Bicycle Infrastructure

Patricia Martel, City Manager of Daly City, has this to say about garbage cans blocking bike lanes: "cyclists have to share the road with vehicles and waste cans [emphasis added] weekly."

The SFMTA held an openhouse last night to get feedback on initial designs for bike and pedestrian safety improvements on 11th Street, which runs from Market to Division. Some 20 members of the public, most of them cyclists who commute through the area, showed up to see design boards and talk to SFMTA officials at the SoMa StrEat Food Park on 11th, across from the Costco warehouse.

Caltrain is displaying three different bike racks today until 7 p.m and tomorrow from 7:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. at 4th and King. They're asking riders to check them out and vote on what kind of bike rack storage they want on the railroad's new electric trains, coming some time in 2019. The options are to either keep bike cars more or less as they are now, where cyclists stack their bikes up along a rail, or adding some bike racks - either with angled parking or suspended from hooks.

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.

Guy Place Park, a small 'pocket park,' is now fully funded and will be built, said Paul Chasan of the San Francisco Planning Department, during a presentation last night on the South Downtown Design and Activation Plan (SODA), given at the Bay Area Metro Center on Beale Street. The new park will be built on a 4,000-square foot parcel near the intersection of 1st and Folsom, on a lot that the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department purchased in 2007.

The 7th annual Pedalfest in Jack London Square took place on Saturday, and was packed with bikes and bike lovers of all stripes. Presented by Bay Area Bicycle Law and Drake’s Brewing, Pedalfest is billed as Bike East Bay’s celebration of cycling, family, food, and fun.

The intersection of 51st/Pleasant Valley and Broadway in north Oakland lies at the confluence of three of Oakland’s most walkable and bikeable districts – Temescal, Rockridge, and Piedmont Avenue – adjacent to Oakland Technical High School, California College of the Arts, and several senior housing complexes. Yet, it has always been a barrier to connecting these districts and destinations. Recent construction at three of the four corners of the intersection presented a unique opportunity to create a safer and more inviting area while filling the void left by a previous generation of auto-oriented strip malls. The Shops at the Ridge, a 300,000 square foot, 1,000 parking space development which redeveloped the Safeway/Longs Drugs complex on the northeastern corner, could have been the centerpiece of this revitalization. However, due to a lack of vision coupled with mismanaged implementation, the 51st and Broadway area has become even more of a mess today than it was before.

Yesterday's Sunday Streets on Valencia Street in the Mission was Victoria Ruddick's first time on a Ford GoBike. "The handlebars and steering are a bit heavy," she said. Ruddick said she normally drives to work and wouldn't consider cycling on a normal day. "I'm scared of biking around cars."