Bicycling

When DOT presented plans for a protected bike lane on Sixth Avenue, one point of contention was the design of intersections. How many intersections will get split-phase signals, where cyclists and pedestrians crossing the street get a separate signal phase than turning drivers? And how many will get "mixing zones," where pedestrians and cyclists negotiate the same space as turning drivers simultaneously?

Thursday night, I was exhausted from covering so many stories in this crazy city that I love. So I grabbed my laptop and headed out to my favorite Divisadero coffee shop to catch up on Facebook and maybe look at some funny cat videos.I walked in the door, ordered, and heard: "Hey Roger! So glad you could make it!"

Yesterday, John Robert Donovan, 41, of Mill Valley, accepted a plea-bargain that got him a misdemeanor conviction, two years of probation, 80 hours of community service, and a $4,134 fine plus court costs, as reported in the Marin Independent Journal. Last November, Donovan, who was driving a Tesla, reportedly got into a road rage incident with some cyclists on Shoreline Highway. When one of the cyclists flipped off his wife, Donovan overtook, cut them off, and braked—causing one of the cyclists to crash into his car. Donovan then drove off.

Mayor Edwin Lee officially vetoed the “Bike Yield” ordinance yesterday. Without enough votes to override, supporting supervisors will have to figure out a compromise plan, such as a pilot project. The bill's author, Supervisor John Avalos, already prepared for that contingency. Not surprisingly, Avalos was frustrated with the Mayor's veto. "SFPD has focused traffic enforcement on places where bicycling is common instead of on high collision corridors. It is clear we have a ways to go with our Vision Zero efforts," he said in an email to Streetsblog.

This week Margaret McCarthy began a six-month term as the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition's Interim Executive Director. She replaces Noah Budnick, who resigned last year. She starts with the SFBC in the midst of new and ongoing projects and, perhaps, a touch of residual tension after its first contested board elections. McCarthy is not a new face at SFBC, where she worked as Volunteer Coordinator and Program Director. Streetsblog sat down with her at SFBC's new digs on Market Street to talk about the police, the politics, the plans, and the future of cycling in San Francisco.

Danica Helb, a 35-year-old scientist and researcher at the University of California in San Francisco, was riding her bike on 16th Street Tuesday afternoon from her lab at San Francisco General Hospital to her office in Mission Bay, something she's done three times a week for the past six years.

Near the end of 2015, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a plan to grow Bay Area Bike Share from 700 to 7,000 bikes. That means the City of San Francisco itself will go from having 350 to 4,500 bikes, giving it the largest number of shared bikes per capita in the nation.

A Nielsen survey shows that 37 percent of Americans list “staying fit and healthy” as a top New Year's resolution. “Losing weight” is close behind it, at 32 percent. That's not much of a departure from last year. And, sadly, we'll probably see something else repeated in 2016: most people won't stick with it. In fact, roughly eight percent will keep those resolutions throughout the year.

Supervisor Avalos’s proposed ordinance would make it the lowest law enforcement priority in San Francisco to issue citations for bicyclists who safely yield at stop signs. However the ordinance would not discourage officers from citing bicyclists who fail to slow to a safe speed at stop signs or fail to yield to another vehicle or pedestrian.