Bicycling

About a hundred planners, developers, neighbors, and interested citizens crowded into a conference room at One South Van Ness yesterday evening for a presentation from the San Francisco Planning Department on their plans for the area immediately around the intersection of Market and Van Ness, also known as the Hub.

A little less than a week ago, Walk San Francisco held its fourth annual "Walk to Work Day" events. The idea is to get people more aware of the health benefits of walking. From Walk SF's promotion:

SFMTA announced this weekend that it has finished installing a new phased signal and lane markings to make it easier for cyclists to cross the intersection at Folsom at Essex. From the SFMTA release:

Need some inspiration to make your city's streets safer and more inviting?

On March 3, the San Mateo County Transportation Authority (SMCTA) awarded $4.9 million to ten pedestrian and bicycle safety projects - $1 million less than the agency awarded two years ago. Agency staff had revised up the amount of funding for this year's Pedestrian and Bicycle Program to $5.7 million in February, but explained in the Board's March 3 report [PDF] that they had "corrected an error in calculation of the prior estimate."

As the photo shows, SFMTA is making some quick improvements to the 2nd Street bike lanes. This is a temporary fix, intended to be replaced once a full-blown makeover starts this fall.

Yesterday, Streetsblog reader Adam Long was riding along Valencia when he heard screeching brakes and commotion behind him. He had his camera on his helmet and, although he didn't catch the actual collision, it's pretty easy to see what happened from the video he put together and submitted to Streetsblog's tips line:

Streetsblog checked in with the dedicated volunteers of the Bicycle Advisory Committee (BAC) on Monday evening at its monthly meeting. The BAC was created by an ordinance back in 1990. The group consists of appointees representing each of the supervisorial districts. It advises San Francisco on matters related to bike safety and infrastructure. The chair is Bert Hill, who is also a veteran Bicycle Education Instructor with the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (SFBC). In a pre-meeting interview with Streetsblog, Hill said he wants more attention paid to roads where cyclists generally don't ride. His argument is that some roads are so intimidating that cyclists avoid them almost completely, so they don't get considered in the criteria for which roads get bike safety treatments in SFMTA's plans. "Is the criteria that you have to get someone killed to get checked off as requiring a bike safety project?" he quipped.

The city of Waterloo, Ontario, is in the process of building a new 12-mile light rail line called Ion Rapid Transit. Now the most pressing question is how to make it a success.