Skip to Content
Streetsblog San Francisco home
Streetsblog San Francisco home
Log In
Bicycle Infrastructure

SFMTA Super Speedy at Removing Safety Measures on Valencia

4:01 PM PDT on October 28, 2016

On Monday, SFMTrA installed safe hit posts on this corner to keep vehicles from sweeping across the corner, endangering cyclists. By the end of the week they were gone. Photo: Streetsblog
On Monday, SFMTrA installed safe-hit posts here to keep motorists from sweeping the corner and endangering cyclists. By the end of the week they were gone. Photo: Streetsblog
On Monday, SFMTrA installed safe hit posts on this corner to keep vehicles from sweeping across the corner, endangering cyclists. By the end of the week they were gone. Photo: Streetsblog

On Monday, Streetsblog joined the SFMTrA, a guerrilla-safety group that glues down safe-hit posts in trouble spots throughout the city, for a pre-dawn installion on Valencia between 17th and 14th. This afternoon, the posts were gone--and everything was back to its dangerous and dysfunctional normal.

Monday morning, trucks and cars were forced to slow and turn carefully to avoid hitting this post...which was promptly removed by SFMTA. Photo: Streetsblog.
Monday morning, trucks and cars were forced to slow and turn carefully to avoid hitting this post...which was promptly removed by SFMTA. Photo: Streetsblog.
Monday morning, trucks and cars were forced to slow and turn carefully to avoid hitting this post...which was promptly removed by SFMTA. Photo: Streetsblog.

Thanks to the SFMTrA, delivery trucks--at least when Streetsblog was there observing on Monday morning--had started making deliveries from the center median lane. Now that the posts are gone, things are back to "normal," and a UPS truck was parked in the bike lane.

Also, now that there are no longer posts at the corner, cars and trucks were sweeping quickly across the intersection of 15th and Valencia. When the posts were in place, Streetsblog saw cars and trucks slowing and making safer right turns, because they had to avoid the safe-hit posts.

Delivery trucks were right back to their usual. Photo: Streetsblog
Delivery trucks were right back to their usual. Photo: Streetsblog
Photo: Streetsblog

Most Streetsblog readers are probably already aware via social media or Hoodline that SFMTA has also removed guerrilla safety installations from Division and Folsom. All of this is consistent with SFMTA's threat to remove posts installed on a "single line." SFMTrA's installation in Golden Gate Park, which was placed within a painted buffer, is still there--word just came down that SFMTA actually replaced the posts with "official" safe-hit posts, whatever that means.

Streetsblog readers have probably seen this shot of an SFMTA truck blocking the bike lane on Folsom while it removes SFMTrA's unofficial posts. Photo: SFMTrA
Streetsblog readers may have seen this shot of an SFMTA truck blocking the bike lane on Folsom while workers remove SFMTrA's unofficial posts. Photo: SFMTrA
Streetsblog readers have probably seen this shot of an SFMTA truck blocking the bike lane on Folsom while it removes SFMTrA's unofficial posts. Photo: SFMTrA

Paul Rose, a spokesman for SFMTA, said it's because safe-hit posts can get knocked into the travel lane if there isn't a buffer space. SFMTrA members--and Streetsblog--don't find that a credible justification to preemptively remove them, given that they are called "safe-hit posts" because they are safe to hit! Ask cyclists if they'd rather thread around an occasional bent safe-hit post or a constant stream of parked cars and delivery trucks blocking or driving in the bike lane. Furthermore, SFMTA's spokesman is talking about a theoretical problem--but people being hurt and killed by cars violating bike lanes and making unsafe turns is far from theoretical.

Furthermore, this:

This old, worn out and damaged post was on the opposite side of 15th from SFMTrA's installation. SFMTA has time to remove new posts that aren't authorized, but no time to fix their own busted post. Photo: Streetsblog
This old, worn out and damaged post was on the opposite side of 15th from SFMTrA's installation. SFMTA has time to remove new posts that aren't authorized, but no time to fix their own busted post. Photo: Streetsblog
Sorry, that's not protection. Photo: Streetsblog

Above is a photo of an old, grimy, and broken "official" SFMTA safe-hit post at the corner of 15th and Valencia--just across from where the guerrillas did their work. SFMTA came through sometime during the week, drove right past this broken post, removed the unofficial installation, and then didn't bother to replace their own damaged post.

The SFMTrA has put together an email list for readers to reach out to elected officials to demand different priorities from SFMTA. The correct approach, in Streetsblog's view, is for SFMTA to form official ninja safety teams that can plug in cheap infrastructure everywhere and anywhere it's needed. But first our elected officials need to force agency brass to get with the spirit of the Mayor's Executive Directive on safety and stop wasting time on what comes across as a thinly veiled pissing match with the safety vigilantes.

Now for one bit of good news for the weekend. Catherine Orland, who captained a count of illegally parked vehicles on the Valencia bike lanes, posted the photo below of cops "ticketing Uber for a bike lane violation!!! West side of Valencia btwn 18th-19th. I thanked the officers and then got bitched out by the three people waiting for their Uber ride, whose night was 'ruined,'" she wrote.

SFPD ticketing an Uber for blocking the bike lane on Valencia? Wait--that can really happen? Photo: Orland
SFPD ticketing an Uber for blocking the bike lane on Valencia? Wait--that can really happen? Photo: Orland
SFPD ticketing an Uber for blocking the bike lane on Valencia? Wait--that can really happen? Photo: Orland

Stay in touch

Sign up for our free newsletter

More from Streetsblog San Francisco

Guest Commentary: Traffic Engineers Must Put Safety Over Driver Throughput

No other field would tolerate this level of death and destruction. The tragedy of West Portal is more evidence that the traffic engineering profession is fundamentally broken

March 27, 2024
See all posts