SFBC

Cameron Beach likes to mention that he started his career in public transportation forty six years ago sweeping buses. The 62-year-old semi-retired transportation consultant and former chief operating officer of the Sacramento Regional Transit District does know a lot about running a transit system.

The SFMTA Board of Directors today issued a directive to staff to move on installing a trial curbside protected bike lane on Fell Street between Scott and Baker Streets. SFMTA Director Cheryl Brinkman raised the issue at today's board meeting, pointing out Mayor Ed Lee's comments to Streetsblog last week that he would like to see a physically-separated bikeway on Fell Street happen "quickly."

Mayor Ed Lee's comments to Streetsblog earlier this week that he would like to "quickly" see a physically-separated bike lane trial on Fell Street along The Wiggle came as exciting news to bicycle advocates who are proposing a continuous green stretch along the curb from Scott to Stanyan Streets.

Bicyclists have begun taking advantage of the new bike lanes being installed this week along the western section of the 17th Street corridor, with many riders saying they began feeling a greater sense of safety just as soon as the first stripes were laid down by Wednesday from Valencia to Church Streets.

As early as this spring, residents and tourists could be enjoying a world-class bi-directional, physically-separated bikeway along a 1.5 -mile stretch of Golden Gate Park's John F. Kennedy (JFK) Drive as part of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition's (SFBC) Connecting the City campaign for a network of routes safe and comfortable enough for an eight or eighty-year-old.

Supervisor David Chiu, a key player in the city's sustainable transportation movement who gets around on his electric bicycle, was reelected president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors this afternoon on an 8-3 vote.  The 40-year-old District 3 supervisor called on his colleagues to "move beyond the past oppositional politics of personality" and build consensus to tackle some of the city's most pressing problems.

During routine business at the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Board meeting Tuesday, Director Cheryl Brinkman recounted how enjoyable it was to ride her bicycle on the new physically separated bike lane on Division Street between 9th and 11th Streets. Brinkman said she hoped the SFMTA would consider how it could improve the connection for cyclists between the Wiggle and the Panhandle, including the possibility of adding physical separation to the bike lanes on Fell and Oak Streets between Scott and Baker Streets.

There are a number of highly qualified people on the list of candidates to be the next mayor of San Francisco, and the Board of Supervisors could embark on a nomination process beginning today. What has become abundantly clear to me is that the person replacing Mayor Gavin Newsom should not be a caretaker, but someone who will lead on an issue that touches the lives of every one of our 815,000 residents: transportation.