Bike Lanes

The SFMTA's proposal to widen the Folsom Street bike lane with a buffer zone and remove a general traffic lane drew significant turnout at a community meeting in SoMa yesterday evening. The project, set to be installed by the end of the year, seems to have strong support from residents and livable streets advocates as a short-term measure to make Folsom safer.

The Mission's stretch of Folsom Street, between 19th and 24th Streets, just got safer with bike lanes and a road diet striped along with a road-repaving.

When Sarah Harling was hospitalized by a minivan driver who made a left turn into her at a stop sign intersection, she says the SFPD officer who filed the police report included a fabricated statement from her claiming that she "approached the stop sign without stopping."

Perhaps we shouldn't expect much from KTVU these days in the way of fact-checking -- Bay Area viewers should be used to the exceptional sloppiness seen in reports like the attempted hit on bike-share, the self-documented harassment of bicycle riders who don't wear helmets, and, of course, the infamous fake names of pilots involved in the Asiana plane crash at SFO.

There's no question: Double-parking in San Francisco is rampant, and it routinely causes danger for people on bicycles and delays for Muni riders.

The SFMTA will re-purpose a general traffic lane to widen and buffer the existing bike lane on Folsom Street between Fourth and 11th Streets by the end of the year, the agency announced today.

Two bicycling upgrades were spotted in the eastern neighborhoods this past week: Preliminary striping for bike lanes on western Cesar Chavez Street and a "green wave" on 11th Street in west SoMa.

The latest proposals for a redesign of Potrero Avenue include no protected bike lanes and only one transit lane, while the removal of any of the street's four lanes devoted primarily to private car traffic remains off the table.

The SFMTA isn't quite ready to declare that it will expedite protected bike lanes on Folsom Street with a pilot project, but planners say they're fleshing out the details of what near-term safety upgrades on the street could look like.