Community, Advocacy and Labor

The SF Municipal Transportation Agency has mapped out a course that could make San Francisco the most bike-friendly city in the nation. All it needs now, it seems, is the political leadership to step up and fund what SFMTA Director Ed Reiskin has called the "most cost-effective investment we can make in moving people."

The top priority for California bicycle advocates this year? To ensure state funding for biking and walking gets better, not worse.

Cars littered on San Francisco's sidewalks are a painfully common sight. The problem is perhaps most prevalent in outer neighborhoods like the Sunset and Bayview, where, for decades, homeowners with residential garages have paved over their front yards. The pedestrian environment on these streets is left degraded, with swaths of dead space where families and people with disabilities are often forced to walk around an obstacle course of cars and driveway ramps.

San Francisco's scarce transportation funds should be used to make streets safer for walking and biking, and to make existing Muni service more reliable before expanding it, according to city residents who were asked to choose how to prioritize public spending.

The Great Highway, the motorway that divides Ocean Beach from the Outer Sunset and Richmond, is set to get some bike lane and pedestrian improvements north of Lincoln Way as part of a nine-month re-paving project started this week by the Department of Public Works.

Just how bad is Muni? And is it getting any better? Supervisor Scott Wiener has called for monthly reports from the SF Municipal Transportation Agency and the City Controller's Office to tally up the true cost of transit delays and track progress on Muni's reliability.

Residents are enjoying a more livable outer Bryant Street since the city implemented a road diet last month, reducing four traffic lanes to two (plus left-turn bays at some intersections) between 23rd and Cesar Chavez Streets. Neighbors joined Friends of the Urban Forest on Sunday on the block between 26th Street and Cesar Chavez to add trees and plants to two new medians -- visual signals that drivers should slow down as they enter the neighborhood from the 101 freeway.

Dangerous, illegal right turns from Market Street onto the freeway at the intersection with Octavia Boulevard -- the location with the most pedestrian and bicycle crashes in the city -- may become less frequent after a long-awaited state decision that allows the city to use camera enforcement. The decision was announced by California Attorney General Kamala Harris last week.

While there's no concrete Pedestrian Action Strategy (formerly the "Action Plan") for San Franciscans to read over yet, city officials went ahead and held a press conference today to tell the public the document is coming next month.