SFMTA’s Own Video Punks Valencia Center-Running Bike Lane
Video indicates SFMTA officials think they just need to educate people on how to use it
4:33 PM PST on November 6, 2023
A still from the video. Note the turning car, which comes within just a couple of feet of the exposed cyclist. Believe it or not, the video presents this as a good thing.
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Advocates of all stripes were appalled by the video's implication, that the serious crashes that have occurred since the experimental lane's installation were a matter of people not understanding how to use it. Over the weekend the Tweet for the video was thoroughly ratioed, with about 43,000 views and over 50 comments as of Monday afternoon. Almost all of the comments were negative; many expressed outrage.
How many more deaths, injuries and terrifying near misses will it take for you to remove parking and have a PROTECTED (concrete!) bike lane? @SafeStreetRebel
"This video provides information on how to navigate Valencia street with the new safety measures installed, such as the center running protected [emphasis added] bikeway and several new traffic regulations that are part of the pilot design," goes the video's narration.
First, the narrator lies repeatedly and calls it a "protected" bike lane. There are no protective barriers--just a plastic curb that any car can easily mount and plastic posts that are designed not to damage or otherwise interfere with automobiles.
The video then describes how to navigate it as a cyclist mainly, but also as a driver, adding that U-turns and left turns are banned for motor vehicles. As we've documented, these turns happen continually and the video's not going to change that fact.
If your design is so unintuitive that you need to make a video explaining it, then it’s a failure.
As Bruce Halperin points out in his Tweet above, clearly, if a street design is so confusing that it requires an educational video, it's failed. Besides, just look at the lead image, taken from the SFMTA's video, of a turning driver nearly clipping a cyclist waiting in the bike box. Going by the voice-over, the video makers apparently think having cyclists wait exposed in the middle of an intersection full of turning cars is a good thing.
As many people pointed out on Twitter, it's hard to believe the Valencia video isn't intentional self-parody. Maybe SFMTA staff made it because they're like a POW blinking in Morse Code, pleading for help from the bowels of One South Van Ness.
Two of the founders of the Bay Area's advocacy group dedicated to fare integration and rational schedules talk about a half-decade of fighting for better transit and what's likely to happen in the next five years.