Streetsblog San Francisco

It looks like Supervisor Eric Mar is ready to make some noise about the need to fund the SFMTA’s vision for a major expansion of bike-friendly streets — which Mayor Ed Lee hasn’t prioritized at all since the agency released its Draft Bicycle Strategy earlier this year.

Supervisor Mar speaking at last week's Bike to Work Day rally. Photo: Aaron Bialick

At yesterday’s Board of Supervisors meeting, Mar issued a request to the City Budget and Legislative Analyst and the Controller’s Office for a report on potential opportunities to increase the abysmal amount of funding currently devoted to bicycle infrastructure — 0.46 percent of the city’s capital budget.

“It’s time that the city walks the walk when it comes to funding bike improvements,” said Mar. “Less than a half of one percent is not acceptable.”

While pro-bike talk from elected officials abounded at last week’s Bike to Work Day rally, Mar noted that ”there were no commitments to step up and deliver the funding that our fledgling bicycle network needs.”

In February, when Mar asked Mayor Ed Lee how he planned to help fund the SFMTA’s Bicycle Strategy – a vision for making bicycling a mainstream mode of transportation – the mayor made it clear that he has no plans to back up his pro-bike rhetoric with a commitment to implementation.

With the SFMTA set to approve its next two-year budget a year from now, “Now is the time where we can start planning and working proactively to make these plans a reality,” said Mar.

Mar pointed to SFMTA Director Ed Reiskin’s remarks at last October’s NACTO Conference in New York, reported by Streetsblog, when Reiskin stated that “the most cost effective investment we can make in moving people in our city is in bicycle infrastructure.”

The efficacy of bicycle infrastructure is already evident in neighborhoods like the Inner Richmond, which Mar represents, where bicycle commuting increased by 167 percent from 2000 to 2010. During that time, bike lanes were installed on Arguello Boulevard and Cabrillo Street. Mar also pushed for the recent implementation of the Fell and Oak protected bike lanes, which now provide a safer commuting route for District 1 residents. “I think the improvements to bike lanes, making them safer for families, has had a real impact in the Richmond,” said Mar.

“We know that improving the bicycle network in San Francisco leads to healthier communities, less car congestion, less pressure on Muni lines already at capacity, healthier commuters, and many other economic benefits,” he added.

Photo: Andy Thornley/Flickr

The SFMTA installed bike lanes this weekend on the Great Highway, north of Fulton Street at Golden Gate Park. The Great Highway continues as Point Lobos Avenue as it runs by the Cliff House.

Point Lobos Avenue. Photo: Andy Thornley/Flickr

The bike lanes are buffered from motor traffic on some stretches, and two of the four traffic lanes on Point Lobos in front of the Cliff House were removed, which should help calm car traffic. The bike lane also disappears on the downhill section of Point Lobos, though sharrows were stenciled in the traffic lane, and there’s a wide shoulder between the lane and the row of angled car parking which it runs by.

The bike lanes were installed as part of a re-paving and streetscape improvement project underway by the Department of Public Works that’s expected to be finished by October. The SFMTA will install plastic posts in the buffer zones “later in the construction period,” according to the agency’s Livable Streets Facebook page.

Thanks to Andy Thornley for the photos — he also pointed out that this is part of the Pacific Coast Bicycle Route, which runs all the way from Oregon to Mexico.

See more after the jump.

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Commuting to work on Gateway Boulevard in South San Francisco. Photo: Andrew Boone

Among the record-breaking 9,000 bike commuters celebrating Bike to Work Day in San Mateo County on Thursday, County Supervisor Dave Pine led a convoy from downtown Redwood City to the Oracle energizer station, crossing Highway 101 using the Ralston Avenue bike-pedestrian bridge in Belmont.

San Mateo County Supervisor Dave Pine and Redwood City Council candidate Diane Howard at the Oracle energizer station. Photo: Andrew Boone

“We really have to look at bicycling as a viable and important part of the transportation network and not just a recreational pursuit,” Pine said. “The county needs to take more of a leadership role to publicize bike routes and get cities to work together to construct practical bicycle infrastructure so that people can get to work more easily.”

Bike to Work Day is booming throughout San Mateo County, with ridership increasing 33 percent since last year, and more than doubling since 2011, according to the Peninsula Traffic Congestion Relief Alliance.

Commuters were greeted with 37 energizer stations along popular bike commuting routes, where volunteers from the PTCRA and the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition helped them fuel up with coffee and snacks. Nearly 1,000 cyclists enjoyed an outdoor breakfast at Oracle’s energizer station at the company’s headquarters in Redwood Shores, which lies along the Bay Trail, a route favored by many bike commuters for its long sections of off-street bicycle and pedestrian paths and beautiful views of the San Francisco Bay.

Each year, more Silicon Valley employers — from tech giants like Genentech, Facebook, and Google, to other major businesses like Kaiser Permanente (which partnered with Whole Foods) and Food Service Providers — are holding their own events to encourage participation in Bike to Work Day as a way to promote employee health and reduce traffic congestion.

“Bike to Work Day provides an opportunity for people who are considering biking to work to try it along with thousands of others, while being cheered on at the energizer stations along the way,” said PTCRA Executive Director John Ford. “Once people try cycling to work, many of them make it part of their regular commute.”

While improvements to make bicycling in San Mateo County safer and more convenient have been hampered by a lack of bureaucratic coordination between cities, a few are starting to take the lead. The city of San Mateo is currently planning safer crossings over and under Highway 101: a bike-ped bridge at Hillsdale Boulevard, and a bike-ped path along the 16th Avenue canal under the freeway.

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Photo: SFBC via Facebook

The Oak Street protected bike lane was opened to bicycle traffic today — the SFMTA finished striping and bike traffic signals just in time to welcome commuters on Bike to Work Day tomorrow, according to the agency’s Livable Streets Facebook page. Crews got the job done at an impressive pace once it became a top priority, completing nearly all of the work since the first signs of construction appeared last Thursday.

At long last, west siders (including myself) have a safer path between the Panhandle and the Wiggle in both directions.

“Every year, biking to work and to school is becoming more commonplace in San Francisco, and we need to meet the rising demand for bikeways fit for anyone from an 8-year old student to their 80-year old neighbor,” said SFMTA Board Chair Tom Nolan in a statement.

While we’re still waiting for protective concrete planters to be installed in the buffer zone later this year, maybe some “interested but concerned” San Franciscans who give biking a try tomorrow will stick with it thanks to this upgrade.

Photo: Bryan Goebel

It’s clear that the parking-obsessed, anti-bike lane merchants behind the “Save Polk Street” group have no interest in vetting information before making their case. Concrete facts certainly had no place in the fearmongering rhetoric spouted by street safety opponents at the March meeting they staged, encapsulated by Flipp store owner Dan Kowalski’s dishonest comparison of the Polk Street project to bike lanes on non-commercial streets in other cities.

Chris Provan speaking yesterday at a Board of Supervisors hearing on parking meters. Provan has blamed the existing Polk Street bike lanes for a decline in his business. Photo: SFGovTV

Meanwhile, proponents of safer streets report that arguments using empirical evidence have fallen on deaf ears with the anti-bike lane crowd.

At the March meeting, Chris Provan, a Russian Hill Bookstore manager wearing a ”Save Polk St.” t-shirt, blamed the partial, door-zone bike lanes that replaced a traffic lane in 2000 — increasing bike traffic on Polk by as much 41 percent in the first ten months [PDF] — for causing a drop in his business in the subsequent years. Apparently, Provan still blames the bike lane (it couldn’t have been, say, the effect of the internet on retail book sales). Provan then argued that the status quo should be maintained because today, “people are coming here by droves, and there’s more of them than can find parking as it stands.” As the SFMTA found, 85 percent of those people are coming without a car.

Unsurprisingly, the Save Polk Street website’s FAQ page is rife with this kind of misinformation. It’s time to de-bunk some of the propaganda that’s being disseminated by the group’s leaders. Let’s start with this statement of theirs:

SAVE POLK ST. believes that bicycle, pedestrian and transit safety and aesthetic improvements can be achieved through alternatives that do not require the wholesale removal of more than half to all of the parking on Polk Street.

First, nothing the SFMTA has proposed would remove more than half of the parking on Polk. More importantly, what street safety opponents are really saying here is that they will not tolerate the safest options for Polk, because some parking would be removed. Retaining parking means that specific improvements — like sidewalk bulb-outs or protected bike lanes — cannot be implemented.

People who drove to Polk Street reported spending the most per trip compared to those who used other modes of transportation.

This is cherrypicking, pure and simple. Drivers did report spending more money per trip than other customers in an SFMTA survey, but the same survey also revealed that drivers made fewer trips per capita than customers who arrived by walking, biking, or transit. The upshot is that drivers spend less per week than customer who come to Polk by any other mode. Of course, when the Save Polk leaders don’t like the result of the survey, they dismiss it:

The SFMTA survey never asked people how much they spend per week on Polk Street. Was there a need for the SFMTA to manipulate its own data?

Sorry, folks — you can’t have it both ways by making your case with survey data, then discounting the same data with your next breath.

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The SFMTA laid down preliminary markings for the Oak Street protected bike lane yesterday, and says it aims to have it ready by Bike to Work Day next Thursday. Photo: Aaron Bialick

Crews erected the bicycle counter on Market Street earlier this week. Photo: SFMTA

The SFMTA expects to have the protected bike lane on Oak Street and the Market Street bicycle counter ready on Bike to Work Day — next Thursday, May 9 — according to agency staff.

As we reported Wednesday, construction on the three-block Oak bike lane has been held up by renovation work at the Kelly-Moore paint shop. However, the agency apparently found a way to work around it, and yesterday laid down the first markings for the bike lane buffer zone on Oak between Baker and Broderick Streets. “Crews are trying to get the work completed by Bike to Work Day,” said Ben Jose, public information officer for the agency’s Livable Streets subdivision. “But at this point we are not certain that given all the work to be done, it will be totally completed.”

Meanwhile, the bicycle counter has been erected on Market between Ninth and Tenth Streets, and is being calibrated. SFMTA spokesperson Paul Rose said it will start counting bicycle traffic at its official unveiling on Bike to Work Day.

Photo: Aaron Bialick

The protected bike lane on Oak Street may not be constructed until some time after May 19, when the permit for renovation work on the Kelly-Moore paint shop on the corner of Oak and Divisadero Street ends, according to planners from the SF Muncipal Transportation Agency. Because the permit allows the paint shop to occupy the parking lane where the bike lane will go, the bike lane can’t be completed until after it’s done, agency staff said.

The project was originally promised this past winter, then delayed to February. SFMTA planners said they are now looking at ways to work around the renovation to start preliminary work on the bike lane, but that the agency’s hands are largely tied until it’s finished. Agency staff also said the paint shop owners have indicated they’re unlikely to need an extension of the permit.

The main cause of the delay seems to be of lack of coordination between the SFMTA and the Department of Public Works, which issues permits to occupy street space for construction.

SFMTA staff has said that unlike the Fell lane, installing the Oak bike lane will require crews to re-stripe all of the traffic lanes on the three-block stretch, in order to fit it into the street’s geometry.

The SF Bicycle Coalition is counting, down to the second, how long it's taking city agencies to install safety upgrades on Fell and Oak Streets.

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The SFMTA said it won't pursue protected bike lanes on most of Polk Street, even though the agency drew up this conceptual plan in the Think Bike workshops in September 2011.

The second open house on the Polk Street safety improvements is tonight. While the agency has said protected bike lanes are not on the table for most of Polk, don’t be discouraged from showing up. This is your chance to tell the SFMTA you support protected bike lanes along the entire street. As we’ve seen, Supervisor David Chiu isn’t going to stand up and make that case for you.

Neal Patel, planning director for the SF Bicycle Coalition, wrote in a blog post today that ”we’ve been told by SFMTA staff that continuous, separated bikeways (including the parking-protected bikeway option presented earlier this year by the SFMTA and an idea the SF Bicycle Coalition developed years ago) are not technically feasible for Polk Street for a variety of reasons.” Patel adds that the SFBC is still trying to “understand if these are truly valid technical issues, or the SFMTA shying away from a hard decision to create one continuous north-south bikeway that’s safe for everyone who wants to bike.”

One explanation is that a continuous protected lane would be feasible if the agency decided to remove more parking. While the anti-bike lane ”Save Polk Street” merchants are sowing fear about removing parking on a street where 85 percent of people arrive without a car, making it a more inviting place for biking and walking will not kill businesses. In fact, since bikes take up so much less space than cars, with a safer bikeway, more people would be able to access Polk than under the dangerous status quo.

While it’s no substitute for attending tonight’s meeting, you can also sign an online petition from Folks for Polk, a group organized in support of the safest options for Polk Street. Currently the petition has amassed 670 signatures. The group is also creating a list of businesses that prioritize safety improvements over a few parking spaces, where protected bike lane supporters can spend their money.

Tonight’s meeting will be held at the First Congregational Church Fellowship Hall at 1300 Polk St (at Bush) from 5 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.