SFBC

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.

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.

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.

The gradually evolving traffic rearrangement on Market Street got a boost yesterday as the MTA re-striped the bicycle and motor vehicle crossing zone at Market and 11th, clarifying how the vehicles are supposed to negotiate the street with bold new markings. In addition to clearer turn and merge arrows for motorists, there are numerous sharrows starting as far back as Van Ness and Market and extending through the intersection of Market and 10th streets.

On an incredible spring day with temperatures in the 60s, thousands of people descended on the Embarcadero in San Francisco for the first Sunday Streets of 2010, riding, skating, dancing, hula hooping, and swinging in the coolest bicycle-powered amusement park ride I've ever seen.

As if the lure of playing in the street wasn't enough, city leaders and organizers gathered at City Hall yesterday afternoon to promote the first of nine Sunday Streets events this year, which will run along the Embarcadero up to Fisherman's Wharf [route map PDF] this Sunday.

With six months of hindsight since San Francisco began trial traffic diversions and art in shuttered storefronts on Market Street, city leaders are taking stock of what has been successful and what has been less so. Within weeks, they expect to complete a scoping document and put out bids for a three-year design and transportation plan that will remake the most iconic street in San Francisco.