Image: SFMTA

Advocates say a strong show of support is critical to ensure the project is approved without delay. Although agency staff won’t make a decision whether to recommend approval of the project to the SFMTA Board of Directors tomorrow, hearing officers will take comments from the public that could influence the project’s design details and implementation timetable.

The project would provide vital safety upgrades for bike travel on the three blocks linking the Panhandle and the Wiggle — currently fraught with danger from high-speed traffic that deters many would-be riders and sometimes leads to confrontations between drivers and cyclists.

Although the SFMTA says the project could be implemented no sooner than next spring, D5 Supervisor Christina Olague, a strong supporter and former president of the Planning Commission, told Streetsblog she thinks it can go in by this fall.

Completing environmental review on the project, she said, should be a top priority for the Planning Department. “America’s Cup was, and I think we’ve seen other huge projects that have been top priorities.”

“This creates jobs, and ultimately it creates safer pathways for cyclists, people who want to bicycle with their families, for pedestrians,” said Olague. “I think it’s something people will love once it’s in place.”

The hearing takes place tomorrow at 10 a.m. at City Hall in Room 416. You can also email staff at sustainable.streets@sfmta.com.

Image: sfbetterstreets.org

The San Francisco Better Streets Program launched a new website this week to provide a central source of information to help residents procure street improvements like traffic-calming measures, parklets, bike corrals, plantings, art installations, sidewalk fixtures, and permits for car-free events in their neighborhood.

The website, sfbetterstreets.org, “combines all the city’s guidelines, permit requirements, and resources for public space development onto one site, giving the user a handy step-by-step approach toward improving San Francisco’s streets,” the Planning Department said in a release.

Launched as a collaboration of the Planning Department, Department of Public Works, SF Public Utilities Commission, and the SFMTA, the site should help spread awareness of the street improvements available to residents and guide them through the city’s bureaucratic processes.

“Before this website was launched, this information wasn’t available. For someone to go through the process, someone would have to go and contact various departments around the city,” said Joanna Linsangan, communications manager for the Planning Department. “People may not think they have the ability to do so, but if they want to, they can apply for a parklet, put out bike racks or put out planters in their neighborhood, at their storefront, and we’re trying to give them all the information to make it happen.”

The site follows the spirit of the 2010 Better Streets Plan, which is aimed at streamlining the process for making improvements to the pedestrian environment. Linsangan said the site was launched during Small Business Week since merchants often show interest in improving the areas around their storefronts.

The website features alluring pages that explain the ins and outs of permit processes, maintenance regulations, planning codes, ways for residents to build neighborhood support for projects, funding sources, and more.

Image: sfbetterstreets.org

That could help city agencies more efficiently deliver improvements like sidewalk bulb-outs, pedestrian countdown signals, traffic circles, or even major street redesigns where they’re needed. There’s also information to help building developers understand the street improvements they’re required to make.

“The creation of this centralized website as a consolidated, concise portal will make understanding the options and navigating the process much easier for all users, not only developers and professionals but also individuals and community groups,” said Jane Martin, director of Plant SF, a group which promotes permeable landscaping on city streets. (Martin designed the city’s first residential parklet on Valencia Street.)

Image: sfbetterstreets.org

Easier access to information on permits for block parties and other street openings could make the process smoother for residents like Adam Greenfield of the Inner Sunset Park Neighbors. Greenfield, who helped organize the second annual Inner Sunset Street Fair last October with co-chair Chris Duderstadt, asked the SFMTA Board yesterday to explore the creation of a “new, nimble program” to facilitate more regular small-scale car-free events in the style of Sunday Streets. Greenfield and Duderstadt told the board that the bureaucratic hurdles — particularly the high fees — can be prohibitive to such community-building events.

Though some residents do manage to make their way through the process, the clarity provided by sfbetterstreets.org will hopefully encourage more residents to engage in it without demanding the kind of commitment shown by Greenfield and Duderstadt.

Greenfield said neighbors are eager to volunteer to help create a regular event called Inner Sunset Sundays in the vein of the more regular Sunday Streets events being held in the Mission this year. ”Sunday Streets has been a huge game-changer for the city, as have the Castro Plaza, parklets, and other new developments,” Greenfield told the board. ”One of the big reflections that we had at the end of” the street fair, however, “was once year is not enough to effectively build community. We need to bring people together in the streets more often so they become familiar with each other’s faces.”

The Inner Sunset Street Fair. Photo: Aaron Bialick

Supervisor Mark Farrell. Photo: Jennifer Low/Flickr

The committee was expected to approve recommendation of the proposal today, sending it to the full board for a vote next Tuesday. However, Farrell said that it was “absolutely inappropriate” for him vote on it today without feeling adequately informed, and that he still wouldn’t be ready in a week. Although the proposal received unanimous approval from the SFMTA Board of Directors today, the SFCTA committee decided to postpone its vote until its next meeting, in one month.

Staying updated on the project, said Farrell, “is a responsibility of mine, for sure, but it’s also a responsibility of the TA [staff].”

“In my opinion, it is very appropriate and, I think, necessary for all the supervisors and commissioners who get affected by this in their districts to be fully briefed on this before we’re asked to vote on any portion of this, even if it might be non-binding,” he said.

The Van Ness BRT design proposal would preserve the center median while allowing the use of right-door buses. Image: SFCTA

The proposal, widely praised by officials and advocates for combining the best features of two design alternatives, was publicly announced on April 27. Responding to Farrell’s complaints, SFCTA Deputy Director of Planning Tilly Chang said agency staff offered to brief the board members at their previous meeting on April 24. “Some did take us up, and some didn’t take us up,” she said.

She also noted that the project “has been out there” in the media, and staff made a presentation on the proposal to the committee today which they’ve given to neighborhood groups and at other public meetings. Today’s committee meeting agenda also included a report [PDF] on the design proposal and a memo [PDF], dated last Thursday, which provides background information.

Postponing the vote could potentially set the entire project back a month, as Chang said agency staff needs board approval before completing the remaining analysis needed on the proposal. She said the vote would not bind the agency to the design.

The project, currently expected to be completed by fall 2016, has seen numerous delays since it was first conceived in 2004. “The Federal Transit Administration, in particular, is very keen for us to essentially catch up, as we are behind on our schedule,” said Chang. “However, they do understand the need for a strong local process.”

A sample diagram of parking-protected bike lane guidelines.

The SFMTA is developing a new engineering guide for bike infrastructure that should help bring street designs like protected bike lanes to more San Francisco streets. Known as the Innovative Bicycle Treatment Toolbox, the guide promises to accelerate the city’s adoption of high-quality bikeway design treatments.

Intersection guidance markings also known as "green-backed" or "super" sharrows.

“The Innovative Bicycle Treatment Toolbox creates standardized guidance for the city of San Francisco in the use of new bicycle treatments being implemented throughout the U.S.,” said SFMTA spokesperson Paul Rose.

The guide is based on proven designs for bike infrastructure that more American cities (including SF) are implementing to make bicycling safer and more accessible to a wider range of people. While these treatments are becoming more common in the U.S., they have yet to be established in “official traffic engineering regulations such as the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) or the Highway Design Manual,” said Rose.

The treatments included in the toolbox: protected and buffered bike lanes, door-zone bike lane treatments, green paint on bike lanes and intersection guide markings, bike boxes, “safe-hit” posts (a.k.a. “traffic channelizers”), back-in angled parking, “green wave” signal timing for bike speeds, “two-stage left turn” markings, and “neighborhood greenways” (a.k.a. bike boulevards).

“These are smart, innovative designs that, once implemented in the right places, will make San Francisco’s streets safer and easier to bicycle on,” said Leah Shahum, executive director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. “We commend the SFMTA’s work in thinking out of the box and urge them to move forward with implementation on our many city streets that need improvement.”

Though the SFMTA has already implemented most of the treatments in the toolbox, they aren’t widespread. The most recent examples are the city’s first parking-protected bike lane in Golden Gate Park and the green-backed sharrow markings guiding riders through the Wiggle.

A two-stage left-turn treatment.

The SFMTA plans to use these treatments more frequently to reach its goal of 20 percent bike mode share by 2020. By establishing its own guidelines, the agency can “ensure consistency and predictability of these new treatments within our jurisdiction, while providing discussion of how these new treatments are addressed in existing regulations,” said Rose. ”This toolbox will help planners and engineers decide whether an innovative treatment is appropriate at a given location that is slated for bicycle improvements. It will also make it faster and more efficient for engineers to design the innovative facilities.”

Streamlining this process is critical to the widespread adoption of cycling in the city. The current rate at which the SFMTA is rolling out improvements is widely seen as insufficient to meet its ambitious mode share goals.

The toolbox is largely informed by the National Association of City Transportation Officials’ Urban Bikeway Design Guide, a manual that leading bikeway engineers from cities around the country, including SF, contributed to. Although bike advocates are pushing for legislative changes at the state level to give cities more freedom to use treatments from the NACTO guide, their most recent effort was undermined, and local planners can face greater liability when using treatments not included in more established guidelines like the MUTCD. Creating this set of guidelines could provide planners a set of locally-approved, widely tested standards to rely on.

Rose said the guide “includes specific implementation details that are in line with California laws, while making style determinations to ensure consistency of application throughout San Francisco, even if there is more than one legal way to do so.”

The toolbox could also be looked to as an example for five other cities that will share expertise on innovative bike infrastructure in the Bikes Belong “Green Lane” project.

Agency staff said the toolbox is still in draft form and not ready to be widely published yet. Although the guidelines will “continue to be a living document,” Rose said, the agency will submit “a finalized version” to the SF County Transportation Authority by June 30.

Door-zone treatments to discourage bicyclists from riding in the door zone in conventional bike lanes.

Back-in angled parking.

Green bike lanes.

Photos: Aaron Bialick

Commuters on the Wiggle got a Bike to Work Day surprise this morning: green-backed sharrows guiding bicycle riders through the intersection of Steiner and Waller Streets.

The “sharrows were painted VERY early this morning and they are permanent,” says a post on the SFMTA’s Livable Streets Facebook page. Agency staff wrote that more will be added “as wayfinding guides all through the Wiggle” along each block and through other intersections in coming weeks.

The green-backed sharrow treatment arose from the SFMTA’s ThinkBike sessions with Dutch bike planners.

One rider told SFMTA staff, “It’s like riding on candy!”

SF Recreation and Parks General Manager Phil Ginsburg seems pleased with the "super sharrows."

Image: SFBC, based on data from SFMTA

San Francisco’s streets are expected to fill with bike commuters tomorrow for the city’s 18th Bike to Work Day.

The city has more bike lanes, more people on bikes, and more political momentum for bike policy today than in years past. ”We definitely expect to see more people bicycling on Bike to Work Day this year than ever before,” said San Francisco Bicycle Coalition Executive Director Leah Shahum, “given that the number of people of biking every year has been increasing significantly — 71 percent over the last five years, given that it’s supposed to be really lovely warm weather, and given, most importantly, that the city has added more dedicated bike space in the last year than ever before.”

In San Francisco’s most visible display of bicycling growth, SFMTA Bike to Work Day morning commute counts show that bike traffic has risen steadily over recent years on Market Street, which the SFBC now calls the busiest bicycling street west of the Mississippi. Last year at the Van Ness Avenue intersection, bikes made up 75 percent of vehicle traffic as car traffic plummeted on the corridor.

Since the bike injunction was lifted in 2010, the SFMTA has striped bike lanes in locations around the city, including some of SF’s first physically protected routes. The parking-protected bike lanes on John F. Kennedy Drive in Golden Gate Park are “substantially complete” as of this week (save some finishing touches), according to the SFMTA. Construction is also nearly complete on a two-way bikeway on Cargo Way.

The 23 miles of bike lanes added by the SFMTA since August 2010 “really cover very diverse neighborhoods,” said Shahum.

Bike commuters tomorrow will benefit from new curbside, post-separated bike lanes on Division, Laguna Honda, Alemany and Cesar Chavez as well as the green lanes on Market. Buffered bike lanes have also been striped on Bayshore and Sloat, and new conventional lanes can be found on 17th, Folsom, Illinois, North Point, Townsend, Kirkham, Phelan, Holloway, Ocean, Portola, and McCoppin. The SFMTA also continues installing bike racks (in corrals and on sidewalks) and sharrows throughout the city.

“When there’s more dedicated bike space, time and time again we see more people bicycling, and we see a more diverse cross-section of people biking,” said Shahum. “We see more parents riding with their kids to school, we see more older folks riding to a farmer’s market, we see more of San Francisco’s work force biking downtown rather than heading in in their cars.”

Market Street commuters on Bike to Work Day last year. Photo: Aaron Bialick

Riding into City Hall tomorrow will be a large cast of city officials, including Mayor Ed Lee and all but one member of the Board of Supervisors. (D7 Supervisor Sean Elsbernd said he used to ride every year prior to his son’s birth, but bicycling is no longer “practically an option” as he needs to drop his wife and son off by car.)

Almost every member of the SFMTA Board of Directors (save Jerry Lee, who is out of town) will also be riding, according to Shahum, including Christina Rubke, Mayor Lee’s recent board nominee to replace Bruce Oka. Other officials expected to ride include SFMTA Director of Transportation Ed Reiskin, Department of Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru, SF Environment Director Melanie Nutter, and Carla Johnson, the new director of the Mayor’s Office on Disability.

The decision makers participating in tomorrow’s event will have to raise their commitment to safe cycling throughout the rest of the year to help the city reach its bike mode-share goals. As the SF Bay Guardian pointed out yesterday, while cycling is on the rise, the current rate of improvements is far from sufficient to meet the city’s goal of getting 20 percent of commuters on bikes by 2020 (it’s currently estimated at 3.5 percent).

Despite some recent high-profile project delays, Shahum said, “It’s really exciting to see that some of the problem areas that the mayor and others experienced riding last year are getting stepped up attention and are getting improvements now.” She noted that the long-awaited protected bikeways on Fell and Oak Streets are also headed to an SFMTA hearing next Friday, May 18.

Tomorrow morning, 11 commuter convoys will head to City Hall from various neighborhoods throughout the city, and 27 energizer stations will be set up along the way, half of which will have a “bike doctor” on hand to help commuters keep their bikes in shape. The SF-to-Google (SF2G) Peninsula convoy, which Shahum noted usually carries about 40 riders on its regular rides throughout the year, is expecting to be joined by 500 people (they had 400 last year).

At City Hall, Shahum said the SFBC will be highlighting the economic benefits that bicycling brings to the city, announcing six of the city’s top bike-friendly businesses chosen from “tons and tons” of applicants who are encouraging their employees to bike with incentive programs and secure bike parking.

“We’re hearing from so many people that there are employers who are deciding to move to or stay in San Francisco because their employees love living in a city, and they want to be able to bike and take transit,” she said.

Image: Mark Dreger/SFBC

Photo: torbakhopper/Flickr

Detailed plans for proposed improvements on eight Muni routes are now available for viewing on the SFMTA’s Transit Effectiveness Project (TEP) website. Head over for a block-by-block breakdown of proposed street changes like transit-only lanes, sidewalk extensions, boarding islands, relocated or consolidated stops, replacing stop signs with traffic signals or traffic-calming measures, and more to help keep Muni vehicles moving quickly and reliably.

To help ensure the SFMTA implements the most effective improvements as quickly as possible, it’s crucial for supporters to attend one of the five remaining TEP workshops and weigh in on the eight priority routes: the 28-19th Avenue, the N-Judah, the 30-Stockton, the 8x-Bayshore Express, the J-Church, the 14-Mission, the 5-Fulton, and the 22-Fillmore.

A recent workshop on the 14 and 22 lines in the Mission was derailed by a small but vocal group who dominated the discussion with unrelated complaints, according to reports from some who attended. To help provide a more balanced and constructive conversation at future workshops, riders eager to see more reliable Muni service on these corridors must be well represented.

The SFMTA will hold two more workshops this week. Tomorrow, the 28-19th Avenue‘s second workshop will take place at Lakeside Presbyterian Church (201 Eucalyptus Drive at 19th Ave.) at 6 p.m. The proposals for the route include extending sidewalks to ease boardings and shorten pedestrian crossings at over 20 intersections along 19th Avenue as well as removing excessive stops at seven intersections.

On Saturday, a workshop on the 5-Fulton, and 22-Fillmore routes will be held at 10 a.m. at the Ella Hill Hutch Community Center (1050 McAllister Street at Webster).

Proposals for the 5-Fulton include extending sidewalks at 11 intersections, moving stops across 11 intersections, removing stops at nine intersections, replacing stop signs with traffic signals or traffic-calming measures at nine intersections, a road diet on Fulton Street between Stanyan and Central Streets, and more.

For the 22-Fillmore, proposals include “median bus lanes” between Bryant and Third Streets, seven boarding islands and roughly two dozen sidewalk extensions along 16th Street, and restricting left turns at most intersections along 16th.

SFMTA staff said it is also working on maps and renderings to help the public visualize the proposed plans. The final workshop on May 5 will include a review of proposals for all eight routes.

See the entire schedule of workshops on the TEP website, and also be sure to weigh in on an online poll.

9th Ave. and Lincoln Way. Photos: Aaron Bialick

This week, I stumbled upon a heartwarming moment for the folks out on the streets every day working to keep things moving along.

A 44-O’haughnessy driver pulled up to a bus stop blocked by a scofflaw driver just as a parking control officer (PCO) was issuing a ticket. In a pleasant show of camaraderie, the driver took a moment to thank the officer for her work.

No doubt, our Muni operators and PCOs both deal with more than their fair share of aggravation on the job – let’s hope they see far more moments of appreciation like these than we can catch on our radar.

Photo: Myleen Hollero / Orange Photography

The SFMTA Board of Directors yesterday approved a two-year budget that calls for parking meter enforcement on Sundays and free Muni passes for low-income youth. The budget must still be approved by the Board of Supervisors before it goes into effect on July 1.

As Streetsblog reported yesterday, the SFMTA Board approved a free youth pass program for low-income students but didn’t extend it to all students. With agency staff saying that free Muni for everyone under 17 would trigger maintenance cuts, board members didn’t think that expanding the free rides for student was worth the trade-off. However, advocates from POWER, the organization leading the free Muni for youth campaign, argued that the board was presented with a false choice.

“Making bus maintenance a trade-off with free Muni for all youth is a false, random and last-minute attempt to limit the board’s choice to free Muni for low-income youth,” said a statement released by POWER the day before the meeting. The organization contended that the SFMTA overlooked opportunities to use available regional funds dedicated to programs for low-income riders and improving air quality. Free Muni for all youth, they argued, would get more middle- and upper-income students to take Muni instead of being driven by their parents.

SFMTA Director of Transportation Ed Reiskin “respectfully disagreed” with POWER’s assertion, arguing that finding additional funds for an all-youth program would come with “real trade-offs.” The $6.6 million in proposed cuts would have come from $3.8 million in maintenance, $2.1 million in state funds for “transit projects in low-income neighborhoods,” and $700,000 to help fund Department of Public Works projects that would include bike and pedestrian improvements. Those funds were “the lowest priority” available, he said.

The $9.6 million for the low-income-only program, which is projected to be open to half of San Francisco students (based on SFUSD’s free and reduced lunch program), will not come out of maintenance funds, said Reiskin, but mostly from $5 million in outside grants that the SFMTA would not have otherwise received. The remaining $4.3 million will come from “general operating funds,” according to an SFMTA document [PDF].

The board passed an amendment to assure advocates of its commitment to seek funding for an all-youth program in the next budget cycle. Upon approval of the low-income program, advocates expressed neither cheers nor jeers.

As for Sunday parking meters, all of the roughly two dozen opponents repeated claims that having to feed meters during church services would repel people from worship. Pastor Amos Brown of Third Baptist Church, who is no stranger to using incendiary rhetoric on the matter, said charging for parking on Sundays was sexist since, he claimed, most churchgoers are women.

Board member Joél Ramos rebuffed opponents’ accusations by appealing to the very religious teachings they claimed to defend. “I’ve been called a lot of things in my life, but never the devil,” said Ramos. “It’s shocking to have heard that coming from a community that lives by, ‘Judge not, lest ye be judged.’”

“The reason why I’m here on this board is because of my Christian teachings, particularly my Catholic teachings, saying that we should look out for those that are the least among us,” he said. “People that don’t have a car, or can’t afford a car, are being pushed out of this city because they can’t even take the bus.”

“We are jam-packed to the gills” with car traffic circling for parking, added Ramos. “On Sundays, it’s just as bad as it ever is, and that affects our transit, making it even more expensive to run.”

Reiskin also pointed out that curb parking can be pre-paid prior to the onset of metered hours at noon, that drivers can pay meters by phone, and that time limits would be four hours long.

Also scrutinized was the SFMTA’s $9 million in annual work orders to the SFPD’s motorcycle traffic enforcement unit, which was once again included in the budget despite criticism in recent years that the SFMTA is footing an unjustified bill while making cuts in other areas. Reiskin defended the practice by arguing that ending it would only shove the problem to the city’s shortfall.

“I don’t think that it’s fair for the ridership of Muni to pay for the entirety of that program,” said Supervisor David Campos, who has led the charge for free Muni for youth at City Hall.

“I think it’s appropriate for some of that money to be paid by other people who drive, other people in the city,” he added. “So if you have the opportunity, at a minimum, to reduce that amount by half, that’s four and a half million dollars that you can get back into the system so that you address issues like maintenance, so that you address issues like on-time performance.”

Image: SFgovtv.org

The board favored a free youth pass program for low-income students, but members weren’t convinced that expanding the proposal to include anyone under 17 would be worth the trade-offs in cuts to Muni maintenance that staff presented to the board — at least in this budget cycle. Advocates rebutted agency staff on this point, arguing that the board was presented with a false choice.

Sunday parking meter enforcement was also opposed by roughly two dozen speakers, all of whom defended the entitlement to free car parking for churchgoers. However, board members saw past the rhetoric and argued that parking must be managed on Sundays as it is on any other day of the week.

We’ll have more on the meeting tomorrow.

Photo: bhautik joshi/Flickr

More than a year after the Mayor’s Pedestrian Task Force began meeting to develop San Francisco’s Pedestrian Action Plan, the SFMTA said the agency expects to finalize the document by late summer. Unclear, however, is whether the plan will include a measurable commitment to implementing physical pedestrian safety infrastructure.

To meet the targets set in former Mayor Gavin Newsom’s Executive Directive on Pedestrian Safety — a 25 percent reduction in injuries by 2016, and 50 percent by 2020 —  the document will lay out a blueprint for safety improvements on wide, high-speed streets known as “arterials,” where pedestrians are most at risk of serious traffic injuries, SFMTA Senior Transportation Planner Frank Markowitz told the Pedestrian Safety Advisory Committee yesterday.

The plan would also set metrics to gauge the city’s progress toward four goals: Reducing severe and fatal pedestrian injuries, reducing injury inequities between neighborhoods, increasing walking trips as a share of all trips, and providing “high-quality walking environments.” The Task Force expects to begin conducting public outreach in May and to release a draft plan in mid-summer, said Markowitz.

“Most of the actions would be implemented in the next two, three years, funding permitting,” he said.

The strategies in the plan will include physical traffic-calming measures as well as media campaigns, upgraded speeding enforcement technology (i.e. LIDAR guns), and more thorough data collection on injuries, said Markowitz. Other efforts already underway, he added, include 15 mph school zones – 88 percent of which have been implemented as of last week, according to the SFMTA. The agency also continues daylighting street corners, installing pedestrian countdown signals, and more.

Physical street improvements, like corner sidewalk bulb-outs, improved crosswalks, and traffic-calming measures, said Markowitz, will be largely funded by incorporating pedestrian infrastructure into transit and bicycle projects, since dedicated revenues for pedestrian improvements are scarce. Funding would also depend on allocations from Prop B bonds, which include $50 million for pedestrian and bike projects.

Aside from the goals set by the mayor’s directive, specific measuring sticks haven’t been proposed yet, and there’s no word that they’ll include the type of commitments in New York City’s plan, after which San Francisco’s is partly modeled. The NYC Department of Transportation’s Pedestrian Safety Study and Action Plan set out to re-engineer 60 miles of streets each year, including 20 miles of “intensive safety redesign.”

Markowitz noted the need for concrete metrics to hold agencies accountable to the plan. “We need to increase the visibility of the commitments by all the agencies that are involved in this area — the MTA, Public Health, Public Works, the Police Department, and so on,” he said.

Walk SF Executive Director Elizabeth Stampe, who sits on the Task Force, said the organization is pushing for a commitment of fixing ten miles of streets per year, including three miles of major redesigns, as part of the plan.

“It’s great to have complete streets. These improvements absolutely should be made in concert with others,” said Stampe, who pointed out that calming motor vehicle traffic and improving pedestrian visibility make streets safer for all users. ”But they shouldn’t be the afterthought, and they shouldn’t be the first thing to get cut out, and that’s what we’ve seen a lot with street plans.”

Still, Stampe said she hopes the action plan will push various agencies to better coordinate on street projects that often overlook “a tremendous opportunity to add a bulb-out and improve safety for crossing,” which “frustrates a lot of people.”

Perhaps the biggest accomplishment of the Task Force so far, she said, has just been getting the various agencies to communicate on pedestrian issues. ”I think we’ve moved forward really well on that,” she added.

Stockton Street. Photo: geekstinkbreath/Flickr

Before you head off to one of the SFMTA’s ten public workshops on how to make your Muni route faster and more reliable, first you can take a peek at the proposed plans on the agency’s website.

The SFMTA’s Transit Effectiveness Project (TEP) web page now features a route-by-route summary of the proposals tailored to each of its eight priority “rapid” lines: the 28-19th Avenue, the N-Judah, the 30-Stockton, the 8x-Bayshore Express, the J-Church, the 14-Mission, the 5-Fulton, and the 22-Fillmore. Although the website doesn’t provide maps or detailed designs, it features a rough look at the street changes proposed for each line, including new transit-only lanes, extending transit bulbs and boarding islands, moving stops across intersections, removing stop signs or adding transit-priority traffic signals, increasing stop spacing, and widening narrow lanes to fit buses.

If you want to see Muni move more efficiently, it’s especially important to show up and support proposals to increase stop spacing to speed up trips (or, in other words, remove stops). At the first of these TEP workshops, which focused on the 28 and N-Judah lines, attendees generally voiced mixed feelings about removing stops, according to agency staff.

Overall, the idea of setting stops farther apart is popular: A 2010 survey found that 61 percent of riders would consider walking longer distances if it would speed up their trip. And once stop spacing is optimized and riders can experience the difference, the changes seem to be appreciated. SFMTA staff said the agency has received mostly positive feedback from riders on the 28-Limited line after the agency removed several stops last fall.

Seventy percent of Muni stops are closer than Muni’s own guidelines call for, according to the SFMTA. With stops as frequent as one (or more) per block, it’s a top complaint among riders. In a 2010 Streetfilm, SFMTA TEP Project Manager Julie Kirschbaum explained that “over time, bus stops have sort of creeped in for various reasons” in “places that aren’t necessarily optimal.”

The SFMTA also held a workshop last weekend on the 8x and 30 lines in Chinatown and will hold two more this week. Tonight’s workshop will focus on the J-Church and 14-Mission (south of Cesar Chavez), and tomorrow’s will look at the 22-Fillmore and 14-Mission (in the Inner Mission). The final workshop on May 5 will address all of the proposals.

See the entire schedule of workshops on the TEP website. You can also weigh in on an online poll.

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.

Buffered bike lanes on Eastern Cesar Chavez also passed a milestone this week after the SFMTA Board of Directors finally approved the safer bike lane plan for the Evans Street intersection. According to the SFMTA’s Livable Streets Facebook page, a water main break caused a delay in the construction, but it should be completed this month.

Eastern Cesar Chavez yesterday.

Cesar Chavez at Evans, where the newly approved plan will relieve bike commuters of having to merge with trucks.

On Cargo Way, a two-way bikeway project led by the Port of San Francisco is on its way to completion in May and will connect Hunter’s Point to bike lanes on Illinois Street. A fence separating the bikeway from motor traffic is starting to take shape.

A two-way bikeway under construction on Cargo Way.

Finally, here’s one more shot from JFK Drive. We’ll be keeping you posted on the city’s first parking-protected bikeway as it takes shape.

A bicyclist enters a "mixing zone." Photo: Aaron Bialick

This misleadingly labeled website, sfpark.info, is chock-full of some pretty outlandish claims about SFPark. Should San Francisco bend to this kind of hysteria?

However, SFMTA spokesperson Paul Rose said the agency is still proposing to install conventional parking meters, which lack the technology that allows the agency to measure demand and adjust prices accordingly. At upcoming community meetings, SFMTA staff will also discuss residential parking permits (RPP), which give residents priority for street parking in those neighborhoods, Rose said.

An SFPark statement reads:

Many neighbors in the 12th & Folsom, 17th & Folsom, Dogpatch, and Potrero Hill areas have expressed uneasiness about being part of the SFpark pilot project until further evaluation of its success. Based on this feedback, the SFMTA will no longer propose for these areas to be included as SFpark pilot areas. As the SFMTA revises parking management proposals for each of these areas, they will reflect regular its [sic] policies and practices.

Are the opponents any less ”uneasy” about conventional meters than SFPark meters? Members of the Eastern Neighborhoods United Front (ENUF — get it?), the leading group mobilizing against paying for parking, make a plethora of outrageous claims about SFPark’s motives on their misleadingly labeled website, SFPark.info (though ENUF asserts that it is not associated with the website). But the group’s opinion of conventional parking meters doesn’t seem any more favorable. According to Mission Local, ENUF organizer John Lum is “not ready to claim victory” since parking meters are still on the table.

But if ENUF is unwilling to accept anything besides the status quo of dysfunctional free parking, then if they ever do claim victory, who else will win? Not the drivers who’ll be circling for parking. Not the residents who’ll be burdened with more traffic in their neighborhood. No one, really, except the vocal contingent who believes free street parking is a “right.”

Photo: THE Holy Hand Grenade!/Flickr

The proposed budget would have included free Muni for low-income youth, but that measure failed after dozens of proponents argued that it should be expanded to include anyone under 17. The SFMTA estimates that doing so would cost about $9 million per year, roughly double the cost of the low-income-only proposal, which the agency has secured regional funds for. The board asked staff to return to the next meeting with a refined proposal that lays out a funding plan for an all-youth program.

Sunday parking metering saw opposition from religious institutions, but on the board the only skepticism came from Leona Bridges, who voiced concerns about car-owning residents who live above businesses with parking meters. SFMTA Director Ed Reiskin pointed out that those spots already aren’t free for residents during business hours the rest of the week.

Sunday metering may also see little opposition from the Board of Supervisors. In an article in the SF Examiner this week, Supervisor Sean Elsbernd said that West Portal residents “should be ready for Sunday enforcement.” At a recent SFMTA presentation to the Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee, members also voiced very little criticism for the proposal.

The budget will be up for approval again at the SFMTA Board’s April 17 meeting. It must be adopted by May 1 before heading to the Board of Supervisors for final approval.

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.

The hot spot in front of the Fell and Divisadero Arco gas station would look mostly like it does today.

At Oak and Broderick Streets, drivers would be prohibited from turning right across the bike lane onto southbound Broderick using a physical barrier. That would also prevent through-traffic on Broderick from crossing Oak in the southbound direction.

Oak and Broderick Streets, where a physical barrier would prevent cars from crossing the bike lane in the southbound direction.

Turnout at Saturday’s open house wasn’t as robust as at December’s meeting, but comments from attendees seemed overwhelmingly supportive of the project. Still, a few critics seemed to keep staff and other supporters busy fielding complaints about the perceived trade-off of losing car parking – the main reason the agency ditched the original idea of implementing the bikeways as a trial this June.

Under the proposed plan, 57 of the 103 parking spaces displaced by the bike lanes would be replaced, mostly by converting existing parallel parking spots to back-in angled parking and perpendicular parking, mostly along the west side of Baker Street between Fell and Haight Streets. The real estate for those spots would come from excess road space on Baker. In a post on the Panhandle Park Stewards blog yesterday, Dale Danley argued that the added parking “would make the entrance to the Panhandle less attractive, from the vantage point of anyone traveling along Baker St or approaching from the east.”

Fourteen more parking spaces would be created on Hayes Street by removing bus stops at Broderick Street and Central Avenue, which could also speed up travel times on the 21-Hayes line.

SFMTA staff also provided a form for residents to petition for the creation of a residential parking permit (RPP) zone on their block, which would give residential car owners priority for curbside parking by imposing restrictions on non-permit holders. A block can only be added to an RPP zone with signatures from 51 percent of the residents. Roughly 120 paid parking spots were also opened for overnight parking at the Department of Motor Vehicles last year.

To implement the project, staff said the SF Planning Department must complete environmental review, which would then need approval from the Planning Commission. He also said an SFMTA public hearing on the project will likely be held in May, although no decision would be made then. The project would then need to be finally approved by the SFMTA Board of Directors.

“Given how many people are biking and walking on these stretches of street — despite how intimidating they are without proper facilities for biking and walking,” said Shahum, “we hope the city will conduct the environmental review with all due haste and get these important safety improvements on the ground by this fall.”

Stay tuned for more details on the implementation process.

An overview of the project. See more in the PDF document.

A map of where car parking would be added and removed.

"Mixing zones" would merge the bike lane with vehicular turn lanes at some intersections.

As illustrated here, the project area is currently a hole of unrestricted parking surrounded by several RPP zones.

A handy set of topography graphs illustrating why neighboring streets like Page and Hayes don't serve bicycle traffic very well compared to Fell and Oak. See more info in the PDF document.

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).

Photo: goincase/Flickr

SFMTA Director of Transportation Ed Reiskin said parking meters wouldn’t run on Sunday mornings because there isn’t enough demand for commercial parking spaces at those times. When asked if church leaders had persuaded the agency not to charge for parking in the morning, he claimed the hours were only chosen to reflect commercial demand.

“The most concerns about Sunday mornings was that [they] start later than Saturdays, and it’s a little bit of a different business model, so we felt like this was the right approach,” said Reiskin. He also said complaints about church members needing to leave Sunday sermons to pay meters, which Interfaith Council member Rev. James Delange voiced to the SFMTA Board earlier this month, have largely died down because time limits would be three to four hours long, and many churches don’t even have metered parking.

Reiskin also said that Mayor Ed Lee and the Board of Supervisors seem more receptive to extending meter hours than the last time around. “I’ve been working on educating folks at City Hall as to the policy rationale and operating benefit of it,” he said. “I think when you just throw something out there, you know — ‘Do you like more taxes? Do you want to pay more for something?’ — everybody, of course, is going to say no.”

Running meters past 6 p.m., however, has drawn more resistance from car commuters who want to park for free after arriving home from work, said Reiskin. But he conceded that there is “an equally compelling argument” for pricing parking during the evening as there is on Sundays, and that “most of the cities across the country” price parking as late as 11 p.m. He also admitted that not metering high-demand parking in the evenings, which often forces drivers to circle for spots and slow down Muni, goes against the city’s transit-first policy.

Still, there’s cause for optimism that the days of evening parking dysfunction might be numbered. Reiskin said some businesses have been asking for evening meter hours, and that the SFMTA may still “pilot” evening meters in some districts “in the next year or two.”

“We’re trying not to do too much at once,” he said. “It was really, frankly, just a pragmatic decision, listening to the feedback we were getting. We’ll do a little bit more due diligence on the evening side before considering really jumping fully into it.”

The budget would also add 500 to 1,000 parking meters throughout business districts where parking is in high demand.

The budget goes to the SFMTA Board of Directors next Tuesday for approval.

Photo: SFBC/Flickr

The San Francisco Police Department yesterday announced a commitment to reduce pedestrian injuries through targeted enforcement of dangerous driving.

In a joint statement with Walk SF, the SFPD said it will target violations like speeding and red light-running, especially in areas with the highest pedestrian injury rates. SFPD also plans to sign an agreement soon to share data with the SFMTA and the Department of Public Health, to implement “systematic” education and enforcement at new 15 MPH school zones as each one rolls out, and to streamline its reporting on enforcement to the Pedestrian Safety Task Force.

The new emphasis on pedestrian safety was prompted by last month’s incident in the Tenderloin, where a van driver slammed into an elderly pedestrian with the right-of-way in a marked crosswalk, writes Walk SF:

Walk SF recently met with the Police Chief and the Mayor’s office… We will be meeting with the District Attorney as well, to urge more action on penalizing dangerous driving.

This is a real milestone. This is a commitment to accountable enforcement of the laws that protect you when you walk.

Walk SF appreciates the commitment by the Police Department and the Mayor to making San Francisco’s streets better and safer for everyone.

In the joint statement, Walk SF and SFPD note that “these actions will help to meet the city goals set by the 2010 Mayor’s Executive Directive on Pedestrian Safety to reduce serious and fatal pedestrian collisions by 25 percent by 2016 and by 50 percent by 2021.”

Read the full statement after the break.

Joint Statement from the San Francisco Police Department and Walk San Francisco on Pedestrian Safety and Traffic Enforcement

March 28, 2012

After meeting with Walk San Francisco, the San Francisco Police Department would like to take the opportunity to join with Walk San Francisco in a statement of concern and action in response to the pedestrian hit in the crosswalk in the Tenderloin, as well as additional recent pedestrian collisions.

1) Update on the Tenderloin collision:

The Police Department heard the community’s concern about the crash in the Tenderloin and has issued a citation to the driver for failing to yield to a pedestrian in the crosswalk.

Walk San Francisco will meet with the District Attorney this month to discuss how and whether the driver in this instance can be charged and on how to penalize dangerous driving moving forward.

2) Additional actions to increase safety:

Enforcing 15-mph school speed zones:

The Police Department is currently implementing a systematic approach to enforcing all the city’s new 15-mph safer speed zones around schools, working closely with the Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA):

Each month, SFMTA gives the police the location of all new 15-mph zones. The following month, police go out and warn drivers at each school of the new speed limit, and the month after that, police issue tickets for speeding at each school.

This is an excellent precedent for citywide targeted enforcement. The police will continue to report on enforcement activity at each Mayor’s Pedestrian Safety Task Force meeting.

Enforcing pedestrian right-of-way:

Neighborhood enforcement: As part of each neighborhood police station’s regular traffic enforcement, police will carry out weekly actions citing drivers that fail to yield to pedestrians at crosswalks. These enforcement activities will be focused in the most dangerous areas, identified on the map of police data showing high-injury corridors and intersections.

Citywide enforcement: The Police Department’s central Traffic Company, the motorcycle police who carry out most of the city’s traffic enforcement, will also undertake weekly crosswalk right-of-way enforcement at the highest-priority locations identified on the map of police data showing high-injury corridors and intersections. This enforcement will rotate locations to ensure that over the course of a year, all of the most dangerous areas are covered.

Walk San Francisco will assist the Police Department in publicizing these activities to increase awareness.

Targeting enforcement on the most dangerous locations and behaviors:

Focusing enforcement: The Traffic Company is currently focusing traffic safety enforcement in high-injury corridors, citing the most dangerous behaviors:

• Speeding
• Failure to yield to pedestrians at crosswalks
• Running red lights and stop signs

Reporting on enforcement: The Traffic Company will report these enforcement efforts—citations, hours spent, locations, etc.—on a monthly basis to the Mayor’s Pedestrian Safety Task Force, of which Walk SF is a member.

Supporting the police’s ability to enforce: Currently, reporting on enforcement is made difficult by the fact that officers still have to actually hand-write citations and have them manually entered into a computer afterward. The SFMTA has committed to funding the purchase of 70 handheld electronic citation devices within the next six months, as well as setting up a computer program that will track and report on citations. This will be part of the Traffic Company’s reporting on a work order with SFMTA to do traffic enforcement on city streets.

Data sharing:

The Police Department, the Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), and Department of Public Health hope to sign a data-sharing agreement soon and continue creating a system to share collision data promptly; a key piece of this will be transitioning this year from handwritten police collision reports to a modern electronic reporting system shared among agencies. This will inform enforcement and engineering efforts to make the streets safer for everyone.

The Police Department is putting together a request for funds, tools, and staff needed to implement this.

3) Making San Francisco’s streets safer:

These actions will help to meet the City goals set by the 2010 Mayor’s Executive Directive on Pedestrian Safety to: reduce serious and fatal pedestrian collisions by 25% by 2016 and by 50% by 2021, increase walking citywide, and reduce inequities among neighborhoods in pedestrian safety.

The Police Department is currently working with the Mayor’s Pedestrian Safety Task Force on a Pedestrian Strategic Action Plan to be finished this year. The plan will include additional enforcement actions to meet these goals, such as deploying additional technology such as more accurate “Lidar” speed guns, and additional targeted enforcement around schools, including schools without 15-mph zones and with the Safe Routes to School program.

The Police Department is strongly committed to keeping San Francisco’s residents, visitors, and workers safe and comfortable on city streets and looks forward to working with other city agencies and with Walk San Francisco to help everyone enjoy the city on foot.

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.

A view of how the parking-protected bike lane will be arranged. Image: SFMTA

When the re-design goes into effect, these cars will park to the left of the cross-hatched area, where the woman is riding, and bicyclists will ride to the right of it along the curb.

Preliminary markings delineate the "mixing zones" at intersections, where right-turning drivers will enter the bike lane and yield to bicyclists on approach.

A view from the future bike lane approaching the mixing zone.