Bicycle Safety

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) Board of Directors has appointed a regular bicycle and Muni rider to become its Chief Executive Officer, ushering in a new era of leadership that advocates hoped would dramatically improve sustainable transportation in the city.

A 25-year-old bicyclist who was involved in a crash with a delivery truck in SoMa yesterday has died from her injuries, the San Francisco Medical Examiner has confirmed. Nancy Ho of San Francisco was pronounced dead at San Francisco General Hospital shortly before 11 last night. She is the first bicyclist to die from a collision with a vehicle on San Francisco streets this year.

A 25-year-old woman riding a bicycle was critically injured in a collision with a food delivery truck at the intersection of Mission and Fremont streets this morning. San Francisco police blamed the bicyclist because investigators determined she was making an illegal left turn onto Fremont, which is prohibited except for taxis and buses.

The California Bicycle Coalition’s bill to give drivers clearer guidance about how to pass bicyclists safely was approved this week by the Assembly Transportation Committee in a raucous hearing that reflected California’s deeply conflicted relationship to motor vehicles and driving.

Just days before bike lanes were scheduled to be striped on eastern Cesar Chavez Street, an SFMTA staffer told a group of neighbors, advocates and others at a community meeting last night that the plan to replace one of the street's travel lanes was being scrapped. City Hall sources told Streetsblog the order came from the Mayor's Office, which was responding to last-minute concerns from industrial businesses worried about reducing road capacity for trucks.

Having already passed the Senate earlier this month, Senate Bill 910, the three-foot passing law, heads to its first Assembly hearing next Monday, June 27 at 1:30 P.M. If you can't make it to Sacramento, you can listen to the hearing here, or follow L.A. Streetblog's coverage on twitter.

People riding shared public bicycles appear to be involved in fewer traffic crashes and receive fewer injuries than people riding their personal bicycles. In cities from Paris and London to Washington, D.C. and Mexico City, something about riding a shared bicycle appears to make cycling safer.

The idea of getting more private automobiles off Market Street is gaining serious traction at the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA). Following the success of measures diverting cars off Market at 6th and 10th Streets, the SFMTA Board of Directors today showed a broad consensus favoring potential pilot projects that could further reduce the impacts of cars on and around Market.

San Franciscans are dreaming big as Market Street's transformation approaches in 2015, when the city's most important street is scheduled to be redesigned and repaved. City planners are engaging with citizens to answer a century-old question: How can we make Market Street the glorious thoroughfare that it needs to be?