Streetsblog San Francisco

One section of the faltered plan for Second Street. Image: SFDPW

A plan for streetscape improvements on Second Street has faltered after the city agencies overseeing it neglected to implement them before dedicated funds expired.

The project that won’t receive the funds is a package including bike lanes, pedestrian safety improvements, and road repaving on Second Street between Market and King Streets.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors, acting as the SF County Transportation Authority (SFCTA) Board, approved a measure today redistributing the expiring $4.8 million in federal funds to three other projects in order to avoid forfeiting them.

The Department of Public Works (DPW) and the SFMTA “failed to steer the project toward successful implementation,” states a memo from DPW Director Mohammed Nuru and SFMTA Director of Transportation Ed Reiskin to Jane Kim, supervisor of District 6, which includes Second Street. “While we are deeply disappointed that the project has stalled at this juncture, we want to assure you that both DPW and SFMTA are dedicated to implementing this project in the near future.”

The SFCTA, which oversees transportation financing in San Francisco, approved the funds in 2010 from a federal Congestion Management Agency Block Grant. That grant was awarded on the condition that it be spent by February 1, 2012.

But in what the SFCTA called a “surprise,” the SFMTA and DPW failed to meet that deadline after a series of communication breakdowns between the agencies. The SFCTA board called today’s special last-minute hearing to vote on a new plan to divert the funds.

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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.

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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.

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Illinois Street. Photo: SF Bicycle Coalition

Bicycle riders can enjoy bike lanes on three new routes striped within the last couple of months, as the SFMTA continues to roll out the city’s Bicycle Plan.

Illinois Street now offers a safer north-south route from Mission Bay to Dogpatch while Alemany Boulevard and Sagamore Street connect the city’s southern neighborhoods.

On Illinois, car parking was replaced on some stretches, but rearranged on others for a total addition of three spots, according to the SFMTA [pdf].

Bike lanes added on Sagamore Street connect riders from Alemany to already existing bike lanes on Brotherhoood Way. Some parking spots were reconfigured to safer angled parking. A similar configuration was done on Illinois Street. That should make it easier for drivers who are pulling out of their spots to see bicyclists.

The addition of a two-way center turn lane should also help calm motor traffic on the street and provide a safer way for drivers make turns. Part of the bike lane also includes double stripes on the right side, which should discourage users from riding unsafely in the door zone.

Buffered bike lanes on Alemany Boulevard that began construction in May have also been fully marked and supplemented with soft hit posts to provide better separation from fast-moving motor traffic.

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A folded bike on board the Los Angeles Metro. Flickr photo: davidagalvan

Muni rail and bus passengers can now bring folding bikes aboard, the SFMTA announced today. The measure will help provide more commuting options for residents who rely on Muni’s metro and bus lines but aren’t able to easily connect to them by foot or other transit.

“This will make bicycling an option for even more people more often,” SF Bike Coalition (SFBC) Executive Director Leah Shahum said in a statement. “We commend the SFMTA for helping even more people move around our city easily on both bicycles and transit.”

Cycling San Franciscans have long bemoaned the inability to bring bikes aboard Muni and still look forward to the day when trains can accommodate regular bicycles. Front racks installed on Muni buses have allowed them to carry bicycles for a number of years, but the Breda light-rail vehicles currently used by Muni are poorly designed for the task. Folding bikes are still prohibited on cable cars.

“In the eyes of the SFBC and many in San Francisco’s cycling community, there has long been a need for bicycle access on Muni’s light-rail lines,” the SFBC explains on its webpage about light rail, noting that “almost all other U.S. cities now allow bikes on their light-rail systems.”

In addition to supplementing longer trips, transit can serve as a vital safety net for bicycling in circumstances where bicycle users are unable to ride such as inclement weather, flat tires or exhaustion.

The SF Bicycle Plan, approved in late 2009, lists folding bicycle access on rail vehicles as a priority along with trials for allowing all bicycles during off-peak hours. SFMTA spokesperson Paul Rose told the SF Chronicle today that the “idea is being studied but could prove problematic, given that the trains are often crowded before and after the morning and evening commutes.”

Photo: Aaron Bialick

In post-bike injunction San Francisco, the SF Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) is gearing up to install some of the final bicycle projects held up in the Bike Plan for several years.

The agency’s efforts will likely get another shot in the arm after a grant was approved today by the SF Board of Supervisors City Operations and Neighborhood Services Committee. Although the SFMTA’s Bicycle Program would ultimately be better served by a system of dedicated revenue streams, it’s one more step towards catching up with improvements that should have begun rolling out five years ago.

“The landscape for bicycle projects is changing quite rapidly since the injunction’s been lifted,” said Oliver Gajda of the SFMTA’s Sustainable Streets Division, who pointed to downtown bike lanes on 2nd, 5th, Fremont, and Howard Streets as well as a cycle track on Innes Avenue near Hunter’s Point as some of the priority projects that could benefit from the grant.

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Crews striped the first stretch today eastbound from Rousseau Street to Justin Drive. Photo: Aaron Bialick

Alemany Boulevard will soon be dramatically safer for cycling as SFMTA crews began striping the city’s newest stretch of buffered bike lanes today.

Despite acting as a vital connection between the Glen Park and Bayview neighborhoods, this stretch of Alemany between Rousseau Street and Bayshore Boulevard [pdf] has long been uninviting for people who bike without any protection from drivers traveling at dangerously high speeds.

“Alemany Boulevard is such an important connector in the city, and with these new bikeways we will see even more people riding comfortably to work or school or the farmers market or simply for fun,” said San Francisco Bicycle Coalition Executive Director Leah Shahum.

The section has long reinforced the 280 freeway as a gouge through the city’s southeastern neighborhoods with a vast, parallel six-lane roadway. The new bike lanes, which will be separated from motor vehicles by safe-hit posts and a striped buffer as wide as nine feet, will provide residents a more accessible route to destinations like the thriving Alemany Farmer’s Market and bike routes toward downtown San Francisco.

“The bike lanes have eight-foot lanes here. This is good, cause these cars are flyin’ down here,” said the project foreman as crews striped the first stretch from Rousseau Street to Justin Drive.

The bike lanes will connect with existing lanes on Alemany to the west and link to the Glen Park BART station. However, to the east of Putnam Street as Alemany passes underneath the 101 freeway, the bike lanes will disappear, and turn into sharrows.

Crew members said they expect to finish the project this week. See more photos after the break.

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Market Street approaching Sanchez. The bike lane will be extended along the painted lines and the three front parking spots will be replaced. Photo: Aaron Bialick

Preparations for improvements [pdf] to the Upper Market Street bike lanes are underway and when completed will mark a step towards safer passage for travelers by bike at three intersections along the city’s busiest bike corridor, where a vision for a protected bikeway was dropped nearly forty years ago.

The extended bike lanes should provide safer guidance through intersections where they previously ended abruptly, forcing people on bikes to merge or squeeze between faster-moving motor traffic and parked cars. The redesign will facilitate riders more safely by replacing several right-turn lanes and fifteen hazardous parking spots between Castro Street and Octavia Boulevard.

“The improved bike lanes will help draw more people to the Upper Market businesses,” said Leah Shahum, executive director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (SFBC). “There are a ton of families in the neighborhoods lining Market Street, so I think we’ll even see more people bicycling with their kids, which is already a growing trend.”

Cars will still be able to turn right by merging into the bike lane, a standard practice in San Francisco: “Bike lanes serve as the right-turn lane for all vehicles by definition,” the SFMTA noted in a presentation on the project last year.

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In light of Scott James’ egregious hit piece on the Bike Plan that ran in the New York Times today, I’ve decided to write the editors of that paper a letter, from a genuine resident of 17th Street.

What does family-friendly mean? What’s more important: safety or parking? Do most San Franciscans ever ride a bike in the city?

Before I get to all of those questions, can I suggest to you a different framing and headline for the Scott James article that ran today: Cyclists and pedestrians still left exposed because a few people oppose safe street plan.

If that sounds like the biased view of a former transit reporter, then consider this. Just this past Wednesday, as I rode my bike down 17th Street through the intersection with Dolores, I was struck by a minivan going the opposite direction that was making a left turn onto Dolores. I was thrown to the ground, lucky to only be bruised and scraped. My bike, by contrast, was totaled from the impact. I was lucky to be in decent enough shape to console the driver of the minivan, who was deeply shaken by the crash.

To paraphrase James: I’m recovering from a bad case of road rash – not from ill-fitting cycling shorts in which I wouldn’t be caught dead, but from the direct impact of a collision with a left-turning driver on 17th Street who didn’t see me traveling straight on my bike through the green light until it was too late.

Can you imagine why I’d be rubbed the wrong way by Mr. James’ suggestion that building a safer bike lane is anti-family and anti-senior citizen?

Count me in among the “emerging group of residents and businesses raising concerns about how the city is carrying out its ambitious bike lane agenda.” When the city compromises on safety to satisfy a few vocal people, citizens have every reason to raise concerns. As part of the compromise on 17th Street, the SFMTA agreed not to remove parking it planned to replace with bike lanes. Instead, it has added extremely narrow bike lanes next to the parking that are not up to the standard prescribed by the National Association of City Transportation Officials’ in its recently released set of urban bike facility guidelines.

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