SFMTA

The latest news from the Better Market Street project could be a setback for implementing a safe, accessible bike network in San Francisco -- not just because construction has been pushed back to 2017, four years past the original date -- but because one of the three proposals that planners will study involves building a protected bike lane route on Mission Street instead of Market, while re-routing Muni's 14-Mission bus line on to Market in the downtown stretch.

The corporate shuttles that whisk tech workers from the highly-valued urban habitat of San Francisco down to the burgeoning suburban campus job centers of Silicon Valley are the newest additions to San Francisco's streets. But while it's become convenient for critics to point the finger at this increasingly-visible symbol of gentrification as the cause of everything from skyrocketing rents to blocked Muni stops, that anger is misdirected.

The campaign to rid lower Market Street of the delays and dangers caused by personal cars has an unexpected champion on the SF Municipal Transportation Agency Board of Directors.

Two years after the Pedestrian Safety Task Force formed to devise a plan to meet the ambitious targets for reducing injuries set by former Mayor Gavin Newsom, the SF Municipal Transportation Agency has released its Draft Pedestrian Strategy [PDF]. The document serves as a rough guide for how the city can re-engineer streets and target traffic enforcement to make walking safer in the coming years.

The SF Municipal Transportation Agency has mapped out a course that could make San Francisco the most bike-friendly city in the nation. All it needs now, it seems, is the political leadership to step up and fund what SFMTA Director Ed Reiskin has called the "most cost-effective investment we can make in moving people."

This morning the SF Municipal Transportation Agency is presenting its strategic plans to reduce pedestrian injuries and increase bike ridership over the next five years at a staff workshop with the agency's board of directors.

Cars littered on San Francisco's sidewalks are a painfully common sight. The problem is perhaps most prevalent in outer neighborhoods like the Sunset and Bayview, where, for decades, homeowners with residential garages have paved over their front yards. The pedestrian environment on these streets is left degraded, with swaths of dead space where families and people with disabilities are often forced to walk around an obstacle course of cars and driveway ramps.

San Francisco's scarce transportation funds should be used to make streets safer for walking and biking, and to make existing Muni service more reliable before expanding it, according to city residents who were asked to choose how to prioritize public spending.

Advocates for San Francisco's low-income communities have issued a new report calling for policy changes intended to improve Muni service, increase mobility for transit-dependent San Franciscans, reduce pollution from driving, and improve the city's economy.