Bicycling

Yesterday afternoon, journalists and advocates were given a first look at Fire Engine 13, assigned to the station on the corner of Washington and Sansome in San Francisco's Financial District. "This fire engine is narrower, not as long, and has a better turning radius," said San Francisco Fire Department Chief Joanne Hayes-White. "It's a beautiful piece of equipment."

Some 45 yellow-shirted safety advocates turned out last night to demand a protected bike lane on the Embarcadero.

The North Bay fires are a painful reminder of the disastrous impact of climate change. Unfortunately, the federal government’s most recent responses to the climate crisis include eliminating the Obama Administration’s attempt to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, known as the Clean Power Program. Now more than ever, the Bay Area has to lead the way in providing solutions that prioritize the needs of communities of color. We need to set a new path away from a carbon-based economy rooted in extraction and exploitation to a just transition economy anchored in sustainability.

"What if San Francisco becomes the next Detroit?" asked Jonathan Miranda, Director of Strategy at Salesforce.com, during a keynote speech this morning at the "Focus on the Future" conference in downtown San Francisco. Given the region's meteoric growth, that may seem far fetched--but no more so than Detroit's fall after the booming years of the auto industry. He said that given San Francisco's inability to build sufficient housing, that's a real possibility. "Companies are moving to Austin, Denver, Seattle--what happens if software and Silicon Valley start looking for a different place?"

Streetsblog tipsters riding on Folsom through SoMa had some good news to report: the parking protected bike lanes, part of the short term improvements planned for this street, are now under construction.

It just got easier for San Francisco to do something productive with land under and next to freeways.

Install wall-mounted bike racks that protrude too far from the wall in the wrong way, and a blind person might walk into a bike. That was just one of many factors to consider when figuring out what kind of bike rack to use and how and where to install it, explained Peter Lemieux, who does sales for Dero, a company that designs and builds bike racks.

While I was riding my bike to an Oakland Department of Transportation press event a couple of weeks ago, a driver in a black SUV came up behind and tailgated me. There were two lanes, and ample room to change lanes to pass--there was also a red light ahead of me and I was keeping up with the flow of traffic--I caught up with her at the next light and the next after that.

Streetsblog tipster Chris Waddling brought this to our attention: apparently a new bike lane in the Bayview District may soon get removed. "Supervisor Cohen is seriously considering bowing to people demanding that new bike lanes on Paul Ave be removed a mere months after they went in," wrote Waddling, in an email to Streetsblog.