Bicycle Infrastructure

Alemany Boulevard will soon be dramatically safer for cycling as SFMTA crews began striping the city's newest stretch of buffered bike lanes today.

For decades, a little known Caltrans advisory committee dominated by highway and automobile interests has been setting the design standards for signs, signals and pavement markings for California's urban streets. If a city wants a green bike lane, it has to be approved by the California Traffic Control Devices Committee (CTCDC), which also develops the state's Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD).

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee proposed a $248 million bond measure today that he hopes will make the city's neglected streets smoother and safer for all users.

Cycling San Franciscans have plenty to be happy about on the streets this Bike to Work Day, with new and greened bike lanes, new bike parking, sharrows, bike boxes, and traffic signals to make riding a little easier.

In the strongest showing of political support ever for bicycling in San Francisco, Mayor Ed Lee, ten of the eleven members of the Board of Supervisors, and a range of city officials pedaled to City Hall with advocates and thousands of commuters on the 17th Annual Bike to Work Day. Commuters pedaling along the city's most important route, Market Street, were greeted with new green paint and protected bike lanes thanks to SFMTA crews who have been racing to fill in the gaps.

SFMTA crews continue laying out the green carpet on Market Street in time to welcome the thousands of bike commuters expected on the 17th annual Bike to Work Day May 12. The improvements will help invite first-time riders to embrace the bicycle as their regular choice for commuting to work.

Preparations for improvements [pdf] to the Upper Market Street bike lanes are underway and when completed will mark a step towards safer passage for travelers by bike at three intersections along the city's busiest bike corridor, where a vision for a protected bikeway was dropped nearly forty years ago.

I’ve been bicycling in San Francisco since the late 1970s so I vividly remember when almost all bicyclists could recognize each other on the streets of the city. There really weren’t that many of us even as recently as the beginning of the 1990s, just two decades ago. We’ve come a long way, and one of the less recognized aspects of this bicycling boom has been the incredible expansion of bike rentals and bicycling tourism.

The commute on the busy Wiggle route will be made a little easier with the installation of a left turn signal at Scott and Fell streets today. The new system is expected to provide ample time for bicycle riders to make the left turn from the bike lane on Scott to Fell Street.