SFMTA

Bike and pedestrian advocates are pushing the SFMTA to make more room in its budget for safety projects and programs as the agency's board of directors weighs its priorities.

It's hard to believe that San Francisco officials are seriously considering repealing Sunday parking metering, and thus abandoning the entire basis of its lauded parking management program.

The SFMTA is searching for a new Sustainable Streets Division director to replace veteran traffic engineer Bond Yee, who retired in January after four years on the job. The broad umbrella of Sustainable Streets includes all SFMTA programs that involve street design and parking management, and its next leader will play a critical role in moving San Francisco towards its stated vision of (as the division’s name says) sustainable streets.

The SFMTA and the Planning Department presented detailed plans for Polk Street at the project's final open house meeting yesterday. The new aspects include specific locations of bulb-outs, dedicated bicycle signals, left turn prohibitions, loading zones, and new trees and landscaping. Plans to improve bicycle infrastructure are still composed of a mix of protected, buffered, conventional, and part-time bike lanes, depending on the stretch and side of the street.

Tonight is the SFMTA and Planning Department's final open house on the Polk Street redesign, the last chance to weigh in on the agency's preferred design before it goes to the SFMTA Board of Directors for approval. As you can see from the above flyer, the parking-obsessed "Save Polk Street" group is still fighting against safety measures in order to hang on to the small amount of car storage the SFMTA proposes to remove.

Service changes to 15 Muni lines are headed to the SFMTA Board of Directors for approval on Friday as part of the Transit Effectiveness Project. The proposals were revised through input at community meetings and approved by the board's Policy and Governance Committee (PAG) last Friday. Many were fine-tuned largely to appease complaints from riders who would have to walk, at most, a few more blocks for more streamlined routes.

The SFMTA extended the buffered bike lanes on Bayshore Boulevard earlier this month from Silver Avenue south to Paul Avenue, reducing four traffic lanes to two. The street now provides a calmer, safer bicycling link for Bayview residents all the way up to where Bayshore ends, at Cesar Chavez Street and the "Hairball" freeway interchange.

The expansion of Bay Area Bike Share into the Mission, the Castro, Hayes Valley, and Mission Bay planned for early this year won't happen until fall at the soonest, due to the recent bankruptcy of Bixi, the company that supplies hardware and software for several American bike-share systems.

Contrary to Mayor Ed Lee's assertions that the public has revolted against Sunday parking meters, records indicate that hardly anyone has complained to City Hall about the policy via email or 311 calls.