently in existence, these people need a safe and convenient place to park their bikes.”

Haddadan said the proposal would be the city’s first “holistic update” to its bike parking requirements since they were first adopted for city-owned and leased buildings in 1996. They have been expanded “on a piecemeal basis” to most other types of buildings in the years since, which resulted in some inconsistencies in the planning code.

The proposed overhaul would apply to new construction and expansions of all types, with city-owned and -leased buildings and parking garages being required to retrofit existing facilities to conform to the new law. Bike parking requirements would continue to be set according to a building’s size and type.

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A legal appeal filed against protected bike lanes and pedestrian safety upgrades on three blocks of Fell and Oak Streets was rejected unanimously by the Board of Supervisors yesterday. Construction on the project, currently underway the SF Municipal Transportation Agency beginning with the Fell Street protected bike lane, will not be halted by the appeal.

Photo: SFBC

Supervisors dismissed the opponents’ claims that the project required an environmental impact report (EIR) under the California Environmental Quality Act, which could have added a year or more to the project. In a statement, the SF Bicycle Coalition hailed the board “for voting to uphold the city’s thorough work, and against creating a precedent that curb extensions and bikeways require an unprecedented and unreasonable amount of environmental review.”

The appeal [PDF], largely seen as a gambit to slow the project, was filed by Mark Brennan, a developer who owns a building on Oak and Divisadero Street; Howard Chabner, a disability rights advocate; and Ted Loewenberg, president of the Haight-Ashbury Improvement Association. Another appeal could be filed at the state level, though it’s unclear if the opponents plan to do so.

At issue was the Planning Department’s determination that the project didn’t require an EIR under CEQA because it only includes “minor alterations” to existing streets and won’t remove traffic lanes, except for a part-time turning lane on Oak.

The project will re-purpose about 100 on-street car parking spaces from Fell and Oak to create protected bike lanes separated from motor traffic by concrete planters (while replacing about half of those spaces on nearby streets). Much of the striping work on Fell is already done.

Although CEQA doesn’t require an EIR for any of the changes in the project, since they’re considered “minor alterations” to the street, Chabner argued that they go beyond that definition when taken altogether, and that the impacts of a separate plan to overhaul nearby Masonic Boulevard should be considered as well.

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In Chicago, a new two-way, parking-protected bike lane is being constructed on downtown Dearborn Street, four months after it was announced. Photo: trapgosh/Flickr

Bicycling in San Francisco is getting better since the bicycle injunction was lifted in 2010, and concrete progress on projects like the critical Fell and Oak Street bikeway is very encouraging. But this week also made bicyclists in SF painfully aware that as the SF Municipal Transportation Agency gets closer to completing the projects in its Bike Plan, it will need to elevate its game to keep up with the nation’s leading cities. The upcoming release of the SFMTA’s Bicycle Strategy is a can’t-miss opportunity to pick up the pace.

The latest reminder that SF risks falling far behind the leading American cities came when bike advocates around the country got a look at Chicago’s new, protected two-way bike lane on downtown Dearborn Street — providing a 1.2-mile connection to another protected lane on Kinzie Street. It’s part of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s commitment to building 100 miles of protected lanes within his first four years of office. And it stands in contrast to the much slower roll-out of protected bike lanes, so far, under SF Mayor Ed Lee.

The SFMTA is planning a handful of similar projects on streets like Market, Second, and Polk, and getting improvements like that into the pipeline is hugely important. Still, those improvements are several years off from construction, as part of larger street makeovers. Meanwhile, cities like Chicago and New York are making much more rapid progress toward building continuous protected bike routes into their major job centers.

San Francisco could catch up, depending on the commitments the SFMTA makes in its upcoming Bicycle Strategy, which planners are expected to brief the agency’s board on in January. SFMTA staff says the strategy will lay out a network of priority routes for bike improvements that will help attain the city’s official goal of increasing bicycling’s share of all trips to 20 percent by 2020.

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