SFBC

Despite the much ballyhooed talk by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom that his city will implement a public bike share pilot (two years of talk that has garnered numerous press hits), the first bike share program in the Bay Area will likely be implemented by the middle of 2010 in Santa Clara County by the Valley Transportation Authority (VTA).  While small size may still be a liability to its success and long term funding sources must be determined, the VTA is miles ahead of other transit operators in completing the process necessary to deliver a pilot.

The injunction that has hung like a pall over San Francisco's efforts to improve bicycle infrastructure for the city's growing number of bicyclists will remain for at least another ten days, and could continue in partial or full form until March 2010 or beyond. A judge today delayed decision on lifting the three-year-old bike injunction, instead ordering both the city and Mary Miles, attorney for Rob Anderson, who first sought the injunction, to submit additional materials by November 12. The judge could then lift the injunction completely, lift it partially for sharrows and bike racks but not bike lanes, or uphold it until a 2010 hearing on the city's environmental review of the bike plan.

A San Francisco judge today delayed a decision on lifting the city's three-year-old bike injunction, and instead ordered both parties to submit briefs by November 12th on his authority to lift the injunction, and then reverse it, if he later determines at a separate hearing that the exhaustive 2,000 page document is not adequate, although that seems unlikely.

Surprise! San Francisco has its first new bike lanes in three years, five days before a scheduled court hearing on lifting the bicycle injunction.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and MTA Chief Nat Ford have made repeated promises that they will act swiftly to build out large segments of the city's Bicycle Master Plan when the 3-year-old bicycle injunction is lifted. Behind the good rhetoric, the agency does appear prepared to begin striping lanes and adding bike racks when the long legal wait finally ends.

California administrative rulemakers recently moved a step closer to reforming the section of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) that has compelled cities to focus undue attention on the age-old Automobile Level of Service (LOS) threshold for impacts of new projects and has led to the construction of excess off-street parking.

The SFBC is working with the Transportation Authority (TA) to get a bicycle path considered for a portion of the Geary BRT project, a result of a meeting held between the two groups recently.

If the Geary Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project doesn't get some love from advocates and the general public, the project could be in trouble, according to several people closely following the process.

Although there are still some kinks that need to be ironed out on Market Street to make the six-week trial diversion of personal automobiles more efficient, the sky did not fall and reaction to the changes was fairly positive, even from drivers in personal vehicles. One consistent complaint was the relatively small signs affixed to street posts, which several drivers claimed they didn't see.