SFBC

The SFMTA is developing a new engineering guide for bike infrastructure that should help bring street designs like protected bike lanes to more San Francisco streets. Known as the Innovative Bicycle Treatment Toolbox, the guide promises to accelerate the city's adoption of high-quality bikeway design treatments.

City officials and advocates rode in to City Hall today alongside thousands of commuters for San Francisco's 18th annual Bike to Work Day. According to the SFMTA, 1,031 eastbound bicycles traveled through the Market and Van Ness intersection between 8 and 9 a.m. this morning, making up 73 percent of vehicles on Market and averaging 17 bikes per minute.

This year's celebration of the Dutch Queen's Day in San Francisco was a bit special.

The SFMTA striped new bike lanes on Folsom Street between 13th and 19th Streets last week, creating a safer and more direct connection for bike commuters between SoMa and the Mission.

Kids at 40 schools this morning participated in San Francisco's biggest Bike to School Day yet. The level of participation, in the event's fourth year, reflects steady growth in levels of biking and walking to schools throughout the year.

In the midst of a wave of media attention around the recent bicycle-pedestrian death in the Castro, walking and bicycling advocates today re-affirmed the greatest dangers facing pedestrians on San Francisco's streets: high-speed roads and dangerous driving behavior.

Bike network expansions are going in at a rapid clip so far this spring. In Golden Gate Park, parking-protected bike lanes on John F. Kennedy Drive are mostly finished on the stretch in front of the Conservatory of Flowers, and drivers already seem to be picking up on the new parking arrangement.

The SFMTA revealed the design [PDF] for protected bike lanes on three blocks of Fell and Oak Streets at an open house on Saturday. The plan would create a safer connection from the Panhandle to the Wiggle by installing a one-way buffered bike lane on each street, partially separated from motor traffic by planters. The proposal would also paint green markings where bike traffic merges with turning motor traffic, re-calibrate the traffic signals for 20 MPH movement, construct pedestrian bulb-outs and zebra-striped crosswalks, and add angled car parking spaces (mostly on Baker Street) to replace over half of those removed to make way for the bikeways.

The SFMTA will reveal the proposed design for protected bike lanes on Fell and Oak Streets tomorrow, and supporters need to make their voices heard to ensure the agency doesn't water the project down or it delay it any further.