SFMTA

To be a successful transportation planner, you've also got to be a persuasive salesman, said two consultants at a recent SPUR event.

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency announced the opening of a concrete-barrier-protected bike lane on the 'Bernal Cut' section of San Jose Ave. on Friday. As seen in the lead image, the bike lane, which was previously 'protected' only by paint and plastic bollards, now has a barrier assuring that cyclists can't be hit by cars. As the SFMTA puts it in the release: "The idea behind measures like these is to make bikeways more comfortable for anyone to use, whether you’re eight years old or 80."

The mainstream media was all over it: private cars to be banned from Market Street under the city's "Better Market Street" plan. It will also have sidewalk-level protected bike lanes. For advocates in the safe streets community the design announced by the city this week is a major victory and a reason to celebrate.

Here we are in week two of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA)'s month-plus of weekend and evening closures of the core of its system--the subway tunnel from Embarcadero to West Portal. Overcrowding on the replacement bus service, as the SF Examiner reports, has left customers further peeved. In response, SFMTA is adding longer buses to its substitute routes to alleviate some of it.

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) infuriated transit advocates when it announced on Saturday that it will close the entire Muni subway, from Embarcadero to West Portal, every weekend and after 9:30 p.m. during the week, for the next four or five weeks. The closures, which start this weekend, are part of a testing program for its new light-rail vehicles (LRV).

For some time now, advocates have called on SFMTA to work with more urgency to get safe-street fixes on the ground. And, it seems, this is starting to happen. "We'll pour concrete on top of asphalt to make bus boarding islands," explained Bradley Dunn, a spokesman at SFMTA, at last night's "Folsom-Howard: Safer Streets Sooner Near-Term Open House #1," held at the Gene Friend Recreation Center.

A source has informed the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (SFBC) that at the San Francisco Board of Supervisors' regular meeting this afternoon, mayoral appointee Jeff Sheehy may vote for the planned parking-protected bike lanes on Upper Market to be delayed over an environmental challenge to the project. That's led the SFBC to question Sheehy's commitment to safe bike infrastructure in his district.

Yesterday, I took a ride on a Jump electric bike on Market Street. Ryan Rzepecki, the CEO of Jump, was riding alongside. When we stopped, we talked about how nerve racking it is to ride on Market. We also discussed how comfortable it is to ride in Berlin, where, in many places, rather than stripe a bike lane on the street (American-style, in the gutter, as on Market Street) they stripe it on the outer edge of the sidewalk.

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) has published a permit application for so-called "dockless" bike-share companies. These are companies that offer rental bikes based on smart-phone and GPS technology--unlike the official, Bay Area Bike Share/Ford GoBike system, they don't require fixed docking locations where users have to pick them up and drop them off. The nine-page permit document is online, but here is the breakdown of permitting fees: