Streetsblog San Francisco

SF Bike Coalition staffers enjoy the partially-completed JFK bikeway. Photo: SFBC/Flickr

Bike network expansions are going in at a rapid clip so far this spring. In Golden Gate Park, parking-protected bike lanes on John F. Kennedy Drive are mostly finished on the stretch in front of the Conservatory of Flowers, and drivers already seem to be picking up on the new parking arrangement.

Progress on new bike lanes connecting eastern neighborhoods continues on Bayshore Boulevard, Eastern Cesar Chavez Street, and Cargo Way. Folsom Street in the Mission has also been re-paved, and the SFMTA said bike lanes should be striped there soon.

New buffered bike lanes are almost finished on Bayshore. Photos: Aaron Bialick

On Bayshore Boulevard, the SFMTA is striping buffered bike lanes similar to the recent Caltrans project on Sloat Boulevard, reclaiming a roughly 9-foot travel lane for bicycle traffic. In the coming weeks, the street markings should create a safer bicycling connection and calm traffic between Cesar Chavez at the 101 Highway south to Silver Avenue.

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Fell Street looking west from Divisadero. Images: SFMTA

The SFMTA revealed the design [PDF] for protected bike lanes on three blocks of Fell and Oak Streets at an open house on Saturday. The plan would create a safer connection from the Panhandle to the Wiggle by installing a one-way buffered bike lane on each street, partially separated from motor traffic by planters. The proposal would also paint green markings where bike traffic merges with turning motor traffic, re-calibrate the traffic signals for 20 MPH movement, construct pedestrian bulb-outs and zebra-striped crosswalks, and add angled car parking spaces (mostly on Baker Street) to replace over half of those removed to make way for the bikeways.

Leah Shahum, executive director of the SF Bicycle Coalition, said the organization is “encouraged to see the city officially proposing wider, physically separated bikeways on Fell and Oak Streets” and “grateful to see that the design includes many new corner, sidewalk bulbouts that will make it easier and safer for people to walk across these intimidating streets.”

“We believe the designs shared at the community workshop should move forward and be implemented to make it safer for the thousands of people who bike this corridor every day,” she said.

Although in January the SFMTA set the implementation timeline for next winter, staff said it has again been pushed back until spring, almost a year later than the city originally predicted. The SFMTA asserts that the project is on schedule according to the new timeline.

The plan uses green pavement treatments to emphasize a number of bike markings, including bike boxes, ”super” sharrows where bikes and cars mix, and bike lane “entrances” at the beginning of each block. The approach at the intersection of Fell and Divisadero Streets, where green markings have already been added to reduce conflicts with drivers queuing up for the Arco gas station, would remain mostly as it is, though a bike box would be added.

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A rendering of what a protected bikeway on Fell could look like. Image: RG Architecture for SFBC

The SFMTA will reveal the proposed design for protected bike lanes on Fell and Oak Streets tomorrow, and supporters need to make their voices heard to ensure the agency doesn’t water the project down or it delay it any further.

The project was significantly delayed after the SFMTA set out to replace some of the free curbside car parking that would make way for the bike lanes. Construction is now slated for the winter, but a small group of vocal opponents are still pushing against major safety improvements for this crucial bicycle connector.

SFMTA staff will present a design for the project tomorrow, but could still make minor changes based on the input they receive at the charette. (See here for designs presented at the last workshop.)

The open house will be held tomorrow from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the San Francisco Day School, located at 350 Masonic Avenue (at Golden Gate).

The bike lane and the parking lane will soon swap sides around this ladder-shaped striping, which outlines the future buffer zone of the JFK Drive bikeway. Photos: Aaron Bialick

Crews have placed preliminary road markings for the coming re-design of JFK Drive in front of the Conservatory of Flowers.

Next month, JFK will become the first street in San Francisco where cyclists are protected from moving traffic by parked cars. The markings, for the time being, give bicyclists a teaser of how the protected bikeway will look, with the traffic pattern remaining the same for now.

Over the past few weeks, crews have been adjusting storm drains, adding curb ramps, and removing road stripes on JFK in preparation for the re-design. The project should be completed just before the city’s first on-street, two-way protected bikeway debuts in the southeastern neighborhoods.

See more photos after the break.

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Preliminary markings are already making room for bike commuters on Cesar Chavez just east of the Evans Street intersection. Photo: SFBC/Flickr

Two bike corridors connecting the city’s southeastern neighborhoods should be safer after crews finish constructing buffered bike lanes on eastern Cesar Chavez Street and a two-way protected bikeway on Cargo Way.

Bike commuters are already enjoying more room on a section of eastern Cesar Chavez, where car parking has been cleared and preliminary striping put on the ground, as shown in photos posted by the SF Bike Coalition yesterday. The SFMTA writes on its Livable Streets Facebook page that the construction is only in its first phase. The plan for the Evans Street intersection, which recently cleared a public hearing, must still be approved by the SFMTA Board of Directors on April 3 before it is implemented.

The project will also include green pavement treatments and soft-hit posts separating the bike lanes and will be completed some time in the summer, according to the SFMTA’s latest report [PDF] to the SF Bicycle Advisory Committee.

Photo: Mark Dreger, San Franciscoize

Just to the southeast, crews are building a two-way protected bikeway linking Third Steet to Hunter’s Point and Heron’s Head Park. The project, led by the Port of San Francisco, will include a chain-link fence separating the bikeway from motor traffic as well as green pavement treatments and bicycle traffic signals. The SFMTA report says the bikeway will be completed in May.

Read more about Cargo Way at San Franciscoize, and check out more photos of both projects after the break.

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On their ride home from a Valentine’s Day dinner, Ian Long and Johanna Weaver were harassed by an angry driver and allegedly threatened by a police officer who didn’t want to hear their story.

Long and Weaver were riding in the right-hand lane of Oak Street along the popular Wiggle bike route around 8 p.m. on February 14, when they say a Toyota Prius driver approached from behind and began honking before swerving in front of Weaver first and then Long. After the driver and the couple all turned right onto Scott Street (following the topography of the Wiggle), the two say the driver slammed on his brakes and forced Long to crash into the back of the car, causing injuries to his hands. The driver stayed at the scene, though Long said he was initially unresponsive to his questions.

The two officers who responded weren’t much more helpful, according to Long, Weaver, and at least two other witnesses. According to a video interview with the couple and Long’s roommate, who drove to the scene, San Francisco Northern District Police Officers Joshua Olson and Melvin Maunu interviewed the driver, but seemed reluctant to take testimony from the victims and other witnesses.

Long said that as he attempted to explain his side of the story, Olson interrupted him and threatened to throw him in jail “for vandalizing the vehicle,” even as Long’s finger bled “quite profusely.”

In fact, Long said he feared the officer would have arrested him had he not accepted medical attention from paramedics.

SFPD Northern Station Captain Ann Mannix says that although she hasn’t spoken with the officers about the incident, the story in the police report is very different. ”This is a case of one side having a completely different view from the other side,” she said.

Mannix doesn’t contest that the driver “behaved badly” on Oak Street, but she said the police report claims that Long appeared to follow the driver onto Scott and continue the confrontation. She said the driver claimed that Long “intentionally hit the car,” adding that “following too closely” is a traffic violation. Both the driver and Weaver, who said she saw the crash from behind, called the police.

But because the officers arrived late, Mannix said “tensions were pretty heated” when they got there. The crash happened in SFPD’s Park District, but officers from that station were tied up for unknown reasons, so Olson and Maunu were dispatched from the neighboring Northern District.

Alex Page was riding on Scott Street when he saw the crash, and he confirmed Long and Weaver’s description of events. “Investigation,” Page said, is ”too generous a word” to describe Olson’s efforts to interview witnesses. Page said the officer told him, “‘I don’t care what you have to say.’”

“He came in with serious bias, and even commanded his partner to cease taking the statement of the victim (the bicyclist) and considered the driver the victim of vandalism after about 10 seconds on the scene and speaking to zero witnesses, only the driver,” Page told Streetsblog.

However, the report, which cites a witness identified as a bicyclist, says eight or nine bicyclists surrounding the car were “yelling and banging on” it. Long and Weaver said they were only there to prevent the driver from fleeing the scene.

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The San Francisco Board of Supervisors today gave preliminary approval to what advocates call the strongest bicycle access legislation in the country. The ordinance [PDF], which would require downtown building managers to provide secure indoor bicycle parking for employees either on-site or nearby, is expected to receive final approval from the board next week and be signed into law 30 days after that.

Employee bike parking at San Francisco City Hall. Photo: Aaron Bialick

“Today’s vote is another way that San Francisco is proving itself to be a great place to do business and to bicycle,” said Leah Shahum, executive director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. ”The city took a significant step forward today in recognizing that more people bicycling benefits our city’s economy.”

“An impressive number of businesses ranging from law firms to tech companies to real estate firms are already making it easier for more of their employees to bike to work, and this legislation will help even more companies become more bike-friendly,” she added.

Supervisor John Avalos, who introduced the legislation, noted the broad support it enjoys, particularly from the Building Owners and Management Association (BOMA), which was involved early on in its development. All supervisors except for Carmen Chu and Sean Elsbernd voted in favor of the proposal.

“With many companies expressing the desire for bicycle parking and storage, BOMA recognizes the need to provide safe, secure parking for bicycling employees,” said BOMA President Meade Boutwell in a statement. ”Members of [BOMA] are concerned about the environment and promote the use of sustainable transportation options, including bicycles.”

BOMA’s support, noted Avalos, “says a lot about where we’ve come from in terms of how much cycling is accepted as a means of commuting in San Francisco.”

At a recent hearing on the proposal, SFBC Program Manager Marc Caswell pointed out that it will benefit far more than the “hundreds of thousands” of San Franciscans who already bike to work. It will also provide incentive for “the thousands of other people who are interested in biking to work, but are discouraged because they do not have a secure place to park their bike right now,” he said.

New York City's Prospect Park West parking-protected bike path. Photo copyright Dmitry Gudkov

New York City has raised the bar in recent years for rolling out bicycle improvements and reclaiming public space from automobiles. While San Franciscans have come to expect major delays for bike projects as the norm in their city, New York, the only American city more dense than SF, has zoomed ahead by adding roughly 20 miles of protected bike lanes since 2007, with more on the way. After each new NYC bikeway is built, injuries to all users decline and bicycling increases along the corridor.

How can San Francisco emulate New York’s success? In short: San Francisco’s public officials need to exert bold leadership to hasten a painstakingly slow planning process intended not so much to achieve specific goals, but to avoid rocking the boat. That was the general sentiment at a recent forum where local bike advocates popped questions at Paul Steely White, the executive director of Transportation Alternatives, New York’s leading advocacy organization for bicycling, walking, and transit.

“New York’s success, tenaciousness, vision, and drive have been guiding the way for other American cities,” San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (SFBC) Executive Director Leah Shahum told an audience at the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association last Thursday, where she and White discussed the state of the bicycling movement in the two cities.

“We all know that we talk about Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Berlin, and Barcelona as being these wonderful bicycling cities, and many getting better and better, but [with] that European model, you really lose people,” said Shahum. ”To have a great American city guiding the way in being a great bicycling space, and really reclaiming space from the automobile and creating public space for people, frankly, is making our job a lot easier in San Francisco.”

NYC DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan has earned a reputation for pursuing groundbreaking projects like the two-way bikeway on Prospect Park West, which produced major benefits and, despite high-profile resistance from a small group of politically-connected NIMBYs, has been largely embraced by the public.

“We’ve been very lucky to have such great leadership that has managed, nevertheless, to involve communities and be very democratic while at the same time acting swiftly and decisively to implement safer streets,” said White. “I think one way to cut through the red tape, and maybe some of the needless process, is to appeal to safety, and say that every day that a street goes without pedestrian or bike infrastructure is putting people in danger.”

“There’s enough data now to show that it’s simply inhumane not to add bike lanes and pedestrian infrastructure when there’s an opportunity,” he added.

One of the main barriers preventing San Francisco from experiencing the same “impressive explosion” of visible change, said Shahum, is that SF transportation officials and politicians like Mayor Ed Lee haven’t been as willing to commit to completing bike projects, and that New York planners don’t have “to go through as much process as we do in San Francisco.”

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The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition is asking members what kind of improvements they’d like to see to enhance safety and the public realm on Polk Street.

Image via SFBC

The SFBC writes in its newsletter this week that it ”is building off the SFMTA’s ThinkBike event in 2011, and developing concepts for an improved Polk Street.” The organization’s new survey asks members to weigh in on ideas like the vision for a protected bikeway in its Connecting the City campaign.

Polk, a key commercial corridor and connection to the waterfront, has received more attention lately as the city eyes improving bike access to the America’s Cup yacht races, which will be held over the next two summers. One much-needed improvement is a northbound contra-flow bike lane connecting to Market Street. Currently, the southernmost block between Market and Grove Street only permits one-way traffic.

“Polk Street connects thousands of San Franciscans to work, school, the waterfront and thriving commercial corridors from Market Street to the Bay,” writes the SFBC, noting that “a separated bikeway, calmed traffic and improved intersections” on the street would make it safer “for the large numbers of people walking and biking to the local businesses, shops and restaurants.”