Bicycle Plan

Surprise! San Francisco has its first new bike lanes in three years, five days before a scheduled court hearing on lifting the bicycle injunction.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and MTA Chief Nat Ford have made repeated promises that they will act swiftly to build out large segments of the city's Bicycle Master Plan when the 3-year-old bicycle injunction is lifted. Behind the good rhetoric, the agency does appear prepared to begin striping lanes and adding bike racks when the long legal wait finally ends.

Former Talking Heads frontman and current bicycling icon David Byrne used his celebrity and the publication of his new book, Bicycle Diaries, to instruct a capacity audience of more than 900 people at San Francisco's Herbst Theater on the many ways that the bicycle has become a more acceptable and mainstream form of locomotion. Rather than read a single line from his book, he took the opportunity to assemble a panel, including Board of Supervisors President David Chiu, San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (SFBC) Executive Director Leah Shahum, and Berkeley City and Regional Planning Professor Emeritus Michael Teitz, and show a largely older audience of City Arts devotees a number of photos from his travels, photos contrasting cities around the world where bicycle infrastructure is more than a-nod-and-a-wink, to American cities, where the car is king and any other form of transportation has suffered from neglect or marginalization.

There's word from the City Attorney's office this afternoon that the hearing to consider lifting the bike injunction has been delayed. From the press release:

MTA Chief Nat Ford announced an encouraging reorganization (PDF) of his top brass this week, a move which may usher in a much needed change in the structure of the agency, and potentially give less power to the old school traffic engineers who continue to prioritize automobiles in the design and management of San Francisco's streets.

After more than three frustrating years without any major bike improvements in San Francisco, it appears what bike activists hope will be the final court showdown for the bike injunction is just weeks away. This afternoon, City Attorney Dennis Herrera's office filed a motion (PDF) to lift the bike injunction, a filing that is 15 inches thick and argues the city has met all of its legal obligations.

Now that the New York City Council has approved a Bicycle Access Bill requiring commercial buildings to allow bicyclists entry, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition is ready to push for a San Francisco version of the requirement "by the end of the year." New York's bill, which is limited in its scope and contains some significant loopholes, passed 46-1 and is expected to be signed by Mayor Bloomberg.

The MTA and City Car Share are welcoming the Bixi bicycle share program from Montreal, Canada, to San Francisco this Sunday to demonstrate how bicycle share could work if this city embraces it. City CarShare is using the event to conduct a user survey and provide information about the service to interested riders in the park.

Construction begins this week on a nine-month project that could periodically disrupt Valencia Street's bike lanes. The result, residents hope, will be a greatly improved streetscape for pedestrians and bicyclists.