Bicycling

The mainstream media was all over it: private cars to be banned from Market Street under the city's "Better Market Street" plan. It will also have sidewalk-level protected bike lanes. For advocates in the safe streets community the design announced by the city this week is a major victory and a reason to celebrate.

Guy Place Park, a small 'pocket park,' is now fully funded and will be built, said Paul Chasan of the San Francisco Planning Department, during a presentation last night on the South Downtown Design and Activation Plan (SODA), given at the Bay Area Metro Center on Beale Street. The new park will be built on a 4,000-square foot parcel near the intersection of 1st and Folsom, on a lot that the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department purchased in 2007.

The 7th annual Pedalfest in Jack London Square took place on Saturday, and was packed with bikes and bike lovers of all stripes. Presented by Bay Area Bicycle Law and Drake’s Brewing, Pedalfest is billed as Bike East Bay’s celebration of cycling, family, food, and fun.

The intersection of 51st/Pleasant Valley and Broadway in north Oakland lies at the confluence of three of Oakland’s most walkable and bikeable districts – Temescal, Rockridge, and Piedmont Avenue – adjacent to Oakland Technical High School, California College of the Arts, and several senior housing complexes. Yet, it has always been a barrier to connecting these districts and destinations. Recent construction at three of the four corners of the intersection presented a unique opportunity to create a safer and more inviting area while filling the void left by a previous generation of auto-oriented strip malls. The Shops at the Ridge, a 300,000 square foot, 1,000 parking space development which redeveloped the Safeway/Longs Drugs complex on the northeastern corner, could have been the centerpiece of this revitalization. However, due to a lack of vision coupled with mismanaged implementation, the 51st and Broadway area has become even more of a mess today than it was before.

Yesterday's Sunday Streets on Valencia Street in the Mission was Victoria Ruddick's first time on a Ford GoBike. "The handlebars and steering are a bit heavy," she said. Ruddick said she normally drives to work and wouldn't consider cycling on a normal day. "I'm scared of biking around cars."

For some time now, advocates have called on SFMTA to work with more urgency to get safe-street fixes on the ground. And, it seems, this is starting to happen. "We'll pour concrete on top of asphalt to make bus boarding islands," explained Bradley Dunn, a spokesman at SFMTA, at last night's "Folsom-Howard: Safer Streets Sooner Near-Term Open House #1," held at the Gene Friend Recreation Center.

As Streetsblog readers have surely seen on social media, heard through the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (SFBC), or read in the SF Examiner, advocates fended off a last attempt (one hopes) to jam up the Upper Market parking protected bike lane project. Yesterday afternoon, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously voted to deny a procedural appeal that would have resulted in long delays.

A source has informed the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (SFBC) that at the San Francisco Board of Supervisors' regular meeting this afternoon, mayoral appointee Jeff Sheehy may vote for the planned parking-protected bike lanes on Upper Market to be delayed over an environmental challenge to the project. That's led the SFBC to question Sheehy's commitment to safe bike infrastructure in his district.

Yesterday, I took a ride on a Jump electric bike on Market Street. Ryan Rzepecki, the CEO of Jump, was riding alongside. When we stopped, we talked about how nerve racking it is to ride on Market. We also discussed how comfortable it is to ride in Berlin, where, in many places, rather than stripe a bike lane on the street (American-style, in the gutter, as on Market Street) they stripe it on the outer edge of the sidewalk.