Who’s Parking in the Fell Street Bike Lane Today? Oh, It’s SFPD

You'd better have a pretty good reason to park a car in the heavily-used Fell Street bike lane during the evening rush hour, forcing commuters to squeeze by alongside three lanes of motor traffic. Police response to an emergency might qualify, but the two SFPD officers who returned to this cruiser from the adjacent Bank of America, carrying an envelope, didn't appear to be in any particular rush.

On Tuesday, the day I spotted this cruiser, 1,707 people used the Fell bike lane, according to the SFMTA's live counter feed. The next day, it was 1,845. By leaving a car in the lane during the peak hour, there's hardly a more effective way to maximize the number of people you endanger and stress out on their way home. All for a lazy parking job.

While there's some hope that the concrete planters planned for the Fell bike lane this year will go a long way toward ending the routine illegal parking, it's pretty dismaying to see the very officers responsible for enforcing the violation committing it themselves.