Streetsblog San Francisco

SFMTA crews were spotted installing more green coloring on the Market Street bike lanes today, and say they expect to complete the entire section between Octavia Boulevard and 8th Street in time for Bike to Work Day May 12.

A dashed green treatment can now be found on the sections of bike lanes approaching Van Ness Avenue, complementing the recently installed bike boxes, as well as Octavia Boulevard and near the Haight/Gough Street intersection. More soft-hit posts are also expected to be added to missing sections.

The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition has urged the SFMTA to fill in the gaps since soft-hit posts and green lanes were first installed on portions of Market between Van Ness and 8th Street nearly a year ago. The SFBC says the green lanes on the city’s most important street for bicyclists have greatly increased safety by making people who ride bikes more visible to drivers and deterring illegal parking.

Crew members said they plan to continue greening the bike lanes in the early mornings this weekend and over the next two weeks.

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Crews were out on Market Street today laying down the first bike boxes on both sides of the Ninth Street intersection. They come as the first of five promised by the SFMTA earlier this month.

The boxes allow bike riders to get up front at a stop light, increasing visibility to motorists and allowing them to cross safely. The ones going in on Market Street are the first in San Francisco to be made of a rough, grip-sensitive material that should help bike riders keep traction even in the rain.

The bike boxes come as welcome news to bicycle advocates who have been pushing the city to complete a continuous Market Street separated bikeway.

Crew members said they’ll be installing the next boxes at Van Ness Avenue tomorrow. See more photos after the jump.

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A trial project diverting private automobile traffic off Market Street will become permanent following a unanimous vote by the SFMTA Board of Directors today. The changes have made the the city’s main thoroughfare more inviting for people who walk, take transit and bike by requiring eastbound drivers on Market to turn right at 10th and 6th Streets.

The improvements are “bringing more people to Market Street despite the tough economic times,” said Kit Hodge, Director of the San Francisco Great Streets Project. Since the trial began in September 2009, transit speeds and pedestrian and bicycle traffic have shown a marked increase.

The street is now “the busiest bicycling street west of the Mississippi,” with bikes making up 75 percent of morning vehicle traffic on last year’s Bike to Work Day, according to the SFBC.

Letters of support from those who feel more comfortable biking on Market Street “completely put to bed the urban myth that the cyclists in this town are young, strong men,” said Director Cheryl Brinkman. “The same people who are on our buses and our streetcars – the same variety of professions, ethnicities and ages – that’s who should and want to be out there on bikes.”

With reduced congestion and bus lane encroachment from automobiles, Muni travel times have decreased by about 3 percent, and “no serious congestion problems arose” on Mission and Folsom Streets, according to the SFMTA.

While the turn at 10th Street has seen approximately 80 percent compliance from drivers after targeted enforcement and a number of tweaks, critics have noted the 6th Street turn hasn’t seen the same level of attention or compliance. SFMTA spokesperson Paul Rose said making the turns permanent will allow San Francisco Police to enforce the rule.

After four years of an agonizing bicycle injunction that prevented the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) from adding any significant improvements to the city’s bike network, a judge earlier this year finally freed the SFMTA to begin building out the city’s long-promised Bicycle Plan.

In short order, the SFMTA made some very noticeable improvements, adding protected bike lanes on Mid-Market Street, installing thousands of sharrows on bicycle routes, striping ten miles of new bike lanes in a year and placing hundreds of new racks around the city. However, the game changing transformation that will elevate San Francisco into the upper echelon of world-class bicycling cities has yet to happen.

Those of us on the streets every day know the city can’t settle for six-foot lanes that leave cyclists straddling the perils of speeding traffic on one side and car doors swinging open on the other. Why should the only truly dignified bicycling space be a handful of blocks on Market Street, the Duboce Bikeway and the Panhandle? To bring San Francisco up to date with Copenhagen and Amsterdam, or even Portland and New York, the city must embrace the infrastructure that makes those cities safe and inviting to people who ride bikes.

Given how long it took to get this far, you might reasonably wonder if San Francisco will ever get to a point where cycling is a safe mobility option and welcoming for people of all ages. Maybe, though, if you consider the strong advocacy community we have here, elected officials who really do want to change the streets and the projected population growth that will stir a greater demand for bike facilities, it won’t take as long as you think.

Perhaps all the city needs is a new bike plan.

In its most ambitious undertaking to date, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (SFBC) has launched an initiative it calls “Connecting the City,” where bicyclists of any age and ability would be able to comfortably pedal across the city on a network of continuous bikeways from the Ferry Building to Ocean Beach, Park Merced to Downtown or Mission Bay to the Golden Gate Bridge.

“Connecting the City’s priority crosstown routes would take routes that are already being used and elevate it to 8 to 80 standards that feel comfortable and inviting for someone who is 8 years old or 80 years old,” said Renee Rivera, the SFBC’s acting executive director, borrowing a page from Gil Peñalosa.

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Most of our readers have probably already watched the amazing historic film of Market Street in the early 1900s, but you probably didn’t realize the video was shot in April, 1906, merely a week before the 1906 earthquake and fires destroyed most of the buildings that lined the street in the film. 60 Minutes aired an excellent story about the video on Sunday, which you can watch above. One point worth noting: Some of those cars driving in and out of the picture were staged by the filmmakers, likely as an example of the technological innovation represented by those earlier vehicles. How times change.

Without prodding from the Mayor’s Office, our sources tell us, it’s very possible the SFMTA wouldn’t have acted as quick to give bicyclists green, protected bike lanes on Market Street. It is the Mayor, after all, who has the ultimate authority over the SFMTA, appointing its board members, overseeing the agency’s budget behind the scenes and influencing major decisions.

Despite the “we’ll be ready to go!” rhetoric that we heard so often from the Mayor and city officials before the bike injunction was lifted, the SFMTA has been slow to finish the job on Lower Market Street, as we pointed out in a post last week. Now, the SFBC has launched a campaign urging bicyclists to write the Mayor and tell him to act now:

Please send an email to Mayor Newsom today asking him to complete the separated, green bikeway on Market Street — now. Thanks to letters from over sixty businesses in support of the idea, sent to Mayor Newsom last May before Bike to Work Day, the Mayor signed our petition calling for a fully separated, green bikeway for the length of Lower Market Street. City staff has implemented one intermittent section of the bikeway, between 8th and Valencia Street, but the bikeway is missing pieces in that section, and is almost completely missing east of 8th St.

For its part, the SFMTA claims it is suffering from a lack of resources and a shortage of thermoplastic, which are slowing its progress.

You can email the Mayor and give him your thoughts at gavin.newsom@sfgov.org (and the SFBC asks that you please cc neal@sfbike.org) or call his office at 554-6141.

In response to concerns that the SFMTA is taking too long to put in more green protected bike lanes and other innovations on Market Street, the agency’s Sustainable Streets Director, Bond Yee, in a letter to the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, has outlined and provided a timeline for his agency’s planned improvements.

Yee confirmed that more colored bike lane trials are planned for Market Street, but the earliest they could happen is March 2011. The reason? According to the email the SFMTA needs two months to “rescope and amend Prop K funding,” two months to “procure materials” and another month to apply the treatments when you factor in delays due to bad weather.

Yee said the agency also plans to put in 5 non-colored bike boxes by “late 2010 and early 2011,” 5 bike corrals by “early 2011,” and hopes to resolve “paratransit issues with the separated bike lanes on Market.”  He called the dates “aggressively realistic.”

In an interview with Streetsblog earlier this week, Yee said the agency is also suffering from a lack of resources, and voids left by some recent retirements.

“We would love to have more.  We’ve done some re-structuring to create more paint crews, and sign crews, and things of that nature, but you’ve got to remember too, we are implementing probably one of the largest, most comprehensive bike network increases in years,” said Yee, who added that a recent nationwide shortage of marking materials is not helping matters.

Renee Rivera, the SFBC’s acting executive director, was concerned the response made no mention of physical separation along Market Street from 8th to Octavia Boulevard.

“We have heard from so many people how important this physical separation is in making their trip down Market Street feel safer and more comfortable. In addition, we feel strongly that 6 months is too long to wait to complete this trial on Market Street,” she said. “With the few blocks of green separated bike space on Market Street in place now, we see this key corridor working better for everyone.”

“More people on Market Street will help our local businesses,” she added, “and what would help them more than having this trial in place before the holiday shopping season?”

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Nearly five months after the SFMTA installed the green protected bike lanes on Market Street, which most agree has been a successful trial, bike advocates are urging the agency to finish the job and plug in the gaps from 8th Street to Octavia Boulevard.

“I heard from [SFMTA CEO] Nat Ford Market Street is a top priority. We heard from the Mayor on Bike to Work Day that Market Street is a top priority, but the question is, when is it going to happen?” asked Renee Rivera, the acting executive director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. She noted the Mayor even signed the SFBC’s petition calling for a continuous bikeway from Octavia to the Embarcadero.

The green bike lanes are part of a pilot project implemented a year ago to divert private automobiles off Market Street with mandatory right-turns at 10th and 6th streets. By all accounts, the trials have dramatically improved conditions for transit, pedestrians and bike riders. Data compiled by the Great Streets Project [pdf] show greater volumes of pedestrians and bicyclists.

When asked why the remaining bike lanes on Lower Market haven’t been painted green or protected, Bond Yee, the SFMTA Sustainable Streets Director, voiced concerns that have been raised about bike lanes in general.

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At the heart of the San Francisco Planning Department’s 328-page Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) for CityPlace, sustainable transportation advocates have pinpointed one glaring flaw. In assessing the impacts of new off-street retail parking, the environmental analysis [pdf] concludes that building a 167-space garage will have the same effect on traffic as building no garage at all.

“This environmental analysis has really pitted this project against pedestrian safety and the livability of this neighborhood,” said Tom Radulovich, the executive director of Livable City.

CityPlace is a 250,000 square foot retail project planned for Market Street that the Mayor has trumpeted as essential for the area, “a key pillar in the continuing revitalization of Mid-Market that will bring hundreds of jobs and new revenues to boost our City’s economy and thousands of new pedestrians and shoppers to activate one of the most blighted blocks of Market Street.”

Radulovich along with attorney Arthur Levy and Walk SF had filed an appeal of the Planning Commission’s certification of the DEIR, arguing that it failed to adequately address and mitigate the dangers to pedestrians and bicyclists. Levy was also concerned the St. Francis Theater, designed by architect John Galen Howard, will be demolished and that the glass structure won’t fit in with the visual and historic character of Market Street.

Supporting the appeal seemed politically impossible for the Board of Supervisors. Instead, Supervisor Chris Daly, who represents the area, with help from Judson True, an aide to Supervisor David Chiu, brokered a deal [pdf] before the supervisors meeting Tuesday.  Market Street Holdings LLC (Urban Realty), the project’s sponsor, agreed to charge a 20 cent per vehicle exit fee at the CityPlace garage that would eventually add up to $1.8 million for “bicycle and/or pedestrian and/or transit improvements.” That pleased the supervisors and the DEIR was certified on a 9-0 vote, giving the final clearance.

The rejection of the appeal followed a public hearing in which the advocates laid out their case, and the project’s sponsors were allowed a rebuttal.

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On the same day San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom announced yet another intervention along central Market Street aimed at rejuvenating the beleaguered section between 5th and Van Ness, the Department of Public Works (DPW) announced it was convening a citizens advisory committee (CAC) to help steer the long-term vision for remaking the city's most iconic street.

Newsom joined the owner of Blick Art Materials in a ribbon cutting yesterday for a new flagship store at 979 Market, near 6th Street, and announced a weekly arts market as part of a Central Market Arts District. The new market opens today at U.N. Plaza and will be co-sponsored by Blick, in what the city hopes will anchor a new art and theater corridor. The city pointed to a recent survey by Theatre Bay Area that found approximately 75 performing arts groups in the Bay Area are interested in expanding or relocating to Central Market. Newsom's administration hopes to lure them to the corridor by establishing a $11.5 million loan fund for commercial projects catered to artists and by providing assistance with identifying space, feasibility studies, and other financing opportunities in the arts district.

"Blick’s opening on Central Market and the weekly Arts Market at U.N. Plaza are major new milestones in our efforts to foster the growing cultural arts district in Central Market," Newsom said in a statement. "Blick and the Arts Market will be cornerstones in attracting artists and arts entrepreneurs to the area and continue its economic and physical transformation."

The current initiative catalyzes several trials to bring art to Market Street storefronts that have been shuttered because of a down economy and is part of the broader Better Market Street Project, a joint effort by the Mayor's Office of Economic and Workforce Development, The DPW, The Planning Department, the San Francisco County Transportation Authority, and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), which runs Muni. The Art in Storefronts trial combined with the People in Plazas concert series were instituted to fight the perception the neighborhood is dangerous and depressed and bring levity at a low cost. The trials also coincided with private automobile traffic diversions meant to speed Muni and improve safety for bicycle riders with separated green bike lanes and reduced traffic conflicts.

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