Bicycle Plan

On the eve of what bicyclists, advocates and SFMTA officials hope will be the final hearing to consider fully lifting the city's bike injunction, a San Francisco judge issued a list of questions for the attorneys involved in the four-year-old case without giving any indication of how soon he'll rule.

It's been nearly four years since a court injunction stopped virtually any bike improvements from moving forward in San Francisco, but now a date has been set for a hearing that could fully and finally lift it.

While San Francisco's battle to implement its Bicycle Plan has generated national press attention, cities like Richmond in the East Bay have been quietly developing bicycle and pedestrian plans, hoping to reduce high rates of injury collisions between pedestrians, cyclists, and motor vehicles.

San Francisco today was named the sixth best city in the nation for cycling by editors of Bicycling Magazine, the best ranking of any city in California. Bicycling editors chose San Francisco in part because of the huge growth in cycling over the past two years and despite the injunction that has prevented the city from substantially improving its bicycle infrastructure.

After experimenting with one configuration for soft-hit posts for a few weeks along Market Street approaching 10th Street, the MTA has changed the configuration to give cyclists more room in approaching the intersection. The new soft hit posts extend from just before the intersection at 11th Street and Market up to 10th Street in the eastbound direction and the lane has a larger painted buffer.

Expect to see twice as many pedicabs on the streets this weekend in San Francisco. If you're counting, that amounts to a modest addition of 15 bicycle taxis.

With a deadline for filing bills in the Legislature for 2010 fast approaching, the California Bicycle Coalition and local advocates are debating what this year's statewide agenda should be. The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition is promoting three ideas they'd like to see become law, according to Program Director Andy Thornley.

The San Francisco MTA has an interesting decision to make with bus zones throughout the city now that a number of bus routes were changed or terminated with the service reductions that went into effect on December 5th, 2009. Will the city open the curb space up to cars, potentially adding meters in zones with metered parking regulations, or take the opportunity to experiment with more innovative parking solutions, such as on-street bicycle parking protected by bollards, similar to the Grove Street entrance of the San Francisco Public Library?

DPT crews have begun striping a new bike lane on Clipper Street between Douglass Street and Portola Drive. Streetsblog tipster Nick sent us these photos of the work, which is expected to take a week to complete, according to Damon Curtis of the MTA's bike program. Nick points out that many residents on Clipper Street support the bike lane, part of a traffic calming project in the Bike Plan.