Bicycle Safety

An unidentified man in his late twenties was rushed to San Francisco General Hospital after falling off his bike and being run over by a minivan in the Mission District Wednesday evening.

Parents seeking a vibrant, community-filled urban lifestyle filled with chance street corner chats on the walk to the grocery store may find living on Fell Street leaves a lot to be desired.

Mayor Ed Lee's comments to Streetsblog earlier this week that he would like to "quickly" see a physically-separated bike lane trial on Fell Street along The Wiggle came as exciting news to bicycle advocates who are proposing a continuous green stretch along the curb from Scott to Stanyan Streets.

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee supports the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition's Connecting the City vision, promises to "very aggressively" carry out Gavin Newsom's executive directive on pedestrian safety, and said he has a commitment from the SFPD to do more aggressive enforcement of drivers in the Tenderloin to make the streets safer for those on foot.

Bicyclists have begun taking advantage of the new bike lanes being installed this week along the western section of the 17th Street corridor, with many riders saying they began feeling a greater sense of safety just as soon as the first stripes were laid down by Wednesday from Valencia to Church Streets.

Lawyers for the family of Nils Yannick Linke have filed a wrongful death lawsuit [pdf] against Joshua Calder, the Oakland man charged with drunk driving and vehicular manslaughter for allegedly mowing down the 22-year-old as he was riding a bicycle on Masonic Avenue last August. The suit also names Calder's girlfriend, Nicole Mairs, and her grandmother, June Soelberg, who was the owner of the 1989 Mercedes involved in the crash.

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.

With the SFMTA poised to install green bike boxes in both directions of Market Street at Van Ness Avenue, it got me thinking about how the agency could better design that intersection for the huge numbers of bicyclists who pass through it on a daily basis, particularly on eastbound Market where drivers and people on bikes have to crisscross to get in their respective lane. It could also be better designed for pedestrians, considering it's so wide and that Van Ness, a state highway, is an ugly street to cross.

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.