Streetsblog San Francisco

The SF Municipal Transportation Agency has taken protected bike lanes off the table for 14 of 20 blocks of Polk Street under its latest design options [PDF].

On 14 blocks of Polk Street, from Geary to Union Street, the SFMTA's most ambitious proposal only includes conventional bike lanes. Protected bike lanes are apparently off the table. Image: SFMTA

The agency, it seems, has backed down from making bicycling on Polk safe enough for a broader range of San Franciscans, in order to placate merchants who have vociferously opposed removing a small percentage of parking to make room for safety improvements that could actually boost business on a street where 85 percent of people arrive without a car.

Instead, the SFMTA’s most ambitious proposal for Polk between Geary and Union Streets only includes bike lanes that, depending on the block, would run either curbside (without parking) or in the door zone — the kinds of bike lanes that only make a relatively small percentage of people feel comfortable enough to ride.

No longer included are options [PDF] presented by the agency in December which would have provided bike lanes that run along the curb consistently, with some stretches protected from traffic by parking lanes.

“The city is setting its sights too low if they’re not committing to a truly family-friendly bikeway that really does offer people of all ages and skill levels a safe place to ride,” said Leah Shahum, executive director of the SF Bicycle Coalition. “We know Polk Street is already one of the more intimidating places for people walking and biking, and we also know there’s a major problem with dooring.”

In all, the SFMTA now provides three design options for the two sections of Polk — north and south of Geary. For both sections, the SFMTA has included an option that would essentially maintain the status quo for bicycling conditions, making no changes to the bike lanes except for some new green paint.

In terms of the amount of parking that could be removed, SFMTA staff said the range for these options is between 4 to 14 percent of the 2,100 on-street spaces within a block of the corridor. (When off-street parking is taken into account, for a total supply of 5,100 spaces, our calculations put the range at 1.6 percent to 6 percent.)

On the six-block stretch of Polk south of Geary to McAllister, the SFMTA does provide an option for protected bike lanes that would eliminate northbound motor traffic (precluding a potential re-route of the 19-Polk onto the street) and preserve much of the parking. Another option for that stretch would create buffered bike lanes with mixed levels of protection, running curbside on some stretches, between parked cars and moving cars on others.

Regardless of the options chosen, SFMTA planners said they would add all of the proposed pedestrian safety upgrades, like corner bulb-outs, re-timing traffic signals for slower speeds, and daylighting to improve visibility at corners.

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Photos: Mark Dreger

The SFMTA installed some green-backed bike stencils and upgraded ladder-style crosswalks at Market Street and Octavia Boulevard, the intersection that sees the most pedestrian and bicycle injuries in San Francisco.

Mark Dreger and I were pleasantly surprised to stumble upon the improvements yesterday while riding home from an awesome Sunday Streets in the Mission. The markings should help call attention to people walking and biking through the intersection and reduce crashes while San Franciscans wait for camera enforcement against drivers who make illegal right turns on to the freeway (the use of enforcement cams there was deemed legal in January).

This particular use of green-backed stencils paired with dashed lane markings may also be a sign of the SFMTA’s continued experimentation with intersection markings to improve bike safety. Though the agency has used these types of markings at Market and Van Ness Avenue, 17th and Church Streets, and several intersections along the Wiggle, SFMTA staff has said that their primary purpose is not to make people on bikes more visible to drivers, but to help guide bike riders through intersections. The reason, an SFMTA staffer told me, is because the agency doesn’t have sufficient data to show that bike markings stenciled through intersections are effective at reducing crashes.

The two Market and Octavia stencils are placed only in the eastbound direction at the spot where illegally-turning drivers would intersect with bike traffic, and they seem designed specifically to call drivers’ attention to passing bicycle riders, much like crosswalks do for pedestrians. Or, as Mark put it, the new markings are “cross-bikes.” Perhaps we can expect to see more of this treatment throughout the city.

Update: According to a Facebook comment from a staffer who runs the SFMTA Livable Streets page, the bike markings are intended for both visibility and guidance: “One key goal here is to further discourage illegal right turns by providing an additional visual clue to any motorist contemplating the illegal turn.”

After the jump, photos of another bike upgrade at Baker and Oak…

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Supervisors Eric Mar, Mark Farrell, and London Breed.

The plan to overhaul deadly Masonic Avenue with pedestrian safety upgrades and raised, protected bike lanes could get much of its funding from a regional grant program. The Masonic project has received a strong endorsement from three members of the Board of Supervisors, who sent a letter last week to the head of the SF County Transportation Authority, urging the agency to make Masonic a priority as it decides which projects it will recommend to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission for funding.

Image: SF Planning Department's City Design Group

Chances that the $20 million project will get a substantial chunk from the MTC’s “One Bay Area Grant” are promising. When the SFCTA presented [PDF] its initial list of ten potential OBAG projects in December, Masonic was in the “upper tier.” It remains to be seen how much funding will go to Masonic, which along with other projects, such as the redesign of Second Street, is in the running for a limited pool of funds. The SF Municipal Transportation Agency applied for $16 million in OBAG funds for Masonic, but the SFCTA says only $35 million will be available for $54 million in funding requests citywide.

In their letter to SFCTA Acting Executive Director Maria Lombardo [PDF], Supervisors Eric Mar, Mark Farrell, and London Breed pointed to “a number of high-profile collisions and fatalities on this route in recent years,” asserting that “we must act fast to improve this corridor.”

We recognize there are multiple candidate projects with needs exceeding the total available funds, but we ask you to prioritize Masonic Avenue. We consider it a matter of public safety. The project will rectify what is now a fundamentally unsafe street design. It will also improve transit on a major north-south corridor, reduce environmental impact, and increase livability, thus meeting all the criteria established in the Transportation Plan.

Masonic is the only north-south bike route in the area, but is currently very unsafe and unappealing for most riders. The sidewalk bulb-outs, grade-separated bikeways, and tree-lined median are desperately needed on Masonic Avenue.

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San Francisco has two new faces on the Board of Supervisors: London Breed, representing District 5, and Norman Yee, representing District 7, both inaugurated last month after winning election in November. At a meeting of the Inner Sunset Park Neighbors last week, Streetsblog asked the two San Francisco natives to talk about their priorities for improving streets and transportation, both in the neighborhoods they represent and throughout the city.

London Breed

London Breed. Photo: Nathan Codd, Local Addition

District 5 is undergoing some major transportation improvements, including bike/ped upgrades on the Wiggle – one of the city’s most heavily-cycled routes for commuters in the western neighborhoods — and planned improvements on the N-Judah, Muni’s busiest line.

Representing neighborhoods like the Western Addition, Japantown, the upper and lower Haight, North of Panandle, the Inner Sunset, and Cole Valley, Supervisor Breed emphasized the long view of how transportation planning can accommodate a growing population. “We have to do more, because we have more people walking, more people using public transportation, more people riding bicycles, and the projections in the next 10 to 15 years are really high,” Breed said. “We’re going to have more people in San Francisco, and more people using these modes of transportation.”

“As supervisor, my goal is to look at data, to look at what’s happening, to look at ways in which we can improve the ability for people to get around,” she added. “We have to look at it from a larger scale. We can’t just piecemeal it together.”

Breed noted the challenges of procuring funding for transportation improvements like the unfunded $20 million plan to redesign Masonic Avenue for better walking, biking, and transit. “Unfortunately, it’s not an overnight solution, because the costs associated with making those changes are expensive,” she said.

Breed didn’t go into other specifics on pedestrian and bicycle safety at the meeting, but the “Transportation” page on her campaign website says she supports the SF Bicycle Coalition’s “Connecting the City” vision for a network of protected bikeways, and specifically endorses the Fell and Oak bike and pedestrian improvements underway:

As a kid, my friends and I used to roller skate the Wiggle long before we even knew it was ‘The Wiggle.’ I think the Wiggle should be an economic gateway and a shining example of what bike transit can be.

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This article is cross-posted from the blog of former Streetsblog SF editor Bryan Goebel, who’s aiming to launch a new website ”devoted to sustained coverage of biking, walking and transit issues in Sacramento, both at the Capitol and locally.” You can also follow Bryan on Twitter.

A proposal in Governor Jerry Brown’s budget that would change how the administration doles out federal and state money for biking and walking improvements could imperil critical street safety programs such as Safe Routes to School at a time when California is facing a growing health crisis and trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Photo: Myleen Hollero

“It does not reflect a serious sense of purpose by this Governor’s Office or the transportation bureaucracy to really make bicycling and walking a central part of California’s transportation system,” said Dave Snyder of the California Bicycle Coalition.

The move by the administration is a response to the federal transportation bill passed by Congress last year. MAP-21 ended some dedicated funding for biking and walking programs.

States are also receiving less money under Transportation Alternatives, the federal program previously known as Transportation Enhancements, which historically granted the bulk of bicycle and pedestrian funding to state transportation agencies and metropolitan planning organizations.

The League of American Bicyclists is encouraging state transportation agencies to make up for the cuts by seeking funding for street safety projects from other eligible pots of federal money.

California is receiving $80 million in TA funds, $13 million less than last year. In its current form, Brown’s budget, which has been widely praised for being balanced, would not kick in any other money to make up for the loss.

Under the administration’s proposal, the Business, Transportation and Housing Agency, which oversees Caltrans, would combine five funding programs, including Safe Routes and the Bicycle Transportation Account, into what’s being called the “Active Transportation Program.”

The combined total in the account would be $134 million, compared to $147 million last year.

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