SFMTA Stripes Bike Lane, Sharrows to Improve Holloway Bike Corridor

The SFMTA recently striped a partial bike lane and sharrows on a block of Lee Avenue connecting Ocean and Holloway Avenues in Ingleside. The improvements are a small piece of a plan to calm traffic and improve bicycling conditions on the Holloway corridor, which connects SF State University to City College Ocean Campus and the Balboa Park BART Station.

The SFMTA tried a traffic calming experiment in 2010 by narrowing traffic lanes and striping chicanes on Holloway and the parallel Garfield Avenue, from Junipero Serra Boulevard to Ashton Avenue. But after residents complained the configuration was ineffective and too confusing, the SFMTA removed the changes and went back to the drawing board. Agency staff expects to approve the final pieces of a new plan at an upcoming hearing, which will include speed humps, a bike lane on one side of the street, and sharrows on the other, according to an agency report [PDF]. The street plan isn’t immediately available.

The SFMTA also recently added buffered bike lanes between Junipero Serra and 19th Avenue as part of a road diet, extending the bike lanes that existed on Holloway bordering the SF State campus.

As part of the improvements on Lee, roughly a dozen angled parking spots were converted to back-in angled parking to improve visibility between bicyclists and drivers. Back-in angled parking is included in the SFMTA’s new Innovative Treatment Toolkit.