SFMTA

Despite living in one of the city's densest residential neighborhoods with one of the lowest rates of car ownership, Tenderloin residents have endured some of San Francisco's most dangerous streets for walking since traffic engineers turned most of them into one-way, high-speed motorways in the 1960s.

Since the Fell Street buffered bike lane was partially implemented in November, drivers have continued to block it. Mostly, they seem to be customers using Bank of America's sidewalk ATM and truck drivers from Ted and Al's Towing.

Dangerous, illegal right turns from Market Street onto the freeway at the intersection with Octavia Boulevard -- the location with the most pedestrian and bicycle crashes in the city -- may become less frequent after a long-awaited state decision that allows the city to use camera enforcement. The decision was announced by California Attorney General Kamala Harris last week.

Updated 4:47 p.m.

Happy New Year, indeed. This Sunday will mark the day when San Francisco finally catches up with the times and runs parking meters during business hours on Sundays, ending the nonsensical weekly tradition of allowing prime parking spots in front of shops to sit occupied for free while drivers circle endlessly around the block.

John Muir Drive, which runs along the south side of Lake Merced, was upgraded last month with bike lanes separated by posts and buffer zones on some stretches. The SF Municipal Transportation Agency also converted angled parking spots on the road to the safer back-in angled configuration, which lets drivers see their path better when they pull out.

As the SFMTA figures out how to increase bicycling to 20 percent of all trips citywide, some neighborhoods are already approaching that milestone. A map that the SFMTA compiled from bike-to-work data in the 2010 U.S. Census shows that as of two years ago, some neighborhoods far exceeded the citywide rate of 3.5 percent.

While there's no concrete Pedestrian Action Strategy (formerly the "Action Plan") for San Franciscans to read over yet, city officials went ahead and held a press conference today to tell the public the document is coming next month.

Red-colored transit-only lanes on Church Street won't come until some time in January, according to SF Municipal Transportation Agency spokesperson Paul Rose, who cited rainy weather as the reason for the delay. The project would be one of San Francisco's first to add transit-only lanes with colorful pavement to emphasize that they're off-limits to drivers. Implementation was originally expected in September, but was pushed back to November to coordinate with a construction closure. "We need 72 hours of guaranteed dry weather to get the work done," Rose said.