Bicycle Infrastructure

SFMTA crews were spotted installing more green coloring on the Market Street bike lanes today, and say they expect to complete the entire section between Octavia Boulevard and 8th Street in time for Bike to Work Day May 12.

Golden Gate Bridge directors today tabled their staff’s surprise proposal for a 10 mph speed limit for bicycles after outraged cycling advocates denounced the plan as everything from a “half-baked idea” to a “solution in search of a problem.”

Seventeenth Street seems like it is quickly on its way to becoming one of the city's busiest bicycle routes, and with SFMTA crews extending the bike lanes east of Valencia this week, it'll be even more cycle-friendly.

Working in 80 degree weather, smiling SFMTA crews installed two green bike boxes in both directions of Market Street at Van Ness Avenue today, the latest pieces of innovative infrastructure to grace the city's main thoroughfare, which continues to become a much friendlier street for people who bike, walk and take transit.

Crews were out on Market Street today laying down the first bike boxes on both sides of the Ninth Street intersection. They come as the first of five promised by the SFMTA earlier this month.

Our daily urban lives shape our imaginations in so many ways. Few things box us in like our everyday transit options, and the patterns of traffic that shape our sense of public space. These patterns themselves are historical of course. A quick look back at the famous Market Street film shot a few days before the 1906 earthquake shows how chaotic and unpredictable the flow of traffic was when San Francisco's main artery hadn't yet been paved and standardized. Similarly, leaving the U.S. and visiting other countries provides a fantastic opportunity to experience other assumptions and possibilities for urban space, and surprisingly perhaps, a different range of vehicles.

Finding great examples of bike-friendly streets doesn't always mean looking across borders to international cities. Here in San Francisco, gems of physically separated bikeways and traffic-calmed neighborhood streets can be found on an oft-overlooked bicycle route along Hugo Street and Kezar Drive that connects the Inner Sunset to areas east.

The wheels are turning slowly in the movement to improve biking and walking conditions in San Mateo County as a lack of cohesive political will leaves little traction for any real changes.