Bicycle Infrastructure

Note: The Better Market Street Project will hold two public workshops on July 17 and 21, where you can provide feedback on the proposed concepts.

Last week, AASHTO, the national association of state DOTs, published the first update to its bicycle facility design guide in 13 years (available online for $144). Since many transportation engineers take their cues from AASHTO, there was an urgent need to update the 1999 guide, which failed to include many effective design treatments and promoted some standards that actually made streets more dangerous. The new guide includes some significant steps forward, but it still lacks the bikeway designs widely recognized as the best practice for making cycling a mainstream mode of transport.

Muni riders, bike commuters and pedestrians passing through the re-opened Duboce and Church junction this morning were welcomed with wider boarding islands, fresh pavement, and a newly-painted, lime-green "bike channel."

For the next two years, the Green Lane Project will lend expertise and support to Austin, Chicago, Memphis, Portland, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. as those cities implement the type of infrastructure that has proven successful at leading people to take up biking for transportation. The project bills itself as a “storytelling campaign” for the cities to share their experiences.

A new bicycle and pedestrian traffic signal was spotted in action at Page and Stanyan Streets last Friday, one month after it was installed.

The SFMTA recently implemented its second green wave on 14th Street, re-timing traffic signals for more bicycle-friendly speeds from Dolores to Folsom.

Nearly 100 attendees packed a City Hall room this morning for a hearing on the Fell and Oak bikeways, where supporters of the project overwhelmingly outnumbered detractors.

A public hearing tomorrow for the long-awaited protected bike lanes on Fell and Oak Streets could be key in determining how soon the project is approved and completed.

The people behind Walk Score, the real estate rating service that goes by the slogan “Drive Less, Live More,” are out with a new rating system, based on hard data, that should prove useful to prospective city dwellers: Bike Score.