Howard Street Protected Bike Lane Blocked Again, No Detour Provided
Cyclists who depend on the protected bike lane on Howard Street were once again forced to divert onto unprotected streets to go around Moscone Center this week, this time for the Config global design conference.
In theory, there’s supposed to be a bike detour between 3rd and 4th Streets, where the conference had taken over Howard. But the entirety of the detour consisted of this sign:
“We’re escalating this concern with MTA and will work with them to ensure detours are better planned out moving forward,” wrote Madison Tam, Legislative Director for District 6 Supervisor Matt Dorsey.
Unfortunately, that’s the kind of excuse cyclists have been hearing for years. Back in 2019, cyclist Tess Rothstein was run over and killed by a truck driver as she was attempting to navigate Howard‘s then-unprotected bike lane. Only after huge protests did the city finally finish installing a protected bike lane to prevent such crashes. However, whenever there’s an event at the Moscone Center or anything else requiring the closure of Howard, cyclists are thrown right back into dangerous traffic.
“We support conferences and other city events that require bicycle and vehicle reroutes,” wrote SFMTA acting chief spokesperson Madhu Unnikrishnan in an email to Streetsblog. “We’ll look into what happened here and get back to you.” Streetsblog will update this post if the agency actually replies.
Of course, Streetsblog supports city events too—even if they require bicycle and vehicle reroutes. That’s not the point. A detour needs to actually be provided. And there seems to be an abundance of concrete barriers available for these events, so why not use some of them to set up a temporary protected bike lane so cyclists can get around the conference safely?
The problem is not a lack of funds or resources; the city makes money off these conferences. The problem is it doesn’t seem to even occur to the city that safety can’t be part-time, not if Vision Zero is to be achieved. This is an important commute route. Real, safe detours must be provided for cyclists, the same way they are for drivers, when a street is closed off for an event.
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