Bicycle Infrastructure

Updated 3:00 p.m.

Of all her trips pedaling around during her San Francisco visit, one of Martha Roskowski's most harrowing was the stretch between the SFMTA building at Market Street and Van Ness Avenue to a venue at Folsom and Second Streets, where she was slated to speak about making cities more bike-friendly. "It was my little moment of, 'Oh my god I'm late,' and 'I'm going to die,'" she said.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

Bringing safe bike infrastructure and shared, pedestrian-priority streets to San Francisco are just a couple of popular ideas among users on ImproveSF.com, a city-sponsored website which features a platform for residents to provide input on the Planning Department's "Green Connections" project.