This bike box on Scott Street will be painted green in a six-month trial. Photo by Bryan Goebel.

San Francisco is about to get its first new bike lane in more than three years along with a colored bike box!  Progress has been long stalled by the injunction but the fact that the MTA is about to whip out the paint is cause for celebration, and the SFBC is planning two events to mark the occasion.

Tomorrow morning, crews will begin installing a new left-turn bike lane on Scott Street along the Wiggle. In addition, MTA crews will put in bike racks on Divisadero, on Grove at Pacific Primary School, and several other nearby locations. Sharrows will also be painted on a number of streets, and improved bicycle way-finding signs will go up, according to the SFBC.

The MTA is planning a press conference Thursday morning with Mayor
Gavin Newsom and MTA Chief Nat Ford, and afterward crews will paint a green bike box where the
existing bike box is on Scott, said MTA spokesperson Judson
True. The press conference had been originally planned for tomorrow but was moved because of scheduling conflicts.

To cheer the new improvements, the SFBC is planning the following events tomorrow:

5:00pm
– 7:00pm – Stop by an SFBC station (at Duboce and Market and at Scott
and Oak) to learn more about the new improvements and hear about what’s
coming next

5:30pm – 8:00pm – Raise a glass and join us for a
drink at the Duboce Park Cafe to celebrate these first of many new
improvements to bicycling in San Francisco (SFBC members receive a 10%
discount).

The improvements on Scott are among eight bicycle projects given the go ahead last week by a San Francisco judge,  who ordered a partial lifting of the bicycle injunction, but refused to allow the remaining 37 Bike Plan projects to move forward pending the outcome of a June hearing on the EIR.  True said the MTA plans to complete the eight projects within six weeks.

Updated 6:51 p.m.