SFBC

As part of its "Calm the Safety Zone" project, the SFMTA plans to install five green bike boxes on Market Street at intersections that currently have bike lanes, bringing to seven the total number of bike boxes in San Francisco. Bike advocates urged the SFMTA to install them quickly and focus on a continuous ribbon of green, separated bikeways from 8th Street to the Embarcadero to further boost the trials of innovative projects on Market Street that have made life a little easier for bicyclists, pedestrians and transit riders.

Dr. Shirley Johnson is the chair of the newly formed Caltrain Bicycle Advisory Committee and the head of the Bikes ONboard project sponsored by the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition.

An SFMTA hearing officer has approved four new bike corrals that will be installed of front of Mike's Bikes in SoMa, Timbuk2 in Hayes Valley, the Butler and the Chef restaurant in South Park and Thieves Tavern/Box Dog Bikes on 14th Street. A total of four parking spaces will be converted into on-street parking for 46 bikes.

After four years of an agonizing bicycle injunction that prevented the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) from adding any significant improvements to the city's bike network, a judge earlier this year finally freed the SFMTA to begin building out the city's long-promised Bicycle Plan.

The SFMTA has begun installing 22 automatic bicycle counters at 15 locations throughout the city to help get a more accurate tally of the rising numbers of bicyclists in San Francisco.

Without prodding from the Mayor's Office, our sources tell us, it's very possible the SFMTA wouldn't have acted as quick to give bicyclists green, protected bike lanes on Market Street. It is the Mayor, after all, who has the ultimate authority over the SFMTA, appointing its board members, overseeing the agency's budget behind the scenes and influencing major decisions.

In response to concerns that the SFMTA is taking too long to put in more green protected bike lanes and other innovations on Market Street, the agency's Sustainable Streets Director, Bond Yee, in a letter to the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, has outlined and provided a timeline for his agency's planned improvements.

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency's (SFMTA) options for fixing Masonic Avenue, a major north-south traffic sewer that was the scene of the city's first and only bicycle fatality this year, have been narrowed to two designs. While each option would calm auto traffic in slightly different ways and offer different amenities for bicyclists, both would significantly transform the street into a greener, friendlier corridor for all users.

Nearly five months after the SFMTA installed the green protected bike lanes on Market Street, which most agree has been a successful trial, bike advocates are urging the agency to finish the job and plug in the gaps from 8th Street to Octavia Boulevard.