Streetsblog San Francisco

A legal appeal filed against protected bike lanes and pedestrian safety upgrades on three blocks of Fell and Oak Streets was rejected unanimously by the Board of Supervisors yesterday. Construction on the project, currently underway the SF Municipal Transportation Agency beginning with the Fell Street protected bike lane, will not be halted by the appeal.

Photo: SFBC

Supervisors dismissed the opponents’ claims that the project required an environmental impact report (EIR) under the California Environmental Quality Act, which could have added a year or more to the project. In a statement, the SF Bicycle Coalition hailed the board “for voting to uphold the city’s thorough work, and against creating a precedent that curb extensions and bikeways require an unprecedented and unreasonable amount of environmental review.”

The appeal [PDF], largely seen as a gambit to slow the project, was filed by Mark Brennan, a developer who owns a building on Oak and Divisadero Street; Howard Chabner, a disability rights advocate; and Ted Loewenberg, president of the Haight-Ashbury Improvement Association. Another appeal could be filed at the state level, though it’s unclear if the opponents plan to do so.

At issue was the Planning Department’s determination that the project didn’t require an EIR under CEQA because it only includes “minor alterations” to existing streets and won’t remove traffic lanes, except for a part-time turning lane on Oak.

The project will re-purpose about 100 on-street car parking spaces from Fell and Oak to create protected bike lanes separated from motor traffic by concrete planters (while replacing about half of those spaces on nearby streets). Much of the striping work on Fell is already done.

Although CEQA doesn’t require an EIR for any of the changes in the project, since they’re considered “minor alterations” to the street, Chabner argued that they go beyond that definition when taken altogether, and that the impacts of a separate plan to overhaul nearby Masonic Boulevard should be considered as well.

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The north side of the University Avenue overpass over Highway 101 has no bike lane and a four-foot sidewalk. Pictured: Brent Butler, East Palo Alto Planning Manager, leads Streetsblog on a tour of the area. Photo: Bryan Goebel.

East Palo Alto was recently awarded $5 million to build a freeway off-ramp designed a decade ago that even the city’s traffic engineer admits is no longer needed because traffic volumes are down. But as part of the project, the north section of the University Avenue overpass — a treacherous but often necessary route for East Palo Alto residents who bike and walk — would be widened to expand the skinny sidewalk to twelve feet and add a five-foot bike lane.

“I’m not crazy about the off-ramp, and I see little benefit, in my opinion, but it’s a package that we have to do together,” said Kamal Fallaha, East Palo Alto’s traffic engineer. “We need the widening for the pedestrians and bicyclists.”

Bike advocates not only take issue with the off-ramp, they say the proposed improvements for bike riders and pedestrians fall far short of what’s needed. They’re concerned the approaches to both sides of the bridge — which have no bike lanes and narrow sidewalks — would not be improved as part of the project. Nor would the south side of the overpass.

“We are about to spend $5 million for a tiny reduction in motorist travel times but cannot even provide decent pedestrian and bicycle accommodation at a place with very high ped and bike traffic volumes,” said Andrew Boone, a bicycle advocate who lives in East Palo Alto and helped start the Peninsula Transportation Alternatives blog.

Alex Fabrikant, a bike commuter who also lives in East Palo Alto, “avoids the bridge like the plague” and was disappointed the south side “would be just as terrible,” he said. ”It feels like the kind of improvement that would be a small step forward but it won’t radically change the biking patterns until both directions are covered.”

The story of why this critical project treats safety as an afterthought highlights major shortcomings in the way regional and state agencies plan, fund, and build improvements for walking and biking. Stingy safety funds from the county’s transportation authority and the rigidness of Caltrans have conspired to stymie a common-sense approach to what should be a simple task: Providing a safe passage for people to walk and bike across Highway 101.

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Howard looking east between Beale and Main. Sharrows are now in the left-most lane on this block, where the Bike Plan originally called for a continous bike lane. Photo: Google Maps

SoMa’s westbound bike lane on Howard Street was extended east to the Embarcadero last week, creating a link from the waterfront to 11th Street. However, the SF Municipal Transportation Agency apparently left a gap on the block between Main and Beale Streets, where Howard passes the temporary Transbay Terminal. According to tipster Hank Hodes, the SFMTA painted only sharrows there, forcing bike commuters to ride in a lane with motor traffic, even though a continuous bike lane was called for in the SF Bike Plan.

The Howard bike lane serves as half of SoMa’s east-west bike corridor, along with the eastbound bike lane on neighboring Folsom Street, and is “a route preferred by many riders over Market Street for its minimal transit and straight angled intersections,” noted Hodes. But commuters hoping for a continuous bike lane that doesn’t suddenly dump them in motor traffic are apparently out of luck.

Howard at Steuart Street. Photo: Hank Hodes

We have an inquiry in with the SFMTA as to why the change was made, but one possible explanation is that curbside bus parking for the temporary terminal ate up space that would have been allocated to the bike lane, and no alternative plan to allow for the bike lane was created. Under the SFMTA’s Bike Plan design [PDF], the space for the bike lane on that block would have been carved from a 12’6″ traffic lane (and part-time parking lane), but that lane doesn’t appear to exist today. The “existing configuration” shown in the Bike Plan design, it seems, was altered to create room for a wider bus stop lane on the opposite side of the street.

Since most of the real estate for the new bike lane (including the originally planned section between Main and Beale) comes from reallocating the excess width of existing traffic lanes, no car parking was removed. A one-block eastbound traffic lane was removed between Steuart and Spear, however, which should help calm car traffic.

Bicycling on Howard has increased dramatically since the SFMTA implemented the main stretch of the bike lane between 2001 and 2006. During that time, the number of bicyclists at Howard and 5th Streets climbed 300 percent, according to city data provided by the SF Bicycle Coalition. From 2006 to 2011, the number of bicyclists at Howard and 11th Streets increased by an additional 104 percent, according to the SFMTA’s 2011 Bicycle Count Report [PDF].

See more photos after the break.

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The SF Municipal Transportation Agency is testing out new street markings to help cyclists safely negotiate hairy intersections where bike routes and rail tracks meet.

Looking eastbound on the north side of 17th, facing Church.

The SFMTA added guidance markings this week to the intersection of 17th and Church Streets, where the 17th Street bike lane meets Muni’s F-Market and J-Church streetcar lines. Car parking spots near the corners were also removed to improve visibility and provide more room for cyclists to maneuver safely.

The dashed lines and sharrows direct cyclists to cross the tracks at nearly a perpendicular angle, which minimizes the risk that bike wheels will get caught in the track crevices — a common bicycling hazard in San Francisco. Similar treatments have been used in Seattle.

“We’ve heard reports of crashes at 17th/Church and are trying this design to determine if it’s effective in improving the angle people take when they ride across the tracks,” said Mike Sallaberry of the SFMTA’s Livable Streets Subdivision. “We’ve taken some observations already and will continue to do that to see if the design could be improved or applied elsewhere.”

Although SFMTA planners have also discussed adding similar markings at the bike and transit junction of Church and Duboce Avenue, Sallaberry didn’t say if those will be implemented.

Similar track-crossing markings were included in the 17th Street Bike Plan project, which originally proposed extending the bike lane west of Church. The plan was revised to cut the bike lane short, to avoid directing bicyclists to ride in the narrow space between parked cars and passing trolley cars. Instead, bicyclists are expected to share the lane with trolleys.

Removing the car parking lanes on that block of 17th, while politically contentious, could provide a much safer space for people cycling on the street, but there are no known plans to do so.

More photos after the break.

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A man riding a bicycle was seriously injured by a driver at Market Street and Octavia Boulevard at about midnight last night, according to police and two witnesses.

Market and Octavia. Photo: sftrajan/Flickr

The bicyclist was sent to the hospital after the crash at 12:05 a.m., said SFPD spokesperson Michael Andraychak. He said more details won’t be available until the police report enters the department’s system.

[Update:] Christopher Schroeder said he witnessed the crash, and that the man on the bike ran a red light:

I watched from my bike at my red light as the cyclist ran his red light at the freeway entrance of Octavia and Market and was hit by the car. After his body hit the car grate it rolled up onto the hood, over the roof and flew 4+ lanes approx. 20 feet before it hit the ground and rolled three times to stop just steps for me. As I pulled out my phone I had seconds to decide whether I run into the intersection to stop his body from being ran over by another car or whether that put myself at too much risk. Luckily the car behind stopped which gave me a chance to run to him, protected from traffic. He was not conscious. He did not move. 911 immediately responded. While the ambulance was in route the cyclist started to sputter and spit. An off duty nurse came to hold his neck and suddenly he started talking. Not in a normal voice but in a high pitched daze. “I’m fine. I need to get up. Please let go of me. Please. I’m fine. Please.” The paramedics say his neck is not broken and he should recover. The police have my number. I gave my statement assuring them the [driver] was not at fault. It never could have seen him. He ran the light to a freeway entrance.

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