SFMTA

A panel of disability advocates, the SFMTA, and other entities has recommended that handicap parking placard holders no longer be given free parking at meters.

It looks like Supervisor Eric Mar is ready to make some noise about the need to fund the SFMTA's vision for a major expansion of bike-friendly streets -- which Mayor Ed Lee hasn't prioritized at all since the agency released its Draft Bicycle Strategy earlier this year.

The SFMTA installed bike lanes this weekend on the Great Highway, north of Fulton Street at Golden Gate Park. The Great Highway continues as Point Lobos Avenue as it runs by the Cliff House.

Seven weeks after the SF Municipal Transportation Agency painted red transit-only lanes on several blocks of Church Street, Muni reports that the J-Church and 22-Fillmore lines are moving faster and more reliably. On the stretch between Duboce Avenue and 16th Street, travel times on the two lines have dropped by 5 percent, and the buses and trains are 20 percent more reliable, arriving closer to their scheduled arrival times.

As has become painfully apparent on Polk Street, there is a deeply-held belief among certain merchants that car parking is indispensable to their business -- even if studies indicate that very few of their customers drive, and that removing parking spaces to implement safety improvements could actually draw more potential customers.

After a makeover, the bus loop that serves as a terminal for Muni's 8X and 49 lines at Phelan and Ocean Avenues, the site of City College's Ocean Campus, became operational yesterday. It's part of a larger city project, in the works for ten years, to create a more efficient and attractive transit hub while opening up the adjacent land for a mixed-use, affordable housing development with shops on the ground floor, complemented by a new plaza that will welcome students stepping off or waiting for the bus.

The SFMTA expects to have the protected bike lane on Oak Street and the Market Street bicycle counter ready on Bike to Work Day -- next Thursday, May 9 -- according to agency staff.

The protected bike lane on Oak Street may not be constructed until some time after May 19, when the permit for renovation work on the Kelly-Moore paint shop on the corner of Oak and Divisadero Street ends, according to planners from the SF Muncipal Transportation Agency. Because the permit allows the paint shop to occupy the parking lane where the bike lane will go, the bike lane can't be completed until after it's done, agency staff said.

The second open house on the Polk Street safety improvements is tonight. While the agency has said protected bike lanes are not on the table for most of Polk, don't be discouraged from showing up. This is your chance to tell the SFMTA you support protected bike lanes along the entire street. As we've seen, Supervisor David Chiu isn't going to stand up and make that case for you.