Streetsblog San Francisco

The SF Municipal Transportation Agency is pondering the most effective way to improve the city’s bicycle network in the coming years as it rolls out its Bicycle Strategy: Should planners focus bicycle improvements on dangerous and stressful spots throughout the city, or focus on upgrading major bike corridors to the highest quality of comfort first?

Tim Papandreou, deputy director of transportation planning for the SFMTA Sustainable Streets Division, posed the question to the SFMTA Board of Directors Policy and Governance Committee today, presenting a color-coded map showing the level of stress posed by traffic conditions at almost any given spot on the city’s official bicycle network.

On one end of the spectrum, spots that are comfortable for most anyone aged eight to 80 to ride a bike were colored with a deep blue. On the other, high-stress spots that are “tolerated only by the ‘strong and fearless’” were marked with a deep red. Needless to say, the map had lots of red, and very little blue.

The “primary corridors” include popular bicycling streets like Market, Polk, Folsom, San Jose, and the Embarcadero. “That’s where the majority of people are already cycling, and that’s where the majority of people will increase their cycling as well,” said Papandreou.

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San Francisco will get its first bicycle traffic counter within the next month. The SF Municipal Transportation Agency Board of Directors sealed the deal yesterday on a bike counter for Market Street between Ninth and Tenth Streets.

Bike counters, which have been installed on major cycling streets in cities like Copenhagen, Portland, Seattle, and Montreal, help the city get an accurate count of bike traffic and promote bicycling by showing that number on a digital display. Every time someone bikes by, the number ticks up. SF’s bike counter will show daily and annual counts of how many people have biked on eastbound Market approaching Ninth.

“The installation of this innovative bicycle barometer comes at a critical moment in San Francisco,” said SFMTA Director Ed Reiskin in a statement. “As more and more San Franciscans are using a bicycle as part of their everyday commute, this visual bike counter will raise awareness of the positive impact bicycling has on traffic congestion, air quality and personal health.”

“I think this will go a long way to make the case for why significant improvements are needed on Market Street,” said Leah Shahum, executive director of the SF Bicycle Coalition.

The SFBC is hoping the SFMTA will install the counter by Bike to Work Day on May 9 to showcase the growing bike traffic on Market, which is one of the busiest bicycling streets in the nation, said Shahum. Manual bike traffic counts from the SFMTA have shown a 98 percent increase from 2006 and 2011, with 750 eastbound bike riders traveling along Market at Fifth Street in one hour on an average weekday morning, she said.

Come Bike to Work Day, said Shahum, “I think we’ll see some pretty astronomical numbers.”

The counter is partially funded by a $20,000 grant from Kongregate, a locally-based online gaming company. The other $50,000 will come from SFMTA operating funds, according to an agency document [PDF], and the Central Market Community Benefit District will maintain the counter.

“This will be a fun opportunity to measure ourselves against the other great biking cities in America,” noted Shahum. “I have a hunch that San Francisco’s going to hold it down.”

The SF Municipal Transportation Agency brought the Market Street treatment to Fell Street yesterday, installing some plastic “safe-hit” posts along its three-block bike lane as a temporary safety measure, after the agency announced last week that concrete planters may not arrive until the end of the year.

While the project delays continue to frustrate San Franciscans who’ve been waiting years for these blocks to be tamed, the posts in the buffer zone should help provide bike commuters an improved sense of protection from motor traffic in the meantime.

“The Oak and Fell Pedestrian and Bike Safety Project is an essential component in both San Francisco’s bicycle network and in the SFMTA’s strategic vision to support and encourage bicycling as an important commute option,” said SFMTA Director Ed Reiskin in a statement. “The installation of safe hit posts on Fell Street demonstrates the agency’s commitment to finding effective solutions to ensure the safety of those who ride a bike on busy roads, such as Fell Street, while we continue to coordinate the completion of the ultimate project.”

The SFMTA website now says planners “did not initially anticipate the significant additional capital cost of repaving portions of Fell Street,” and that “the SFMTA will investigate additional funding sources for this work and coordinate with the Department of Public Works as part of their ongoing street repaving prioritization.”

The Oak Street bike lane, slower traffic signal timing, and more visible crosswalks should be in by May, according to the SFMTA website.

Here’s what I’ve got my eye on: Will the posts overcome drivers’ temptation to park in the bike lane to use the Bank of America ATM, instead of pulling into the parking lot around the corner?

I was recently rolling down the 14th Street bike lane when a man standing on the far side of the Guerrero Street intersection flagged down a taxi that had just passed by me. I saw where this was going: The taxi driver stopped next to the bike lane, and the man stepped quickly into it to open the door, without a glance to check for bicycle traffic.

Fortunately, I was prepared to slow my downhill descent and make a safe stop well before running into this man, but not without feeling some fight-or-flight adrenaline. The man and the driver looked at me speechlessly when I said, “Seriously? Have a safe day,” before continuing on.

Dangerous and frustrating situations like that are a routine part of using San Francisco’s bike lanes. In fact, since the vast majority are striped between parked cars and moving cars, or curbside without protection from traffic, taxis are actually legally allowed — and instructed — to stop in the bike lane if there’s no better place to pull over.

Marc Caswell, program manager for the SF Bicycle Coalition, teaches a class for the SF Municipal Transportation Agency where taxi driver applicants learn the law and best practices on how to negotiate with bicycles. If no parking spot is available, or it’s not practical to pull around the corner, Caswell tells students that loading in the bike lane is the safest and most legal option, compared to directing taxi passengers to step into the bike lane.

“If there is not a bus stop, there is not a fire hydrant, there is not a side street, and the driver does need to pull over and pick up or drop off, say, on a busy corridor even like Valencia Street, [loading in the bike lane] is legal and it is the safest thing to do,” said Caswell. He did note, however, that drivers legally “can’t stay there, they can’t double park there.”

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After the SFMTA last week announced another delay for safety improvements on three blocks of Fell and Oak Streets, work began today on another aspect of the project: a reconfiguration of Baker Street between Oak and Fell, which is used by eastbound bicycle riders to connect from the Panhandle to Oak and the Wiggle. As of this afternoon, the previous striping had been removed and temporary markings put in place.

The SFMTA’s plans for Baker include converting car parking on the west side of the street from parallel spaces to back-in angled spaces, which will partially offset the roughly 100 spaces to be removed by the Fell and Oak protected bike lanes. By making that change, along with perpendicular space conversions on Baker between Oak and Haight Streets and Scott Street south of Haight, 43 parking spaces will be added (another 14 spaces are being created by removing two bus stops on Hayes Street at Broderick and Lyon Streets).

The work on Baker between Fell and Oak also includes an adjustment to traffic lanes: Previously, Baker consisted of four lanes along the entire block, with the two center lanes both reserved for left-turning vehicles. Now those left turn lanes will be shortened to make room for the angled parking spaces. The SFMTA’s plans also call for green-backed sharrows, bike boxes, and pedestrian bulb-outs along this block of Baker.

With this work to ensure that car owners aren’t too heavily inconvenienced by safer streets now well underway, the question is whether bike commuters will actually have to wait until the end of the year, as SFMTA Director Ed Reiskin said last week, to see a three-block protected lane on Oak and protective concrete planters.

The partially completed project to add safety measures like protected bike lanes and pedestrian bulb-outs on three blocks Fell and Oak Streets has once again been delayed by the SF Municipal Transportation Agency. Though the project was originally scheduled to be completed by spring or summer, the agency now says components like the protected bike lane on Oak, bicycle traffic signals, slower signal timing, and concrete planters separating the bike lanes from motor traffic may not go in until the end of the year.

The SFMTA had previously said that work on the Oak lane was set to begin in February — after it was originally promised by winter — but only minor changes in striping have been made (the street may appear untouched to the casual observer). The SFMTA continues to cite construction work on the Kelly-Moore paint shop at Oak and Divisadero, which has been occupying the site of Oak’s future bike lane, as a source of delay.

With bicycle riders on Fell left to wait the better part of another year for concrete planters, the SFMTA says it will install soft-hit posts as a temporary measure to help keep drivers out of the bike lane until the Department of Public Works gets the planters designed, funded, and constructed. The SF Examiner has more:

Ed Reiskin, transportation director of the transit agency, said temporary “soft-hit” pylons will soon be added to separate the Fell bike lane from traffic. However, the Oak part of the plan is much more labor-intensive and includes installing signage, removing parking meters and painting new traffic stripes.

Construction at a private business at Oak and Divisadero streets has hampered those efforts, and the Oak project might not be completed until the end of the year, Reiskin said.

Leah Shahum, executive director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, said that’s unacceptable.

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With flyers stuck on storefront windows along Polk Street spreading misinformation about the SF Municipal Transportation Agency’s developing plans to make the street a safer, more inviting place to walk and bike, local supporters of the project are rallying neighbors and merchants to attend a public meeting on Monday. There, city officials including SFMTA Director Ed Reiskin and D3 Supervisor David Chiu are expected to attend.

The flyers, handed out to merchants by an entity calling itself the “Save Polk Street Coalition,” falsely claim that the SFMTA is “planning to remove 20 Blocks of street parking on Polk St. from Union St. to McAllister St.”

In reality, the project’s proposed options, which were developed with input from well-attended community outreach meetings in September and December, would only remove some portion of the on-street parking on Polk, which in total represents 7 percent of all parking within a block’s range of the corridor. Meanwhile, the commercial street would receive the kind of improvements that have been shown time and time again to invite more shoppers.

Madeleine Savit, a 61-year-old mother, architect, and urban planner who lives in the neighborhood, has been talking with shop owners and attempting to debunk misconceptions about the project with a flyer of her own, which reads, “SFMTA’s Polk Street proposals benefit all in our community.” She said the vast majority of upset merchants seem grossly misinformed, and estimates that “Save Polk Street” is led by a handful of people.

“People don’t know what’s going on. So the most vocal people are the minority,” said Savit. “The problem is, we’re not dealing with facts. We’re dealing with emotion and fear.”

SF Bicycle Coalition Executive Director Leah Shahum pointed to streets like Valencia, where bike and pedestrian improvements have revitalized businesses by inviting people to spend more time on the street. “It’s very clear that when other corridors in San Francisco have been studied the way Polk Street is right now, there have been great improvements not only to the walkability and bikeability, but also to the business environment and real estate values,” she said.

On Polk, parklets and bike corrals that replaced parking spaces in the last couple of years have drawn more foot traffic. After a parklet was installed in front of Quetzal Cafe on Polk between Bush and Sutter Streets, a study conducted by the Great Streets Project found that more people stopped to talk or window-shop, and overall foot traffic increased.

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California Vehicle Code 22517 is clear: “No person shall open the door of a vehicle on the side available to moving traffic unless it is reasonably safe to do so and can be done without interfering with the movement of such traffic.”

But in the view of Geico Car Insurance, which insures the driver who, on January 28, stopped in front of Melissa Moore in the Polk Street bike lane, opened his door, and knocked her off her bike, he’s only 80 percent at fault for the crash.

That’s right — even after seeing video footage of the crash, Moore says Geico is putting 20 percent of the blame on her for getting doored on northbound Polk at Golden Gate Avenue, leaving her with physical pain and a taxing legal battle.

In what Moore calls a “flat out lie,” she says Geico accuses her of speeding as she climbed uphill on Polk at what appears in the video to be single-digit speeds.

Geico’s statement, as relayed by Moore, is as follows: “According to the information available to us to date, our investigation indicates the damages occurred because you failed to control your speed in order to avoid an accident and lost control of your bicycle. Based on these facts, the percentage of negligence apportioned to you or your driver is 20%. The percentage of negligence apportioned to our insured driver is 80%.”

Moore says that even when presented with the video footage caught by a surveillance camera on the Supreme Court building where the crash occurred, the company’s insurance agents refuse to budge. Geico hasn’t responded to Streetsblog’s request for comment.

In the days since the crash, Moore said she has been left with physical pain like she has “never felt.”

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A few weeks after SF Mayor Ed Lee displayed a total lack of commitment to the city’s Bike Strategy, London Mayor Boris Johnson has announced an aggressive $1.3 billion plan for a comprehensive bike network, including protected bike lanes.

Streetsblog NYC‘s Stephen Miller reports:

“Cycling will be treated not as niche, marginal, or an afterthought, but as what it is: an integral part of the transport network,” Johnson said. ”I want cycling to be normal, a part of everyday life.”

The plan includes big changes, including new types of bike lanes for the capital:

• The flagship initiative, a 15-mile separated crosstown route connecting western and eastern suburbs via central London and business districts including the West End and Canary Wharf.
• A network of “quietways,” akin to bike boulevards, that will connect suburban and central London neighborhoods.
• Adding physical separation to the existing “cycle superhighways,” which sometimes offer little more than a stripe of paint on some of London’s busiest roads.

The plan also has a broad policy framework to transform biking in London:

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