Bicycle Plan

During routine business at the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Board meeting Tuesday, Director Cheryl Brinkman recounted how enjoyable it was to ride her bicycle on the new physically separated bike lane on Division Street between 9th and 11th Streets. Brinkman said she hoped the SFMTA would consider how it could improve the connection for cyclists between the Wiggle and the Panhandle, including the possibility of adding physical separation to the bike lanes on Fell and Oak Streets between Scott and Baker Streets.

Editor's note: Matthew Ridgway is a principal at Fehr and Peers, a transportation design and engineering firm that routinely consults on bicycle and pedestrian projects throughout California. His firm was hired to help develop Fresno's Bicycle Master Plan. Bryan Jones, the city of Fresno's traffic engineer, contributed to this report.

San Franciscans who live in the Sunset or want to pedal to the beach now have a three-mile stretch of bike lanes on Kirkham Street from 9th Avenue to the Great Highway. I rode the new bike lanes over the weekend and it was a mostly calm, relaxing ride. I typically pedal through Golden Gate Park to get to Ocean Beach (a much smoother trip since the repaving) but on Sunday I decided to explore a few quiet neighborhoods along Bike Route 40.

Despite a four-year bicycle injunction starting in 2006, San Francisco's share of bicycle commuting has risen, lifting the city to 4th on the League of American Bicyclists' (LAB) list of 70 largest American cities, while Oakland rose two spaces to 5th. The list is compiled each year from data collected by the Census Bureau as part of its American Community Survey (ACS).

A 37-year-old Oakland man has been identified as the driver of a 1989 Mercedes-Benz who allegedly killed 22-year-old Nils Linke of Germany while he was riding his bicycle Friday night on Masonic Avenue near Turk Street, a tragic reminder that the SFMTA needs to act quickly to fix one of San Francisco's most notorious traffic sewers.

It's no secret that many bicyclists pedaling through one of San Francisco's most popular bicycling corridors, The Wiggle, often run the red light turning onto Fell Street from Scott. Whether you agree it's a dangerous move to do so, considering the speeding traffic that thunders down Fell, the intersection has not been designed to give left-turn bicyclists signal priority, even though the SFMTA earlier this year installed a left-turn bike lane and green bike box on Scott. As it stands, bicyclists have 30 seconds to turn left on the green, but only if there's no southbound automobile traffic.

After nearly four years of legal wrangling, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Peter Busch lifted the city's bike injunction this afternoon, freeing the SFMTA to begin working on implementing the remaining projects in the Bike Plan, and soundly rejecting the objections made by plaintiff Rob Anderson and his attorney Mary Miles.

After four long years, a San Francisco judge this afternoon lifted the city's longstanding bicycle injunction, overruling the objections of Rob Anderson and his attorney, Mary Miles. Here's the ruling (PDF), and here's the press release from City Attorney Dennis Herrera:

The attorneys on both sides in San Francisco's four-year-old bike injunction saga have filed their proposed orders with Judge Peter J. Busch, documents he requested at a recent hearing that will inform his final decision on whether to lift the frustrating legal hold on the Bike Plan.