Community, Advocacy and Labor

Safe streets advocates often ruefully say, "if you want to kill someone and get away with it, do it in a car." In fact, unless alcohol is involved, very few motorists who kill vulnerable road users -- like pedestrians and cyclists -- are charged with a crime, even when they break traffic laws in the process.

It may not be at the most convenient hour to make a trip to City Hall, but tomorrow's SFMTA Board meeting at 2 p.m. could be the last chance to speak up before Muni service cuts are extended for the next two years.

Let's just say right away that Critical Mass is a bike party, and the San Jose Bike Party has a lot more similarities to Critical Mass than differences. A half-dozen San Francisco and Berkeley Critical Mass veterans took a field trip to join the San Jose Bike Party on Friday night as it cruised through the heart of Silicon Valley. We piled onto a "Baby Bullet" Caltrain that got us into downtown Sunnyvale well before the 8 p.m. starting time. (Along the way we pondered how many cyclists it takes to make a Critical Mass and concluded that it takes enough to break into different factions that don't like each other!)

The SFMTA has installed three new bike racks on the southeast corner of Church Street at Market to help accommodate the throngs of bicycle riders who often park their bikes illegally on the Muni island rails. I snapped these photos of the new bike racks this afternoon and one thing rang clear: it's not enough.

People catching Muni near West Portal station this morning were greeted by an unusual sight: Supervisor Sean Elsbernd, SPUR Executive Director Gabriel Metcalf, and a team of volunteers were out canvassing the avenue to gather signatures for a ballot measure that would change the way the city sets Muni operator salaries.

As any bicycle rider in San Francisco knows, the potholes on the streets can be vicious. Most of us probably get to know a few quite well and just ride around them. The pothole that I learned to hate was in the bike lane on Valencia at the intersection of McCoppin. Every time I rode by, I swerved and badmouthed the city and thought about that street repair bond that never got past the Board of Supervisors.

Although there is no record book for the cities with the most traffic-calmed streets, San Francisco planners believe their city has the most road diets, or roads that have had auto lanes narrowed or removed to calm traffic speeds and provide room for other modes of travel.

You'd hardly know that it's illegal to charge discounted daily and monthly parking rates at numerous downtown San Francisco garages because enforcement of the law is almost non-existent.

Though it may seem esoteric, one of the biggest impediments to designing streets for people is the over-reliance on design standards that have long privileged movement of vehicles over any other consideration on the streets. That's why advocates cheered when U.S. DOT Secretary Ray LaHood published a policy paper recently that, at least in word, placed bicycles and pedestrians on equal footing with motorists.