The new plan for this block of Cesar Chavez, which includes an additional lane on the north side rather than a parking lane on the south side. Image: SF Dept. of Public Works.

Snowballs are piling up in hell. I’m about to defend car parking.

The rug has been pulled out from under those living on the nastiest block on Cesar Chavez between Hampshire and York, closest to the 101 highway ramps. With only a belated chance to weigh in on changes to the design that never underwent the public scrutiny of the rest of the plan, a decision to add a one-block westbound traffic lane and remove a parking lane on the south side to make room for a curbside bike lane was made at the behest of Caltrans (which is providing $5 million for the project).

Since 1997, the southernmost lane on that block has been a part-time bike lane, part-time parking lane — a compromise that never satisfied anyone. Through the recent five-year redesign process, the plan shifted to include a full-time bike lane next to a full-time parking lane. Residents who had opposed the bike lane back in the 90s applauded that plan.

Although the change was originally scheduled at an SFMTA engineering hearing on January 6 along with several other improvements on the street, it was postponed until February 17 because the legally required postings were not done on the affected block. However, several residents never got the message. They learned about the January hearing only the night before and hastily took off work to testify. I went to City Hall, too, to testify in their support while wearing full cyclist regalia.

Why should I care about these car parking spaces? Several reasons, in addition to the lousy hearing notification:

• The change is a bait and switch. Neighbors saw one design and were now being subjected to another, with no chance for input.
• It discredits the whole project’s planning  process. Our organization, CC Puede, always took care to involve affected neighbors in the discussion and work toward some consensus, even in the face of often pretty heated disagreement. No one who initiated the process or who lives in the affected block was consulted.
• Physically, the block in question has a narrow sidewalk, and parked cars would act as a buffer for pedestrians and residents. Several homes on that block have been hit by cars.
• Public transportation for that block is not good and may get worse. Now, the nearest bus is the #27-Bryant, and that may move two more blocks to Folsom Street under a proposal in the Transit Effectiveness Project. Walking to the #9-San Bruno involves the hair-raising navigation of the Hairball.

The reason for the change is even more infuriating. Last night, city engineers held a community meeting to explain the change and listen to neighbors vent their frustration. They said that Caltrans, which had zero presence at any of the meetings, demanded that the original plan to include two vehicle travel lanes in each direction (down from the existing three) be changed to keep the third westbound lane to prevent cars piling up on the freeway sometime in the next 25 years. Even during the construction now clogging Cesar Chavez, such pileups have failed to materialize. And even if they did, why should the potential temporary inconvenience of drivers passing through our neighborhoods take precedence over the safety of the people actually living there?

I appreciate the irony of getting on my high horse about traffic to defend parking. I hope the day will come when the residents of the affected block, who do seem to have garages in almost all of the buildings, won’t feel, as one resident said she did, trapped in their homes because they’re afraid to lose their parking space. And I would not advocate sacrificing the new bike lane to restore the parking. As mitigation, the new plan does include several trees and bollards on the block to act as buffers.

But what Caltrans has done is unconscionable. And the city agencies who have been visionary and supportive throughout the Cesar Chavez Street process failed to notify the community in time to let us agitate against this change. Finally, I fault myself for neglecting to check in on the process and nag the city officials for more details, once it seemed like smooth sailing, losing the chance to alert the opposition. I let myself and the community be blindsided.

Lesson learned: Never let up! And never trust the guys in charge.

Image via SFMTA. See full PDF here.

The Transportation Sustainability Program (TSP) would reform the city’s transportation practices in three key areas: by eliminating reliance on the automobile-centric measuring stick known as Level of Service (LOS), by instituting a system of development impact fees that fund sustainable transportation improvements, and expediting the review process for pedestrian, bicycle, and transit projects. The details are on the wonky side, but if the city delivers on these reforms, SF could be looking at a much more rapid build-out of transit corridors, bikeways, and pedestrian safety measures.

“This program is taking a look at how we manage, regulate, and mitigate for development as it relates to transportation to develop a process that’s more transparent, equitable, and meaningful, and provides a much better nexus between land use planning and transportation,” said SFMTA Director of Transportation Ed Reiskin.

SF Planning Department Assistant Director Alicia John-Bauptiste presented details [PDF] about the TSP Tuesday to the SFMTA Board of Directors. The program, currently planned for adoption in late 2013, is a coordinated effort between the SFMTA, the Planning Department, the SF County Transportation Authority, and the Office of Economic and Workforce Development.

One key component to the TSP is the Transportation Sustainability Fee (TSF), which would replace the current Transit Impact Development Fee (TIDF) that building developers pay to the SFMTA to account for infrastructure costs due to car trips and transit trips made by users of those buildings. The TSF would be based on offsetting car trips added by a project, and its revenues could only be spent according to a spending plan to directly fund projects that improve transit service and bicycle and pedestrian safety. Developers would receive discounts on the TSF for building less car parking, and it would apply to residential buildings (except affordable housing), which the TIDF doesn’t.

According to John-Bauptiste, many developments and transportation projects will also no longer be required to conduct an environmental impact report (EIR) as part of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), which would lead to major time and cost savings. “Individual projects will be relieved of having to study cumulative transportation impacts because the TSP EIR will study those impacts. Project-specific analysis will be limited to site design issues such as loading docks, curb cuts, and pedestrian and bicycle safety,” the presentation says.

Planners would also be relieved of having to measure projects using LOS, a tool that grades transportation projects based on how much they might slow down cars. LOS often calls for planners to take measures that “result in inconsistencies with achieving the city’s transit-first policies,” said John-Bauptiste.

A recent cartoon about LOS by Andy Singer.

Image: Andy Singer

“If what we’re concerned about is how quickly automobiles are moving through a particular intersection or roadway segment, a logical mitigation might be to expand roadway capacity, to add a lane of traffic,” said John-Bauptiste. “That is, first of all, often infeasible in a built-out, urban, dense environment such as San Francisco. It, secondly, can often be in contradiction to our policies supporting the bike network or pedestrian safety.”

Instead, the program would implement a new metric called Transit System Performance, which turns the LOS approach on its head by evaluating the transportation network holistically and focusing on reducing driving and improving conditions for walking, bicycling, and transit. This metric was developed as an alternative to LOS over recent years, and in 2009, San Francisco agencies successfully lobbied the state to allow cities to use alternative metrics.

“This is the latest in a long-running conversation about reconciling our practice of CEQA with our city’s wonderful adopted policies,” said Andy Thornley, policy director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. “We decided as a city quite a long time ago that we didn’t want to use LOS in CEQA.”

Under the TSP’s new environmental review system, projects would move so much faster that Reiskin said some improvements currently in development might get finished sooner by waiting until after the reforms are adopted.

“One of the main cost- and schedule-drivers of environmental review is transportation analysis, and that’s for any large development project,” said Reiskin. ”Somewhat ironically, that has created cost and schedule extensions for our own projects, even those that on the surface would appear to be very clearly imparting positive environmental impacts to the city — the Bike Plan is perhaps the poster child for that.”

As another example, he pointed to the Transit Effectiveness Project (TEP), which Mayor Ed Lee has said is his #1 priority for Muni. The SFMTA is now at the outset of a 21-month, $2 million environmental review process for the TEP, said Reiskin. The TEP “is really about speeding up transit — a very clearly environmentally-beneficial initiative, but because we currently are under a Level of Service methodology… the TEP is subject to a full environmental impact report,” he said, though he noted that the TSP reforms won’t come soon enough for the project to take advantage.

The SFMTA Board roundly praised the program, and directors Joél Ramos and Bruce Oka emphasized the urgent need to implement it. “Every month that we don’t have a policy like this in place, we stand to lose, who knows, millions of dollars,” said Ramos.

Director Malcolm Heinicke hailed the program as a “creative way to restructure at the more local level to meet our goals and still satisfy the state act.”

“There’s always complaints about the CEQA process. There’s always calls to reform it at the state level,” he said. “It’s impressive that someone is actually doing something about this rather than just throwing up their hands and saying, ‘CEQA screws up everything.’”

Aside from the program’s cost savings, the TSF is expected to generate $630 million over 20 years and leverage $820 million more in other funding. The streams of revenue would fund “a comprehensive and strictly regulated $1.4 billion plan targeted at highly-efficient transportation system improvements,” according to the SFMTA presentation. Every two years, the city would dedicate funds to projects like the Market Street redesign, Muni’s TEP, Bus Rapid Transit on Van Ness and Geary, regional improvements like Caltrain electrification, the bikeway network, and pedestrian improvements.

City staff are currently reaching out to stakeholders for the program. This month, they plan to introduce a legislative ordinance and begin conducting the program’s EIR, which should finish next summer. The program is set to be heard and adopted by the SF Board of Supervisors in fall of 2013.

A press release from the Mayor’s Office states:

Since 2006 when 4,862 bicycle riders were counted, San Francisco’s bike counts have increased an impressive 71 percent to 8,314 riders, and have increased 7 percent since 2010. Bike trips accounted for 3.5 percent of all trips in the City compared to two percent in 2000…

The 2011 Bicycle Count Report relied on a new methodology and more comprehensive approach which included American Community Survey findings, manual intersection counts, loop-detector automated corridor counts and Metropolitan Transportation Commission manual counts. The purpose of changing the methodology was to bring San Francisco’s data in line with national reporting standards.

“These counts back up what is apparent on our streets everyday — that San Franciscans love bicycling, and that bicycling has never been more popular,” San Francisco Bicycle Coalition Executive Director Leah Shahum said in a statement. “We look forward to continuing to work with city leaders, neighbors and local businesses to help even more people bicycle by connecting the city with safe and inviting crosstown bikeways, helping the city reach its goal of 20 percent of trips by bicycle by 2020.”

Construction on the JFK Drive bikeway in Golden Gate Park should begin next week, the SFMTA tells Streetsblog. The agency recently posted street plans [PDF] on the project website, showing how the geometry of the city’s first parking protected bike lane will work.

John F. Kennedy Drive is still without parking-protected bikeways. Photo: davidhanddotnet/Flickr

If construction does begin next week, it will mark tangible progress on a project that was initially supposed to be completed in December 2010. Even now, new delays seem to come each week. Following the initial delay, prompted by revisions to the project scope, implementation had been slated for December 2011. Then it was pushed back again one month.

That delay, an SFMTA planner said, was due to further revisions to the project design and concerns that construction could negatively impact museums during a peak season. An exact construction date didn’t surface until two weeks ago, when SFMTA spokesperson Paul Rose said the project would start last week. Today, work still has yet to begin, but Rose says it will start next week.

The reasons for the recent delays are unclear, but at a Pedestrian Safety Advisory Committee meeting last month, SFMTA planner Dustin White said staff has had to make last-minute modifications to assuage concerns raised by some disability advocates that the project could hinder wheelchair access to pedestrian pathways. The first phase of construction will involve adding a number of curb ramps, and a number of parking spots will be reserved for disabled placard holders, he said. Construction will also involve drainage improvements. The overall project is expected to take at least several weeks, and according to the latest update from transportation staffers it will be completed in March.

Stay tuned for updates as construction gets underway (or doesn’t). After the jump, see samples of the project drawings.

Click to enlarge.

A bike-share vendor demonstration at Civic Center in December 2010 (this is not necessarily what the system will look like). Photo: SFBC/Flickr

The system will include 500 bicycles at approximately 50 stations in downtown San Francisco, plus another 500 bikes and 50 stations located near Caltrain stations in Redwood City, Mountain View, Palo Alto, and San Jose. The scope is more ambitious than San Francisco’s previous proposal for bike-share, but smaller in scale than the world’s most successful systems.

“A large-scale citywide bike-share will make it easier for locals and visitors alike to see San Francisco by bike, and help our city reach the goal of 20 percent of trips by bike by 2020,” said San Francisco Bicycle Coalition Deputy Director Kit Hodge.

While the SFBC is looking forward to the pilot launch this summer, Hodge said it “also believe[s] that the pilot should be quickly expanded into a robust, big-enough-to-succeed phenomenon that have proven successful in Paris, China and London.”

SFMTA spokesperson Paul Rose said San Francisco stations will be “centered in SF’s employment- and transit-rich Downtown/SOMA corridor between the Financial District, Market Street and the Transbay and Caltrain terminals with connections at Market Street BART stations and the Ferry Terminal.”

The system will launch “just in time for America’s Cup,” said Rose, as a key component of the “People Plan” announced by Mayor Ed Lee last April. Bike-share will be part of the initiative to encourage the hundreds of thousands of spectators expected to travel to the Embarcadero this summer to get around by foot, transit, and by bike.

The July launch was pushed back a few months from its original spring schedule, but Rose says the SFMTA is “confident that all the work we’ve done over the last year to ensure that the project meets the needs of all of our project partners throughout the region will yield a better result when we deliver the pilot later this year.”

The program is not San Francisco’s first plan for bike-share — a previous plan for a meager pilot of 50 bikes was dropped in late 2009 when Clear Channel backed out of a partnership with the city, after which then-Mayor Gavin Newsom pledged to launch a larger system. Santa Clara County’s VTA was set to launch the region’s first bike-share in 2010, but delayed its own program until it could be integrated into this broader regional system. Agencies are currently selecting a vendor to operate the system.

Stay tuned to Streetsblog for more details as the program develops. For more information, check out the SFMTA’s website, which includes this presentation [PDF].

Map of San Francisco bike share areas. Specific locations are to be determined. Image: SFMTA

Regional locations for bike share stations along the Caltrain line.

Note: The discussion on the Fell and Oak bikeways begins at about 11:05.

Mayor Ed Lee and SFMTA Director Ed Reiskin (a.k.a. “the Eds”) faced questions about the city’s extensive delivery time on the Fell and Oak bikeway project at Google’s recent “Fireside Chat” forum. A questioner asked why the project is coming in 2013 rather than this year (though, as of last week, staff has moved the timeline up a few months to next winter).

Reiskin repeated the SFMTA’s assertion that it’s not a “delay” at all, and claimed that complaints about losing car parking are important enough to prolong safe bicycle access for the public. As for the mayor, he said he would “bring leadership” to the project and mentioned that he’d rode on the route in a caravan of public officials before pointing to progress on the long-awaited JFK Drive Bikeway (which, as of last weekend, still hadn’t started construction despite promises of starting in January).

Technically, the SFMTA is correct that Fell and Oak’s official delivery date was originally set for the fall of 2013 in project funding documents [PDF] approved last summer. But its public relations staff hadn’t openly announced that fact at public meetings or elsewhere, and expectations were still mostly set on this year based on the originally proposed date for a trial in June 2012, which Mayor Lee told Streetsblog a year ago he wanted to implement “quickly.”

When staff told Streetsblog recently that implementation would wait until some time in 2013, it was, by and large, news to most people who’ve been following the project. The main reason for the delay (what else to call it — a “timeline change”?) cited by the SFMTA is its decision to abandon what would have been an efficiently-delivered trial project in order to create a more permanent project that tries to appease pushback from car owners over 80 parking spots (despite the roughly 120 overnight paid spaces opened at an adjacent lot last May).

“We had been talking about trying to pilot something sooner, but we have run into a pretty significant amount of opposition in the directly impacted neighborhood… and we don’t want to steamroll over folks,” said Reiskin. “We’re taking the time to try to find ways in which we can mitigate the parking loss.”

Good public process and outreach are key in turning out the best project possible. But that’s not the same as letting the terms of public safety improvements be dictated by those who want to keep on receiving precious public space to store their private automobiles for free — a status quo bias which has “steamrolled” nearly everything else on the city’s streets for most of the past century.

H/T Streetsblog commenter Mike Sonn for the video.

San Francisco's first green bike box installed along with a left-turn bike lane on Scott Street two years ago. Photo: SFBC/Flickr

As bicycle traffic increases along the Wiggle, improved crosswalks and other potential traffic-calming measures could help assuage complaints police say they’ve heard from some residents that stop sign violators are making it a less comfortable place to walk. Though no significant bike-pedestrian crashes are known to have been reported, police have begun stepping up enforcement in the area against bike riders (and drivers, they say) who officers determine to be running stop signs and red lights.

“That’s not going to solve the problem,” says Morgan Fitzgibbons, co-founder of the Wigg Party, a group focused on promoting environmental sustainability in the neighborhoods around the Wiggle. He said rude or dangerous behavior is limited to a minority of bicycle riders, and while an education and outreach initiative on the streets would be a good idea, the root of the problem is that “these streets are simply designed for cars.”

Current stop sign laws, pointed out Fizgibbons, are tailored for car movement. While Idaho has allowed bicycle riders in that state to treat stop signs as yield signs with positive results for nearly 30 years, California requires both bicyclists and drivers to come to a full stop. Advocates say the Idaho approach — which still requires bicyclists to slow down and yield to others who have the right-of-way — simply legitimizes common practice, since bicycle riders can safely negotiate smaller intersections like those on the Wiggle without the need for a full stop, while also clarifying expectations between different users.

“If you start designing the streets for the use that it actually receives, then you’re going to engender an attitude of respect from cyclists,” said Fitzgibbons. “I think when you start making the Wiggle a known place [for bicycles], and create that identity around the Wiggle, then you can start holding the cyclists who use it to a higher standard.”

Last September, SFMTA planners looking to transform the Wiggle into a more walkable, liveable, and bikeable place sought inspiration from Dutch planners, who in recent decades have pioneered and refined street designs to safely accommodate people on foot, on bikes, and in cars.

Waller Street at Steiner on the Wiggle, where a temporary bike corral was installed for display in late 2009. Photo: SFBC/Flickr

During the two-day ThinkBike workshops, planners took a ride along three of the city’s main bike corridors: Market Street, Polk Street, and the Wiggle. Drawing on Dutch expertise, the groups sketched conceptual re-imaginings of the streets and listed recommendations for a more pedestrian- and bike-friendly environment. This year will see the first of those ideas [PDF] implemented on the Wiggle.

In the coming months, the SFMTA plans to install “green-backed” sharrows (seen already on Market Street at Van Ness) and continental crosswalks (a.k.a. “zebra-striped” — one was installed along Steiner last year) along the route from Steiner to Scott Streets, states an SFMTA report [PDF] submitted to the SF Bicycle Advisory Committee last week. The report also mentions that “wayfinding and traffic engineering improvements to the Market/Duboce/Buchanan intersection are under consideration.” The critical bikeway link on Fell and Oak Streets, connecting the Wiggle to the pathway on the Panhandle, will also come next winter — a few months sooner than recently reported — according to an SFMTA presentation.

"Green-backed" sharrows, also called "super sharrows", will be painted along the Wiggle in the coming months, the SFMTA says. Photo: Bryan Goebel

Come summer, the Church and Duboce Track Improvement project is expected to be completed with an exclusive green bike “channel” on Duboce near the Church intersection, connected by paint markings guiding bike riders across rail tracks in the intersection, said SFMTA planners. Green-backed sharrows will also be installed on Duboce to complement the others, and other improvements include new lighting, wider sidewalks and boarding islands, greening, new pavement treatments, sculptures, and more.

The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition “looks forward to immediate and longer-term improvements to the Wiggle, a critical biking pathway and a wonderfully vibrant residential and commercial area,” said deputy director Kit Hodge. “Communities in the Duboce Triangle, Lower Haight, Alamo Square Area have been making piece-meal improvements to the Wiggle area for years, which has improved local commercial corridors and enhanced the experience for those walking and biking.”

“The creative energy and desires for art and greening can be joined with long-supported traffic calming in the neighborhood to create an improved large-scale neighborhood — starting right now.”

Measures like raised and more-visible crosswalks, bulb-outs, reduced car traffic, and other traffic calming improvements could help make walking across streets on the Wiggle more comfortable. But until they come, police seem to be targeting behaviors that aren’t necessarily the most dangerous, particularly when compared to the danger from drivers. Bicycle commuter Stuart Krengel said he and a friend were ticketed by an officer last week for a stop sign violation while making a right turn onto Pierce Street from eastbound Page Street.

A rendering of Duboce at Church Street after the completion of the Track Improvement Project expected this summer. Image: RHAA via SFMTA

The officer, according to Krengel, told the riders they were required to put their foot down at the stop sign. ”We made a safe right turn, and got made an example of,” said Krengel, who claimed the officer dodged questions about the legitimacy of the citation and seemed unfamiliar with the Wiggle, but said police would be targeting stop sign violations there for six weeks. On Market Street, police were also spotted today “running a sting on cyclists running red lights,” according to a report from Uptown Almanac.

SFPD spokesperson Albie Esparza denied that police were targeting bicyclists for any particular period of time. “There is enforcement because of complaints from the community that bicyclists are running red lights, not stopping at stop signs,” he said. “It’s a safety effort. We want to make sure that people are aware that they can get a citation for not obeying the rules of the road.”

The SF Bicycle Coalition, said Hodge, believes “there shouldn’t be any question: pedestrian safety always comes first.” At the same time, the organization continues “to work with the city to prioritize the enforcement of the most dangerous behavior from all road users, ensuring that our streets are safe for everyone,” she said. ”We’re excited to see the city putting energy into this vibrant corridor, where a huge and growing number of people are biking and walking.”

The ThinkBike sketch of Scott Street between Page and Oak.

While Page and Pierce — the corner where Krengel was ticketed — isn’t technically on the Wiggle, Scott Street (one block over) could benefit from concepts sketched at ThinkBike. Many drivers and bicycle commuters move quickly through the somewhat wide intersection of Scott and Page, which lies next to a slope on Page — another popular bike route.

To calm Scott, ThinkBike planners recommended redesigning it as a “slow shared street” which doesn’t separate bikes and cars, but deters cut-through motor traffic and slows speeds using features like wider sidewalks with chicanes, more greening, and a planted traffic circle in the intersection (an idea that has been tried unsuccessfully on Page before).

Plans to implement the more substantial recommendations have yet to surface, but Fitzgibbons says the ThinkBike workshops and the initial projects coming out of it are encouraging. Still, he’ll wait until they’re on the ground before declaring progress.

“There’s often a gap between the good intentions of many people who work [at the SFMTA] and the implementation,” said Fitzgibbons. “What you end up having is a political leadership — namely the mayor, and on down from there — who instead of wanting to do the right thing and improving the city, they’re more concerned with taking everybody’s temperature.”

“When that’s your goal, you’re always going to run into people who aren’t on board. If that’s your tactic, you’re never going to get anything done.”

The SFMTA plans to implement guideway markings recommended at Duboce and Church Street.

A sketch of the intersection at Duboce, Steiner, and Sanchez Streets drawn by planners at ThinkBike.

An SFMTA report says staff is considering "wayfinding and traffic engineering improvements to the Market/Duboce/Buchanan intersection," where the gateway to the Wiggle lies.

SFMTA Board Chair Tom Nolan (left), Supervisor Scott Wiener (center), Mayor Ed Lee, and SFMTA Director of Transportation Ed Reiskin at an SFPark press conference. Photo: Mayor's Press Office/Flickr

But whether San Francisco will live up to its promise as a leader in sustainable transportation in the coming years depends on the political will of city leaders like Mayor Ed Lee and SFMTA Director Ed Reiskin to make bold improvements to our streets. Lasting change will come from policies like extending parking meter hours, consolidating bus stops, implementing a strong pedestrian safety action plan, and the swift build-out of safer, more comfortable bikeways to increase bicycle ridership.

“San Francisco has indeed never been so poised to leap ahead and build on the successes of the past few years by committing to and vigorously pursuing a sound strategy that will get the city to its goal of 20 percent of trips by bicycle by 2020,” said San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (SFBC) Deputy Director Kit Hodge. “San Francisco loves bicycling and is more ready than ever to take even bigger steps forward, beginning right now with the implementation of the crosstown bike routes in our Connecting the City vision.”

This month, the SFMTA approved its 2013 – 2018 Strategic Plan [PDF], setting out to reduce car use from 62 percent of all trips to 50 percent. And San Francisco’s goal of reaching 20 percent trips by bike by 2020 is uniquely ambitious among American cities. But for the reality to match the rhetoric, change will have to happen faster.

To use the example of bikeways and complete streets, the agency’s current rate of delivery on protected bike lanes doesn’t seem sufficient to meet the city’s targets. The SFMTA has struggled so far to keep up with the bold ten-year plan envisioned by the SFBC in its Connecting the City campaign, which calls for 100 miles of bikeways by 2020. The city’s first parking-protected bikeway is only expected to begin construction this week after a year of delay, and fixing the crucial bicycling link on just three blocks of Fell and Oak Streets will have taken over a year and a half from conception to implementation. Planners on that project have said the time required is partly due to the search for new car parking spots to make up for the spaces the bikeways will replace.

Meanwhile, New York City has built about twenty miles of protected bikeways in recent years, and aims to build up to ten more in Manhattan by 2013. Traffic injuries to all users have dropped as much as 35 percent on streets with protected bikeways, and the reallocation of space from traffic to pedestrians in Midtown has produced even more impressive safety gains. Overall, the city’s pedestrian fatalities have declined by 40 percent since 2001. In Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel quickly installed the Kinzie Street bikeway last summer, and wants to build 100 miles — the same number envisioned by SFBC within the decade — before his first term is over.

San Francisco’s SFPark program, while highly successful, could extend to more neighborhoods and cover additional times of day when it is sorely needed. The program is perhaps the most visibly noted accomplishment by the ITDP, but it is being tested by a backlash as the SFMTA seeks to expand it into the neighborhoods around Mission Bay. Whether neighbors have valid criticisms of the agency’s outreach or they just don’t want to pay for parking, SFPark manager Jay Primus announced this week that the agency will postpone taking the expansion plan before the SFMTA Board of Directors. Meanwhile, Mayor Lee has backed down on extending meter hours that would allow SFPark to be used most effectively. Eyes are on city leaders and staff to see how willing they are to stay the course with a groundbreaking, progressive and effective program.

San Francisco has made some important advances in sustainable transportation. But to meet — and perhaps exceed — the expectations set by the ITDP’s award, Mayor Lee and other leaders must commit to the changes San Francisco needs to achieve safer, more livable streets.

Bike commuters will continue to face dangerous conditions on Fell Street for at least another year. Photo: Aaron Bialick

Separated bikeways on Fell and Oak Streets won’t come until spring 2013 at the earliest, nearly a year later than originally proposed, the SFMTA told Streetsblog today.

SFMTA planner Dustin White said the delay largely comes from opposition from some car owners to the removal of curbside parking, which is leading staff to create more parking spaces on nearby streets as it plans the bikeways.

“We have started to receive feedback opposing the parking removal, and I anticipate that developing parking mitigations will be one of the most difficult aspects of building community support for the project,” said White. Before presenting a proposed design this spring, staff will be “working on refining intersection design options and seeking mitigations to the proposed parking loss” and fielding input from bicycle, pedestrian, and disability advisory committees, he said.

Although SFMTA Sustainable Streets Division Planner Mike Sallaberry said last June that the project could be fast-tracked as a trial and be on the ground as early as this June, White claimed the project was actually ahead of an original target of fall 2013 officially set in a funding grant document approved by the SF County Transportation Authority (SFCTA) [PDF]. “We don’t think the environmental review process will take as long” as originally envisioned in the SFCTA document, he said.

On top of environmental review, staff must complete detailed design, legislation, and acquire funding for construction before implementation, said White.

The bikeways, which would vastly improve a vital bicycling link on three blocks between the Wiggle route and the Panhandle, would replace up to 80 parking spaces depending on which design alternative is chosen. However, about 120 paid parking spaces were opened to the public last year at the adjacent lot at the Department of Motor Vehicles, and the city has a nearly forty-year-old Transit First Policy which generally says safe bicycle access should take precedence over car storage.

Mayor Ed Lee told Streetsblog's Bryan Goebel last February, "I want to get to that experiment on Fell Street quickly." San Franciscans will have waited at least two years since that statement for the city to make good on it. Photo: Christine Falvey

While Mayor Ed Lee‘s administration continues to let complaints from car owners impede safety improvements to city streets, San Francisco is falling farther behind cities like New York and Chicago when it comes to 21st Century bike infrastructure. New York has implemented about twenty miles of on-street protected bikeways in recent years; in no instance has the city delayed a project to make up for the loss of on-street parking. In Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel installed the Kinzie Street protected bikeway just days after entering office and plans to add 100 miles of protected bike lanes within four years.

The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition is urging supporters to call on Lee and SFMTA Director Ed Reiskin to take a stand behind the long-overdue project and implement it with haste in pursuit of the city’s official goal of reaching 20 percent of trips by bike by 2020.

“A safe separated bikeway on this key biking corridor can’t wait,” said SFBC Executive Director Leah Shahum. “We are urging the city to move this project forward more quickly, and ensure the safety of the thousands of San Franciscans who use this crosstown route daily.”

Image: SFPark

The SFPark program’s Mission Bay Parking Management Strategy is “meant to address the existing severe parking availability issues and to get ready for the future,” said SFPark Manager Jay Primus, who sat in on a three-hour hearing on the plan at City Hall today. “These are neighborhoods where we’re going to see the majority of the city’s growth in the years to come.”

The plan was approved for recommendation to the SFMTA Board of Directors, save for a few blocks which the hearing officers recommended for re-evaluation.

Included in the plan’s Mission Bay “Parkingshed” area are existing and planned developments that are drawing more and more commuters, including the University of California San Francisco, AT&T Park, and Caltrain stations at 22nd and Fourth Streets. It also encompasses impacted “buffer areas” like the Dogpatch and Potrero Hill neighborhoods, and SFPark expansions are also planned in the Mission around a park that’s set to replace a parking lot at 17th and Folsom Streets.

But among the complaints, residents defended subsidized free parking, claiming meters would impose an undue burden on drivers in areas with poor access to transit and more residential and industrial uses than retail.

“No doubt these are complex neighborhoods,” said Primus, “but they’re predominantly commercial, mixed-use PDR [production, distribution and repair] areas. That doesn’t mean that MTA should leave this parking utterly unmanaged. This is parking that is close to BART, Third Street light rail, and that businesses depend on for their economic vitality.”

But even some supporters of SFPark, like Potrero Boosters Neighborhood Association President Tony Kelley, criticized the SFMTA for a lack of outreach to neighbors.

“We do not have space for everybody in their car to drive to work, so we need parking management,” said Kelley, “but for god’s sake, if you’ve got 2,000 people in the neighborhood saying you haven’t talked to us, then maybe you need to talk to us.”

Primus defended the outreach efforts, saying staff does its best “to engage with every individual.”

“We’ve reached out to every large group we could in these areas,” said Primus. “It’s impossible to reach everyone. Judging by the meeting today, clearly, the word has gotten out there, and that’s great. This is part of a healthy process for SFMTA.”

“Sometimes you feel like you could send an engraved invitation and people would still say they’ve never heard about it,” said Cheryl Brinkman, a member of the SFMTA Board of Directors. She pointed out that even though flyers were put on every door in the outreach for the Masonic Avenue redesign project, some still complained it wasn’t enough.

“I think as city dwellers, we sometimes underestimate what people are willing to do for free parking,” she added.

Among the organizations supporting the plan are Livable City and the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, who sent letters to the SFMTA this week encouraging staff to move it forward.

“The expansion of metered spaces will provide the parking turnover that neighborhood-serving businesses need,” wrote Livable City Executive Director Tom Radulovich in his letter. “SFPark metering and pricing will also reduce cruising for parking in these neighborhoods. Cruising for parking generates traffic which delays Muni, produces greenhouse gas emissions, and distracted drivers making multiple turns endanger pedestrians and cyclists in these increasingly pedestrian- and cycling-oriented neighborhoods.”

But ending the subsidy of free parking rarely comes without a fight, and opponents seemed geared up to return when the plan goes before the SFMTA Board of Directors for final approval in February. Contrary to the doomsday predictions of critics, Primus warned that the plan’s approval will be crucial to the success of those neighborhoods.

“Mismanaging parking in this area is going to hold back the economic growth and vitality in the city,” said Primus, “and that would be a shame.”

We will be off for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Have a great weekend, and we will see you back here on Tuesday.

Photo: Howard Wong

As if squeezing onto the 30-Stockton wasn’t already undignifying enough, Muni riders on Stockton Street soon face a four-year detour to make room for the construction of the Central Subway project.

Beginning January 21, southbound buses on the 30 and 45 Muni lines will be detoured off of Stockton Street at Sutter Street — a change likely to exacerbate delays on one of the city’s most heavily-used transit corridors already notorious for its slow, overcrowded bus service.

The Central Subway, a $1.6 billion project which the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) says is necessary to serve the needs of transit demand along the Stockton/Fourth Street corridor, isn’t expected to open for at least eight more years. But while riders take a back seat during its construction, the agency has yet to indicate any interest in improving existing transit on the surface — one of the major criticisms leveled against the Central Subway over the years.

Last July, the San Francisco Civil Grand Jury blasted the project in a report calling on the SFMTA to redesign it “to better serve the San Francisco population.” The major problems cited included poor connectivity to major destinations and transit stations and a lack of ”plans to address existing problems on the Stockton corridor before project completion.”

“The problems have been noticeable, predictable, and no solutions have ever been offered,” said Howard Wong of Save Muni, a “volunteer group of transit experts, public transportation supporters” which has lobbied the SFMTA to pursue surface transit improvements as a more useful and cost-effective alternative to the Central Subway to meet transit needs on the corridor.

The 30-Stockton, which runs through San Francisco’s densest areas of Chinatown and Union Square, is widely known as one of the most overcrowded and slowest-moving buses in the city. A 2007 San Francisco Chronicle article cited its average speed at 3.6 mph between Market and Sutter Streets, and while more recent official data weren’t immediately available, service doesn’t seem to have improved. In the San Francisco Examiner’s recent ”Man vs. Muni” series, it was the first — and last — bus to be raced at a walking pace by transportation reporter Will Reisman. (Reisman won the second round.)

Although the Chinatown Community Development Center and other groups have voiced support for the Central Subway, some transit advocates say with or without the project, the more immediate needs of service on Stockton need attention.

“Stockton Street is the most hectic street in the city,” said Robert Boden of the San Francisco Transit Riders Union (SFTRU). “Buses have to compete with delivery trucks, cars, and pedestrians, making it nearly impossible for Muni to run reliable service. Hopefully SFMTA will implement speed improvements to ensure buses move easily through Chinatown, providing riders with quicker travel times.”

Bunched buses sit mired behind tour buses, taxis and private autos in Stockton Street's "bus only" lane in the Union Square shopping district. Photo: Aaron Bialick

A report [PDF] released by Save Muni in November of 2010 included five near-term transit improvements that they say could speed bus service on Stockton:

Improvement 1: Deploy part-time loaders during peak times. Loaders would check fares and otherwise facilitate bus boarding through the rear doors. By making better use of the rear doors and by encouraging people to move quickly to the backs of buses, loaders could speed up the loading and unloading process. Loaders, strategically positioned at the four or five most congested stops in Chinatown during the busiest times of the day, would significantly enhance Muni service between Union Street and the Stockton Street Tunnel.

Improvement 2: Deploy low-floor buses along Stockton Street. Low floor buses make loading easier, safer and significantly faster. The current situation is severe enough to warrant the immediate procurement and deployment of enough lowfloor buses to end the inordinate loading delays that currently plague the riders of the 8x, 30 and 45 lines.

Improvement 3: Enable Stockton Street buses to pre-empt traffic signals. This long overdue improvement would facilitate better and more reliable bus flow during all hours of the day.

Improvement 4: Create a Southbound transit-only lane on Kearny. This would enable the southbound 8x bus to be rerouted fromColumbus/Stockton/Fourth to Columbus/Kearny/Market/Fourth. Simplifying the southbound 8x routing in this manner would provide northeastern San Francisco with a faster and more direct connection to Market Street and the Financial District. By removing 8x riders and 8x buses from Stockton Street while maintaining a robust Stockton Street 30 and 45 line service, it would also improve bus flow and ease crowding on Stockton.

Improvement 5: In order to calm traffic, improve the pedestrian orientation of the street and facilitate the flow of Muni buses, consideration should be given to altering the configuration of Stockton as Market Street was successfully altered last year.

“It almost seems that the MTA is purposely avoiding solving these problems,” said Wong, “the very conventional management techniques that have been tried and true in transit systems throughout the United States and throughout the world.”

SFMTA spokesperson Paul Rose said the agency has evaluated surface improvements as an alternative to the Central Subway, but they were “rejected from further evaluation…because they had fewer benefits in terms of service reliability and greater impacts on parking and traffic.”

Detours starting January 21st. Image: SFMTA

“The SFMTA considered and reviewed a range of transportation alternatives to provide public transit service that enhances and preserves the social, physical and environment aspects of the communities to be served while minimizing potential negative impacts during construction and operation of the line,” he said. “Though the capital costs were less for a surface alternative than for a subway alternative, the surface alternatives only minimally met the project purpose and need and resulted in higher operation, maintenance costs and environmental impacts.”

But Wong said the Central Subway, which will only extend as far north as Chinatown eight years from now, won’t serve the bulk of the passengers that travel on the corridor from northern Chinatown, North Beach, Russian Hill, the Marina, and the Embarcadero.

“If they’re saying they’re never going to improve service for the bulk of the people in the northeast quadrant, then they’re not doing their job,” he said. “You have to have better, more dependable buses, because they’re not going to walk a mile or two to the Central Subway station to ride half a mile.”

The construction detour starting this month could add several minutes for riders as it reroutes buses onto Mason Street via Sutter, taking a sharp left onto Market and a right on Fifth Street all the way to the Caltrain station. Northbound buses will remain on their regular routes.

“Even a small change in a bus route can be confusing for riders at first,” said Boden of SFTRU. “Hopefully this temporary re-route will allow riders of the 30 and 45 to have reliable service by avoiding the construction area.”

In the meantime, measures to mitigate the transit impacts of the detour are limited to a supplemental shuttle for the 8x line which loops between Broadway and Kearny and SoMa. The shuttle ”will continue to operate down Stockton Street during peak service hours until later in the construction schedule,” said Rose.

However, the agency ultimately continues to rely on the Central Subway as the solution to the corridor’s problems.

“We think that the only reason trial programs haven’t been instituted is to create a sense of urgency to drain all the funds from the entire citywide Muni system to the Central Subway,” said Wong. “I think that’s disingenuous and dishonest to the ridership.”

The SFPD bills millions to the SFMTA each year for services like directing traffic at this recent visit from President Obama. But which services should the SFMTA be paying for? Photo: Steve Rhodes/Flickr

As the SFMTA struggles to provide reliable Muni service, little headway has been made in curbing the amount it spends on staff overtime and work orders issued to other departments.

Supervisors David Campos and David Chiu, who held a hearing on both issues yesterday, say the continued the lack of transparency and accountability is frustrating.

“We’ve been having this conversation as long as I’ve been here,” Chiu told SFMTA Chief Financial Officer Sonali Bose at yesterday’s Government Audit and Oversight Committee meeting, where the supervisors found little explanation as to why the agency has agreed to dole out ballooning sums of money to other city agencies for services in recent years.

“I almost feel like we’re wasting our time, at times, by having these hearings,” said Chiu. “We are not seeing results, but I hope with this new administration that that will change.”

“I think that the single biggest challenge that the MTA is facing,” said Campos, “is not a challenge of lack of funding, but is a challenge of mismanagement.”

The $62 million to be spent this year on frequently vague, inadequately documented work orders is down compared to the $66 million spent in FY09-10, a rate that has doubled in the past decade.  However, where exactly that money is going remains “a bit of a black hole,” said Chiu, and critics have scrutinized both the SFMTA and the agencies who are billing it.

“From my perspective, I just don’t understand why it’s been so difficult to get a better handle of what’s happening in the black box of $60 million-plus that are being spent on this,” he said.

In April of last year, an audit by the City Controller’s Office found weak oversight of the SFMTA’s payments to 25 departments including the Police Department, the City Attorney, the Department of Technology, and the Department of Public Works. Many of the agreements, according to the audit, did not include accurate descriptions of the services provided, proper signatures, or even a memorandum of understanding establishing fee rates and performance measurements.

Critics like then-Supervisor Bevan Dufty blasted the SFPD for collecting nearly $19 million from the cash-strapped SFMTA through excessive work orders for services like traffic enforcement, injury crashes, dignitary escorts, and directing traffic at special events.

The SFMTA made some progress in buckling down on work order procedures within the few months after the audit was released, said Tonia Lediju, the Director of Audits for the City Controller’s Office. The agency has since established MOUs with all departments which it pays to perform work, though many lack the proper signatures and charter-mandated performance standards.

“We’ve come a long way, but there’s still some way to go,” said Bose.

But procedures aside, the audit doesn’t address whether or not the SFMTA should be paying for the services in the first place, the supervisors argued.

“I don’t feel like this audit helps to clarify that big question,” said Chiu. “I feel like we’re focused on the trees and not the forest.”

When asked about the guidelines SFMTA staff uses to determine which work orders are appropriate, Bose said it generally agrees to any work order which the agency “is getting any value from.”

Reducing work orders would not only help balance the SFMTA’s budget, but also help fund services like free Muni for low-income youth, argued dozens of speakers from POWER, a social equity advocacy organization. Chiu agreed, pointing out that “over the next six weeks, the amount of money that will be spent by the city on work orders will be the equivalent of what it would cost to get free Muni in San Francisco.”

Another major budget-buster for the SFMTA is overtime costs, which are projected this year to nearly double the budgeted amount at $57 million, but the agency is only now developing an official policy aimed at curbing them.

Debra Johnson, the SFMTA’s Director of Administration, presented a plan [PPTX] to reduce overtime by addressing issues like vehicle breakdowns, special events, staff shortages, and under-budgeting. One major boon, she said, will be new part-time operators joining the work force as part of the new labor agreement reached in June. That should reduce the need for full-time operators to work overtime at peak hours.

Overall, the agency aims to cut overtime by 10 to 15 percent in the next fiscal year, said Johnson.

The supervisors were optimistic about reform under the new administration of Transportation Director Ed Reiskin, who brings a strong track record from his tenure as director of the Department of Public Works.

Reiskin, who was unable to attend the hearing due to a family emergency, said in an op-ed in the SF Examiner yesterday that he agrees overtime must be curbed but generally defended the validity of work orders.

But the SFMTA’s lack of accountability for controlling costs in recent years, the supervisors said, is to blame for its current budget crisis.

“In the private sector, if overtime costs continued to be as high as they are, someone would be held accountable and not have their job at this point,” said Chiu.

San Francisco will soon see its first parking-protected bikeway like this one on Chicago's Kinzie Street, which was installed less than 30 days after Mayor Rahm Emanuel entered office. Photo: Josh Koonce/Flickr

Update: An explanation for the delay of the JFK bikeway project was provided by SFMTA staff below.

Protected bikeways on John F. Kennedy Drive and eastern Cesar Chavez Street will arrive in January and March respectively, San Francisco transportation planners said this week.

The parking-protected bikeway on JFK in Golden Gate Park, previously slated to be installed this month, has been pushed back to January, according to an email update from SFMTA Livable Streets Division Planner Miriam Sorell. The reason for the delay, which is not the project’s first, was to mitigate construction impacts on the neighboring de Young Museum and California Academy of Sciences during a peak season, she said.

Delaying construction has also allowed the SFMTA to perform more outreach and “refine design details through additional meetings with stakeholders regarding concerns raised by members of the disability community and pedestrian safety advocates,” said Sorell.

On eastern Cesar Chavez Street, a bikeway separated from motor vehicles by soft-hit posts is also due to be installed in March, SFCTA Deputy Director for Policy and Planning Anna Laforte told the SFCTA Plans and Programs Committee yesterday. It will arrive the same month as a two-way bikeway on Cargo Way in Hunter’s Point.

Laforte also said the Cesar Chavez project, which was re-drawn after a previous iteration was dropped, will include colored pavement treatment at “conflict zones,” mainly at intersections.

Last weekend, the SFMTA also held a public workshop for the protected bikeway project on Fell and Oak Streets, drawing input from hundreds of attendees. That project is expected to be implemented by summer.

Photo: Mark Dreger/Flickr

SFMTA crews were out striping bike lanes on Portola Drive today from O’Shaughnessy Boulevard to St. Francis Circle. The new lanes complement those striped on the rest of the street in recent months.

Streetsblog reader and Portola resident Mark Dreger reported spotting the crews this morning, noting that the project will provide a bicycling connection “on a street with no good parallel alternative for bicycling.”

Portola, which runs alongside Twin Peaks, is a road fraught with harrowing high-speed car traffic. It’s also the only direct road connecting the west end of Market Street to the intersection of Sloat Boulevard and West Portal Avenue, also known as St. Francis Circle, in the Parkside neighborhood.

The new bike lanes should provide some room for a more comfortable ride. The reduced width of the other traffic lanes, noted Dreger, “should also serve to traffic calm the street a bit.”

The project is part [PDF] of the San Francisco Bike Plan currently being rolled out by the SFMTA. The lanes connect with a buffered bikeway striped on Laguna Honda Boulevard in February, which connects to the Inner Sunset and areas north.

More photos after the break.

Photo: Mark Dreger/Flickr

Photo: Mark Dreger/Flickr

Photo: Mark Dreger/Flickr

The T-Third Street Light Rail project's Central Subway extension has nearly tripled from its baseline cost. Photo: Marcin Wichary/Flickr

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) received a low score in an audit of its performance in delivering construction projects. Millions are reportedly wasted annually in delays and management inefficiencies.

“Some of these findings are very disturbing,” said Supervisor David Campos after hearing the report at today’s San Francisco County Transportation Authority (SFCTA) Board meeting. ”We have heard repeatedly how there are limited resources that the MTA has available, but this audit points out… that a big part of the problem is that we’re not doing enough with the resources we do have.”

As the SFMTA seeks new revenue sources to fill budget gaps for the coming fiscal years, it is considering unpopular fee increases like a hike in Muni fares, which was quickly taken off the table by the SFMTA Board of Directors yesterday.

The SFCTA Board, which approves much of the funding for the SFMTA’s capital projects, requested the audit from CGR Management Consultants.

The numbers reported were sobering. In the third quarter of 2010, 29 projects with a total baseline budget of $800 million had gone over-budget by an estimated $90 million, excluding the Central Subway, and averaged 592 days in delay.

The consultants estimated that 5 to 10 percent, or up to $15,000,000, of the SFMTA’s capital budget could be saved with better project execution. Among the causes for waste, they listed weak oversight of capital projects, inadequate staff reports to the SFMTA Board of Directors, and the board’s own leniency towards granting extra time and money to projects.

“What we found, in reporting to the SFMTA Board, and their own monitoring, is that they compare themselves to the approved budget, not the baseline budget,” said CGR Principal Jim Ayers. “They ought to be using [the baseline] as a benchmark for showing how well or not well they’re doing.”

The SFMTA officially “concurred” with 17 of the recommendations provided by the consulting firm and “partially concurred” with two. One of the recommendations that met with “partial” agreement concerned a reorganization of staff which SFMTA Director of Transportation Ed Reiskin said would hurt the agency’s flexibility. The other suggested using public affairs specialists to hold community outreach meetings rather than SFMTA staff, who are paid a higher premium.

“I believe it’s important that [the project managers] make the time available to spend engaging, to go to community meetings to understand what the concerns are, because ultimately, that person is going to be held accountable,” said Reiskin.

Reiskin also rebuffed some of the numbers in the report, arguing that some items categorized as “overruns” were actually project expansions, as in the case of the ongoing Duboce and Church rail replacement and streetscape project.

Still, the new transportation chief welcomed the audit as a guide for reform.

“It’s a great thing,” said Reiskin. “I’d be lying if I said we in departments love when folks come in and audit us, but often the results can be very helpful.”

Valencia Street's bike lanes are notoriously full of stopped taxis. Photo: bbond, MyBikeLane

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) is officially allowing taxi drivers to block bicycle lanes.

A memo [PDF] from Deputy Director of Taxi Services Christiane Hayashi and Accessible Services Manager Annette Williams says the agency is issuing bumper stickers to taxi drivers telling Parking Control Officers not to cite them.

John Han of Taxi Town SF first reported the story, writing that the move has been “more than a year in the making”:

The memo, signed by Deputy Director of Taxis Services Christiane Hayashi, says not only will the SFMTA issue the bumper stickers, but it has also issued “guidance” to the Parking Control Officers instructing them not to ticket taxi drivers who are actively loading or unloading in bike lanes.

Taxis stopped in bike lanes routinely endanger people on bikes in San Francisco, and legitimizing the practice could encourage more of it. When blocked, bicycle riders are typically forced into passing motor traffic or between parked cars, where drivers or taxi passengers may open doors in their path.

Condoning such a dangerous practice seems incongruous with the SFMTA’s goals of improving the safety of bicycling in the city.

Leah Shahum, executive director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, said the organization “has real concerns about the agency’s confusing policy regarding taxi pick-ups and drop-offs in bicycle lanes, which seems to invite conflict and unsafe conditions.”

“In order to reach the city’s official goal of 20 percent of trips by bicycle by 2020, we urge the SFMTA to develop a more coherent policy that prioritizes safe conditions for all road users, while also setting up more dedicated taxi stands for greater predictability,” she said. “Increased use of both bicycles and taxis will help the city meet its transit-first goals and can be complimentary of each other.”

The SFMTA’s decision, according to the memo, comes from “the need to provide access to the curb for taxi and paratransit van customers with disabilities.”

“The proliferation of new bicycle lanes throughout San Francisco has caused some confusion for taxi drivers and led, in some cases, to citations being issued while loading and unloading passengers in these bike lanes,” the memo states.

“We work hard to find workable solutions to address safety concerns for all modes of transportation in our scarce right-of-way,” said SFMTA spokesperson Paul Rose. ”This plan allows for the safe use of bike lanes, while at the same time, providing curb access for paratransit van and taxi customers with disabilities.”

Shahum said the SF Bicycle Coalition “is understanding of the SFMTA’s imperative to provide access for taxi and paratransit van customers with disabilities,” and that it “supports a flexible approach to assure full access for these road users as we build out the citywide bike network.”

However, the decision seems to have been made without an opportunity for public input. Cheryl Brinkman, a member of the SFMTA Board of Directors, said she’d heard discussion about the needs of disabled passengers, but not of the wider policy change. Rose, the SFMTA’s spokesperson, offered no comment on the public process.

The memo also includes a set of instructions for taxi drivers on how to “safely” stop in a bike lane, stressing the use of bike lanes as “an absolutely last resort” after looking “for other safe locations to stop (such as an open curb space, taxi stand, or side street).”

For physically separated bike lanes, like those on Market Street, the memo says taxis may only enter them to drop off “disabled or elderly customers who require direct access to the curb,” and pick-ups are only allowed when the dispatcher tells a driver that “the customer is disabled and must be picked up at a location that is next to a separated bike lane.”

Drivers are still forbidden from using them “for any other reason.”

The SFBC, Shahum said, is encouraged by measures included in the memo to mitigate the increased danger to bicycle riders. Taxi driver training must now include a “defensive driving training module specific to driving safely around people on bicycles and bike lane policy.”

The SFMTA will also issue decals “cautioning passengers to took for people on bicycles when exiting the vehicle to be affixed in the lower right hand corner of the rear window,” according to the memo.

Alternative measures to help accommodate the needs of both bicyclists and disabled passengers could include converting more car parking into taxi stands.

New York, a city comparable to San Francisco, prohibits [PDF, pg. 52] motor vehicles from stopping in bike lanes at all.

Bike lanes can also be raised up near the level of the curb, allowing passengers to access the curb without conflicting with bicycle traffic. This practice can be seen in successful cycling cities like Copenhagen, Denmark, and similar features will be included in the coming redesign of San Francisco’s Masonic Avenue.

Bikeways in Copenhagen are commonly near-level with the sidewalk and sometimes include buffer areas that make them easily accessible to passengers without endangering cyclists. Photo: Mikael Colville-Andersen, Copenhagenize

The Masonic Avenue redesign. Image: SFCTA

The Masonic Avenue Streetscape Project took another step forward today after the board of the San Francisco County Transportation Authority approved funding to conduct an environmental impact report (EIR). The board also gave the green light to funds to construct the city’s first on-street two-way protected bike lane on Cargo Way in Hunter’s Point.

The Masonic Avenue redesign will transform the dangerous corridor with traffic calming, greening, and other improvements for pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit. The project’s EIR will be completed by the SFMTA and the SF Planning Department by June 2012, according to memos accompanying the resolution passed by the SFCTA [PDF]. Once cleared, the SFMTA would approve the report as an addendum to the San Francisco Bicycle Plan before beginning a 12- to 18-month phase of “detailed design work” on the project.

The $41,000 required for the EIR, as well as the $94,000 for the Cargo Way bikeway construction, come from Prop K sales tax funds.

The SFCTA is still seeking funding for the project’s estimated $18 million construction, but potential sources include the Proposition B bond measure and grants from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and Caltrans, the agency memos state.

Residents will have to wait until at least 2014 for construction to begin on the Masonic redesign, which will bring the city’s first physically raised bike lane to the corridor.

Cargo Way, meanwhile, will see the city’s first two-way, on-street bikeway protected by a raised concrete barrier and fence, according to the memos. The bikeway will fill a gap in the San Francisco Bay Trail, connecting Third Street and existing bike lanes on Illinois to Heron Head’s Park and Hunters Point. It will be placed along the south side of the street to minimize conflicts with trucks accessing the north side.

The project was approved in the 2009 Bike Plan and is expected to be completed by March 2012.

The plan for a bi-directional, protected bikeway on Cargo Way. Image: SFCTA

Image: SFCTA

]]> http://sf.streetsblog.org/2011/10/25/funding-approved-for-masonic-eir-and-cargo-way-protected-bikeway/feed/ 15 http://sf.streetsblog.org/2011/10/07/jfk-bikeway-project-faces-one-last-hurdle-before-december-arrival/ http://sf.streetsblog.org/2011/10/07/jfk-bikeway-project-faces-one-last-hurdle-before-december-arrival/#comments Sat, 08 Oct 2011 00:15:56 +0000 Aaron Bialick http://sf.streetsblog.org/?p=274741 [...]]]>

Image: SFMTA

Anticipation is building for the arrival of San Francisco’s first parking-buffered cycle track along the eastern stretch of John F. Kennedy Drive in Golden Gate Park this December. The project received approval from the Golden Gate Park Concourse Authority on Wednesday, and the final step in its approval will come at a Recreation and Parks Commission hearing on October 20.

“We are happy to see such strong public support for the proposal for a dedicated bikeway on JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park from key city leaders as well as hundreds of citizens who have sent letters of support,” said San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (SFBC) Executive Director Leah Shahum. “We hope that the Recreation and Parks Commissioners will also prioritize safety and access in the park by making the street safer for the growing number of families, locals, and visitors who bicycle.”

Recreation and Parks General Manager Phil Ginsburg testified at Wednesday’s hearing in support of the project, and it also has the backing of District 1 Supervisor Eric Mar and San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee. Lee, who announced the project’s December arrival at Bike to Work Day, sent a letter [PDF] to the Concourse Authority lauding the project.

“The city must work to improve our streets with innovative designs in order to attract more people to this healthy, fun, low-cost transportation option,” wrote Lee in the letter. “Following significant public input, the SFMTA has developed designs for JFK Drive that will create San Francisco’s first parking-buffered cycle tracks, providing a protected space for bicyclists and attracting those who are less comfortable riding in traditional bicycle lanes.”

The design [PDF] proposed by the SFMTA features one-way cycle tracks on opposite sides of the road in each direction, separated from motor vehicles by a striped buffer of at least three feet along the entire length of the bikeway. A lane of parked cars would also provide a physical buffer where room is available. Safer conditions created by the project could invite many visitors who don’t currently feel comfortable biking outside the weekend motor vehicle closures.

The project faces some opposition from the neighboring de Young Museum and the California Academy of Sciences, who have come out publicly against it in favor of preserving car parking.

Just 5 percent of the existing 1,900 free car parking spaces that line the roads of eastern Golden Gate Park would be replaced by the redesign, according to the SFMTA website. That number doesn’t include the 800-space underground paid parking garage which has invited car traffic to congest the park and its adjacent neighborhoods since it opened.

The Academy’s opposition runs in sharp contrast with its image as a beacon of sustainability. Its stated mission involves “raising public awareness about the urgent problems” of sustainability and “minimizing its own environmental impact,” including in the area of transportation.

In spring of 2009, Academy of Sciences Chief Revenue Officer Don Skeoch even testified at a Concourse Authority hearing on local vehicle congestion that “Golden Gate Park is too car-friendly.”

Despite the broad public support for the project and the dissonance between the Academy’s recommendations and its stated commitment to sustainability, representatives from the two institutions are expected to testify at the final hearing.

The SFBC is urging supporters of the project to email Phil Ginsburg and to testify at the hearing on October 20 at 10:00 am at City Hall, Room 416.

Bicyclists still have to contend with a mess of private auto traffic on Market Street, especially below 5th Street. Photo: Myleen Hollero/Orange Photography

In a unanimous vote, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors this week passed Supervisor and mayoral candidate David Chiu’s resolution calling on the SFMTA to initiate more pilot projects on Market Street to further restrict private auto traffic and make it car-free on a trial basis in advance of the 2015 redesign. The 11 votes were a strong message to the SFMTA that it needs to take more immediate steps to calm private auto traffic on parts of Market Street that are a mess for Muni, and a danger to bicyclists and pedestrians.

The vote comes at a time when a growing of number electeds and mayoral candidates are backing a car-free Market Street. Asked to respond to the passage of the resolution, SFMTA spokesperson Paul Rose said the agency “is committed to making Market Street more efficient for Muni, safer for pedestrians and even more user-friendly for cyclists.”

“We are currently exploring pilots that can be used to test concepts down the road,” he said. Those options include deploying a traffic control officer to New Montgomery to “help coordinate the flow of pedestrians and vehicles” and installing a green right-turn arrow signal at New Montgomery on eastbound Market Street “which alternate when cars and pedestrians have the right of way.”

Drivers turning left onto Market from Montgomery (which turns into New Montgomery) are an ongoing problem, because they use 2nd as a cut-through to the Bay Bridge, creating a backup on Market that sometimes delays Muni all the way up to 6th Street.

Yesterday, a number of parking control officers (PCOs) had already been deployed to Market Street, including the congested 3rd/Kearny/Geary and New Montgomery intersections. At New Montgomery, some drivers had trouble complying with the PCO’s orders. I witnessed an angry SUV driver hop out of his vehicle in the middle of the intersection, and confront the PCO in a threatening manner. He backed down after an SFPD unit pulled up, but then nearly ran over a cop, and was ordered to pull over. I wasn’t able to witness the conclusion.

On Third Street at Market, “drivers are constantly running the red light,” one of the PCOs told me. “This is one of the worst intersections on Market.”

The two back to back signal lights for northbound traffic crossing Market and then Geary are sometimes confusing for drivers. The first light for Market turns red, while the light for Geary just behind it remains green for a few seconds. Seeing only the green, drivers sometimes dart across Market when the signal they should be obeying is actually red.

While deploying PCOs may help, the SFMTA’s response thus far doesn’t fully address the resolution, which states: “Additional near-term pilot projects on Market Street should test further diversions of private automobiles from Market Street in both directions as well as other strategies to reduce Muni delays and improve the safety and attractiveness of Market Street for people walking and bicycling, while still supporting the business and cultural environment.”

The resolution also notes that other pilots the SFMTA is considering “are not poised to make significant impacts on Muni performance.”

“It’s good to see the SFMTA taking some steps, but we need to see more pilots more quickly,” said Judson True, an aide to Chiu.

In reality, it would seem that only Mayor Ed Lee has the power to make changes happen more quickly on Market. Without his support, the SFMTA lacks resources and political power. During last week’s question-and-answer period at the Board of Supervisors, Lee gave an ambiguous answer to a question by Chiu on whether he supports more private auto restrictions on Market.

Lee said he’s behind finding ways to improve Market “for all users” and “supportive of initial trials and pilots,” but skirted around the issue of more immediate private auto restrictions. A phone call and email to the Mayor’s Press Office were not returned.

The Think Bike rendering for Polk Street envisions curbside green bikeways with bus-bulbs and other improvements for Muni riders.

The delegation of Dutch experts who were in San Francisco this week for a series of Think Bike workshops with city officials, bike advocates, transportation planners and others honed in on three critical corridors: Market Street between 5th and 9th, Polk Street between Broadway and Union streets, and The Wiggle.

What resulted from the day-long workshops, survey rides and discussions was a series of recommendations based on feedback from the Dutch experts and workshop participants. The ideas were presented at the final session Tuesday night, which was hosted by SFMTA Transportation Director Ed Reiskin and ended with a speech from Supervisor David Chiu.

On Market Street, the vision was a green carpet of “continuous, safe, attractive” bike lanes that separate cyclists and motor vehicles while reducing the speed and volume of private autos. The recommendations could be incorporated into the Better Market Street planning process, said Kit Hodge, the deputy director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition.

The SFBC has been pushing for a continuous ribbon of bikeways on Market for awhile now. On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors unanimously passed Chiu’s resolution calling on the SFMTA to implement more immediate pilot projects on Market Street to make it car-free ahead of a 2015 makeover.

The suggestion for Polk Street was curbside protected bike lanes, bus bulbs and other enhancements that “improves the pedestrian experience and enhances transit access.” Polk Street, a major north-south connection for cyclists, is in dire need of improved bike facilities. The ideas could be implemented in 2013 as part of a planned repaving.

Along The Wiggle, on Scott Street, the focus was on converting a few blocks into a “slow shared street,” with a planted traffic circle at the Page Street intersection. This would deter the cut-through traffic on Scott. There would also be sidewalk plantings for more greenery.

“With the Wiggle, I think it’s a very exciting vision that draws on the community conversations that have been happening for awhile in those neighborhoods and has a lot more emphasis on greenery and neighborhood traffic calming,” said Hodge.

The Think Bike workshops are also happening in other cities across the U.S., including Los Angeles. Damien at Streetsblog L.A. notes that one Dutch official was pretty excited about San Francisco’s revolutionary parklets program.

“What’s heartening about these ideas is nothing is crazy new. It’s definitely fresh thinking, and it was wonderful that people from different worlds could collaborate so well together, but I think it’s also a testament that a lot of neighborhood and community groups have been proposing a lot of these ideas for awhile,” said Hodge. “To see them put on paper in an even more elegant way was fun to watch.”

Download the Tuesday night presentations here: Market [pdf], Polk [pdf] and The Wiggle [pdf]. And if you didn’t catch Leah Shahum’s Streetsblog essay reflecting on her sabbatical in the Netherlands, and how a “Dutch Touch” can help San Francisco bicycle to greatness, by all means do. It’s a great piece.