Bicycle Infrastructure

A project that would create separated bikeways connecting the vital Wiggle route to the eastern and western parts of the city will take at least a year to plan and implement, SFMTA staff told the agency's Board of Directors Policy and Governance Committee today.

When traffic engineers from the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) invited the public to weigh in on the design of Golden Gate Park's first separated bikeway on John F. Kennedy (JFK) Drive last night, the discussion wasn't dominated by complaints about losing car parking. Instead, the room was filled with citizens eager to see JFK Drive finally transformed into a road safe enough for their even children to cycle on, whether they felt the proposals would achieve that or not.

Editor's note: Streetsblog San Francisco is thrilled to launch a three-part series today by renowned Danish architect and livable streets luminary Jan Gehl. The pieces are excerpts are from his book, "Cities for People" published by Island Press. Donate to Streetsblog SF and you'll qualify to win a copy of the book, courtesy of Island Press. Visit the Island Press website to find many more great titles by the nation's leading publisher of books on environmental issues.

Venturing into the Mid-Market area this fall, Huckleberry Bicycles aspires to go well beyond selling bikes. As co-owners Brian Smith, Jonas Jackel, and Zack Stender launch the first full-service bike shop to open on Market Street, they aim to bridge more everyday riders with bicycle advocacy and provide a much-needed service along the busiest bicycling street west of the Mississippi.

The SFMTA installed two new signal lights this week that the agency hopes will lead to increased safety for people walking and biking in the Broadway Tunnel and a Tenderloin intersection.

Outbound bicycle commuters wanting to connect to Valencia from Market Street, two of the city's busiest bicycling routes, are forced to navigate one of the most challenging turns found anywhere in the city. A project waiting to be implemented in the Bike Plan would change that, making the left turn easier with accommodations riders might expect to find only in a cycling utopia like Amsterdam.

San Franciscans are dreaming big as Market Street's transformation approaches in 2015, when the city's most important street is scheduled to be redesigned and repaved. City planners are engaging with citizens to answer a century-old question: How can we make Market Street the glorious thoroughfare that it needs to be?

SFMTA crews are continuing the "green branding" of Market Street, installing "green-backed" sharrows for people who ride bikes across several different intersections headed eastbound between Octavia Boulevard and 10th Street.