Streetsblog San Francisco

Working in 80 degree weather, smiling SFMTA crews installed two green bike boxes in both directions of Market Street at Van Ness Avenue today, the latest pieces of innovative infrastructure to grace the city’s main thoroughfare, which continues to become a much friendlier street for people who bike, walk and take transit.

In addition to providing bicyclists an opportunity to queue up in front of waiting autos, the bike boxes are designed to prevent bike riders from entering the crosswalks on Market Street. Recent surveys have shown that in addition to growing numbers of bicyclists, pedestrian volumes have also risen on Market Street, thanks to a number of improvements the SFMTA began implementing in 2009.

It took SFMTA crews nearly 5 hours to install the two bike boxes on eastbound and westbound Market at Van Ness Avenue today. The preformed themoplastic is designed so that “both skid resistance and retroreflectivity are maximized,” according to the manufacturer,” Flint Trading Inc of Thomasville, North Carolina.

In addition to the green bike boxes, the SFMTA is expected to fill in the gaps on Market Street between Octavia Boulevard and 8th Street before Bike to Work Day May 12. Crews will color in the remaining standard bike lanes with green paint, and add soft-hit posts on some sections. In addition, the sharrows across Market at Van Ness will be enhanced. A combination of green pavement and white sharrows will guide bike riders through the intersection.

A fifth green bike box will be installed sometime this week or next on westbound Market Street at Gough, but it will likely be done in the early morning hours because daytime work would affect somel Muni lines. See more photos after the break and on my Flickr page.

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Bicyclists have begun taking advantage of the new bike lanes being installed this week along the western section of the 17th Street corridor, with many riders saying they began feeling a greater sense of safety just as soon as the first stripes were laid down by Wednesday from Valencia to Church Streets.

In interviews with Streetsblog, several people on bikes roundly cheered the improvements, described as simply “fantastic” by one rider. “It’s really nice because we always bike on 17th Street and the [car] traffic is not that high,” said another traveler trying out the new lanes with a partner.

“Improvements on 17th Street will help the fast-growing number of people bicycling between the Castro, Mission and Potrero neighborhoods,” said San Francisco Bicycle Coalition executive director Leah Shahum. “There are so many families with children riding bicycles in these areas already, and this new bike lane will help welcome even more people of all ages onto their bicycles.”

SFMTA counts show a 75 percent increase in bike traffic on 17th Street at Valencia from 2006-2010, according to Shahum. The long-awaited project comes as part of the San Francisco Bike Plan, which is currently being put into action after a four-year bike injunction delay.

While SFMTA crews have begun work along the roughly two-mile stretch from Corbett Avenue to Kansas Street, bike lanes between Church and Sanchez are temporarily on hold as planners try to figure out a solution that addresses safety concerns about the streetcar tracks, according to the SFMTA Sustainable Streets Division’s Mike Sallaberry.

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During routine business at the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Board meeting Tuesday, Director Cheryl Brinkman recounted how enjoyable it was to ride her bicycle on the new physically separated bike lane on Division Street between 9th and 11th Streets. Brinkman said she hoped the SFMTA would consider how it could improve the connection for cyclists between the Wiggle and the Panhandle, including the possibility of adding physical separation to the bike lanes on Fell and Oak Streets between Scott and Baker Streets.

“I think it’s such an important connection and I’ve been riding that stretch more and more recently,” Brinkman told Streetsblog. “I don’t know if it’s the quality of the traffic changing, or if I’m getting older, but riding with the moving traffic so close to my handlebars is very unpleasant. I choose not to ride that section anymore.”

Brinkman added that she had heard from several people living in the Sunset and the Richmond districts that they would ride downtown to work if it weren’t for those three blocks along Oak and Fell. “It seems such a shame to have that great corridor but to have those three blocks that way,” said Brinkman. “It shouldn’t be designed so that only the brave cyclists use it. No one should be dissuaded because they are frightened.”

As it turns out, Mayor Gavin Newsom is open to a study to improve that section of the bicycle network. According to Johanna Partin, a policy adviser to the Mayor, he would be “supportive of anything that would increase bike safety in the city.” Partin said Brinkman’s comments were a catalyst for addressing those blocks of Oak and Fell. She said Newsom was going to encourage the SFMTA to look into the possibility of improving the bicycle facilities and was going to ask them to work with the neighborhood to address concerns that might arise about parking, for instance.

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Editor’s note: Matthew Ridgway is a principal at Fehr and Peers, a transportation design and engineering firm that routinely consults on bicycle and pedestrian projects throughout California. His firm was hired to help develop Fresno’s Bicycle Master Plan. Bryan Jones, the city of Fresno’s traffic engineer, contributed to this report.

A collective sigh of relief could be heard throughout San Francisco this past August when a judge finally lifted the a four-year Bicycle Plan injunction, freeing the city to move ahead with striping miles of bike lanes. News outlets in the city depicted the denouement of one of the more confounding dramas in transportation planning, as the curtain on Rob Anderson’s quixotic mission to thwart clean transportation came to a final close.

But the biggest story in expanding bicycle networks in California has been quietly unfolding two hundred miles away from the City by the Bay in Fresno.

Yes, Fresno.

Even with an astounding 15.2 percent unemployment rate and home prices down by 48.6 percent over the last five years, Fresno has managed to add more bike lanes than most cities outside of New York, which has completed construction of 200 miles of bike lanes in three years. Given Fresno’s size, the per capita addition of lanes makes it competitive with the accomplishments of Janette Sadik-Khan, though with much less fanfare.

Take the numbers: over the past 12 months Fresno has built 30 miles of new on-street bike lanes and three miles of new trails, with an additional 30 miles of bikeways in the works (compare that to San Francisco’s plan to add 31 miles). And that’s before its City Council unanimously approved its first comprehensive Bicycle Master Plan, which focuses on the Five E’s of Engineering, Education, Encouragement, Enforcement, and Evaluation.

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San Franciscans who live in the Sunset or want to pedal to the beach now have a three-mile stretch of bike lanes on Kirkham Street from 9th Avenue to the Great Highway. I rode the new bike lanes over the weekend and it was a mostly calm, relaxing ride. I typically pedal through Golden Gate Park to get to Ocean Beach (a much smoother trip since the repaving) but on Sunday I decided to explore a few quiet neighborhoods along Bike Route 40.

The SFMTA recently striped Kirkham, narrowing the auto lanes to 10 feet and giving bicyclists 6-foot wide bike lanes on both sides going east and west. Three medians between Funston and 17th have been converted to raised concrete islands, the result of a community process than began five years ago to help tame the street and make it more welcoming to pedestrians.

For long stretches on Kirkham, it was a very pleasant ride. The most uncomfortable part was not climbing the hills, it was crossing 19th Avenue, San Francisco’s busiest traffic sewer. The westbound bike lane turns into sharrows at 18th, and to get across the congested intersection at 19th, I had to plod through the mess of cars waiting to turn right. It was a bit dicey not just for me but for one woman on foot who got stranded on the median trying to cross.

The SFMTA did consider removing the parking spaces along that portion of Kirkham to add a westbound bike lane along the curb, but it probably would not have been popular in the neighborhood. The Kirkham project as it exists sailed through without any resistance because it had little effect on parking. There’s also the issue of right-turning drivers who would likely obstruct the bike lane. The SFMTA surmises since this section is downhill most bicyclists will be traveling at similar speeds to cars on a green light, but if my experience is common, bicyclists should be very careful when crossing this ugly intersection.

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Despite a four-year bicycle injunction starting in 2006, San Francisco’s share of bicycle commuting has risen, lifting the city to 4th on the League of American Bicyclists’ (LAB) list of 70 largest American cities, while Oakland rose two spaces to 5th. The list is compiled each year from data collected by the Census Bureau as part of its American Community Survey (ACS).

“I’m proud that San Francisco continues to be a leader in promoting bicycling as a healthy, sustainable transportation alternative,” said Mayor Gavin Newsom. “With the safer and more inviting bike network we’re creating throughout the City, more and more San Franciscans will start bicycling.”

San Francisco’s 10 percent increase and Oakland’s 18 percent increase in bicycle commuting in 2009 came during a year when the number one and number two bicycle-commuting cities in the country, Portland, Oregon, and Minneapolis, Minnesota, respectively, lost bicycle mode share relative to other forms of transportation. Despite these drops, Portland and Minneapolis are still far ahead of the Bay Area, with 5.81 percent of Portlanders bicycle commuting and 3.86 percent in the Twin Cities. Compare that to San Francisco’s 2.98 percent and Oakland’s 2.53 percent.

These numbers should seem low to those who ride regularly on Market Street in San Francisco during commute hours, where cyclists have been the majority of the street’s users the past several Bike to Work Days. Overall bicycle usage in cities is actually harder to measure than the very specific commuting percentages would suggest, because ACS data collection under-counts cyclists, according to LAB. From their website:

Workers were asked to list only the means of transportation they used on the largest number of days in that week. This means that if the respondent rode a bicycle to work two days but drove three, they would not be counted as a cyclist. Likewise, workers were asked only for the means of transportation used for the longest distance during the trips. If someone biked one mile to a bus stop and rode the bus for two miles they would not be recorded as a bicyclist.

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A 37-year-old Oakland man has been identified as the driver of a 1989 Mercedes-Benz who allegedly killed 22-year-old Nils Linke of Germany while he was riding his bicycle Friday night on Masonic Avenue near Turk Street, a tragic reminder that the SFMTA needs to act quickly to fix one of San Francisco's most notorious traffic sewers.

SFPD spokesperson Lt. Lyn Tomioka said Joshua Calder faces charges of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, DUI, felony hit-and-run causing death and no proof of insurance. Tomioka wasn't sure if Calder was being held without bail, but he was booked Friday night. Police told the Chronicle he drove away from the scene but was located two blocks from the crash, at Turk and Tamalpais Terrace.

According to CBS5, Calder was traveling southbound on Masonic Avenue around 10:40 p.m. Friday when he hit and killed Linke, who was identified as a tourist. A spokesperson for the German Consulate in San Francisco told Streetsblog Linke had been traveling alone on his visit.

For years now, advocates and residents who live on and near Masonic Avenue have been trying to get the SFMTA to turn Masonic into a complete street, replete with bicycle and pedestrian amenities that would slow traffic, and make it a safer place for everyone. At a recent community meeting, the agency offered four options to do that, including a cycle track.

As Michael Helquist of BIKE NOPA pointed out today, the SFMTA has been hearing loud calls to fix Masonic since 2008 when 500 residents signed a petition citing speed concerns. It was hand delivered to SFMTA Chief Nat Ford.

During a press conference today for new Clipper fare gates, Ford was asked to respond to concerns about Masonic.

"We've put about four options out there now to really look at how to redesign that street," said Ford. "Unfortunately, Masonic could use some traffic calming. I have to be cautious, because you can imagine, this is a very litigious situation. Our hearts go out to the family of the young man who got killed, but we have to also make sure that we're making prudent legal steps going forward in dealing with this issue."

We're attempting to get more details on the victim, the suspect and the growing calls to Fix Masonic. Look for more coverage this week. 

It's no secret that many bicyclists pedaling through one of San Francisco's most popular bicycling corridors, The Wiggle, often run the red light turning onto Fell Street from Scott. Whether you agree it's a dangerous move to do so, considering the speeding traffic that thunders down Fell, the intersection has not been designed to give left-turn bicyclists signal priority, even though the SFMTA earlier this year installed a left-turn bike lane and green bike box on Scott. As it stands, bicyclists have 30 seconds to turn left on the green, but only if there's no southbound automobile traffic.

The fact that the intersection hasn't been updated to accommodate the dramatic rise in bicyclists, the most vulnerable users of the road along with pedestrians, apparently doesn't matter to the San Francisco Police Department. According to reports from Streetsblog readers, the SFPD has upped its enforcement along The Wiggle, where increasing numbers of bicyclists are getting ticketed not only for running the red light on Scott, but for rolling through stop signs.

"I've lived here my whole life and I never expected to get a ticket on my bike," said Nate Miller, who was slapped with a ticket one evening last month as he was commuting from his job in the Mission District to his home in the Inner Richmond. "He (the officer) was standing in the bike lane (on Fell) so as soon as you hit it he stopped you and you had to pull over."

Miller said he recognized the officer as being one of about a dozen cops who were on hand recently at an Arco station protest. "He could only ticket so many people at a time so he grabbed one and wrote us a ticket and then three minutes after he was done he'd get another person, and he was just doing this rapid fire."

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After nearly four years of legal wrangling, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Peter Busch lifted the city's bike injunction this afternoon, freeing the SFMTA to begin working on implementing the remaining projects in the Bike Plan, and soundly rejecting the objections made by plaintiff Rob Anderson and his attorney Mary Miles.

"We are celebrating San Francisco's freedom to once again make streets safer for everyone and look forward to real improvements on the streets in a matter of days," said Renée Rivera, acting executive director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. "This is the first time in San Francisco's history that this many bike lane projects are approved and ready to be striped. These long-awaited improvements will help growing numbers of people feel more confident, comfortable and safe when they bike to shop, to work and to play."

Busch's ruling (PDF) late today ends a long legal ordeal for the city, bike advocates and the increasing numbers of San Francisco bicyclists who have been starving for significant improvements in bicycle infrastructure. Though the city got a partial lifting late last year, the SFMTA has been held back from moving full speed ahead on innovative projects it has in the works, and very often was hesitant to make even minor improvements, fearing it would jeopardize the city's case. The agency will now be on track to add 34 miles of new bike lanes, nearly doubling the current number.

"Today is the beginning of a new era for bicycling in San Francisco," said SFMTA Chief Nat Ford. "The SFMTA Bike Program staff has been working tirelessly to prepare for this day and we are committed to doing the work needed to keep the number of bicyclists growing in the years ahead."

Mayor Newsom also issued a statement saying the city's efforts "to promote bicycling as a healthy and environmentally sustainable transportation alternative will surge."

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After four long years, a San Francisco judge this afternoon lifted the city's longstanding bicycle injunction, overruling the objections of Rob Anderson and his attorney, Mary Miles. Here's the ruling (PDF), and here's the press release from City Attorney Dennis Herrera:

San Francisco Superior Court Judge Peter J. Busch issued an order late this afternoon finding San Francisco in compliance with the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, in seeking to implement its Bicycle Plan citywide. The ruling effectively dissolves an injunction that continued to prohibit City engineers from moving forward on some planned bicycle route improvements intended to enhance the safety and usability of streets for bicyclists. A previous order from Nov. 2009 lifted significant portions of the original 2006 injunction, but left limited restrictions intact while the adequacy of environmental review for certain projects was adjudicated.

"I am very gratified by the ruling from Judge Busch, who carefully considered an enormous amount of evidence in this case, and found that the City met its environmental review requirements," said City Attorney Dennis Herrera. "Today's decision clears an important hurdle toward making San Francisco safer for bicyclists, and healthier for all of us. I am very thankful to the many dedicated public servants involved in this policy initiative and meeting the stringent legal requirements to fulfill it, including Mayor Gavin Newsom and the Board of Supervisors, the Municipal Transportation Agency, and the Planning Department."

The case is: Coalition for Adequate Review et al. v. City and County of San Francisco, San Francisco Superior Court No. 505-509, filed July 28, 2005. A copy of the order is available on the City Attorney's Web site at http://www.sficityattorney.org/.