Bicycling

Some 20 bicycle advocates and city officials met up on Saturday morning to share ideas for fixing the eastbound bike lanes of the Hairball, San Francisco's notorious maze of freeway ramps, bike lanes, and homeless camps where Cesar Chavez crosses under US-101.

Representatives from San Francisco's Planning Department, the Municipal Transportation Agency, and Public Works were on hand last night at John Muir Elementary School to hear more public comment on the Lower Haight Public Realm Plan, a project that promises, among other things, better bike and pedestrian amenities for the neighborhood.

Last night, the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR) and Young Professionals in Transportation hosted a talk and discussion about bike-share and the transportation changes taking place in our cities. The event, which was held at SPUR's Oakland location, featured Jay Walder, the CEO of Motivate. One of many items that stood out: Walder said that Bay Area Bike Share, which Motivate operates, will definitely work with the Clipper card. "We will have it integrated into the transit system," said Walder. "It should be as simple as using BART or Muni or any other part that uses Clipper."

Last Wednesday, March 8, at 9:15 am, Mary Ann Blackwell was riding her bike down Martin Luther King in Oakland, on her way to the MacArthur BART station, to get to an appointment in San Francisco. She turned left onto 40th, to reach the station entrance. The long-time cycling advocate saw something familiar to cyclists throughout the Bay Area--a car, in this case a black sedan, stopped on the bike lane. “There wasn't even a car against the curb, but he didn't pull over,” she told Streetsblog, during her first trip back to the location since the incident.

Yesterday afternoon, thousands of people strolled, biked, skate boarded, and just generally had a good time on Valencia Street in the Mission, during the first Sunday Streets of 2017. After a long, wet winter, everyone seemed in especially good spirits on such a warm day. That said, there were serious overtones to the festivities and advocates of all stripes were out, pushing for some truly worthwhile causes. For example, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, its booth manned by volunteers Paul Valdez and Clay Woolam, was out building membership and making new connections.

Recently, District 8 Supervisor Jeff Sheehy committed to protected bike lanes in his district from Octavia to Duboce on Market, as part of the Upper Market Street Safety project. But despite Sheehy's support, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) leadership delayed a key hearing and, according to a report in the SF Examiner, the protected bike lanes were "quietly removed from the approvals process altogether."

As Streetsblog readers have no doubt seen in Hoodline, the SF Examiner, Curbed,  Bernalwood, or on various social media, the newly opened stretch of protected bike lane on Valencia Street, from Cesar Chavez to Mission, got off to a bad start, with confused motorists parking all over it. Fortunately, the protected bike lane was open for business today, thanks to better signs and some cones, as seen in the above photo.

Bike crashes on the tracks at 17th Street, double parking, and turn signals were just a few of the issues discussed at last night's monthly meeting of the Bicycle Advisory Committee (BAC) at San Francisco City Hall.

Last week, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (SFBC) launched a letter-writing drive to make sure protected bike lanes are part of SFMTA's Upper Market Street Safety Project from Octavia to the start of the Duboce bicycle path. It looks as if the campaign worked.