Bike Lanes

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.

Caltrans has converted two general traffic lanes to bike lanes and a center turn lane on a deadly stretch of San Jose Avenue just south of highway 280, where 69-year-old Hector Arana was killed by a driver while crossing the street in March.

Soon after an SFPD sergeant harassed bicycle advocates at a rally for safer streets at the site where Amelie Le Moullac was killed, SF Bicycle Coalition Program Manager Marc Caswell found what SFPD investigators claimed they couldn't: two surveillance cameras facing the street, one of which had footage showing the truck driver running over Le Moullac in the bike lane at Folsom and Sixth Streets on August 14.

Update: Shahum reported that SFBC staffer Marc Caswell found a surveillance camera at an auto body shop which has footage of Le Moullac's crash, even though SFPD has said no such footage could be found. More on that story later as it develops.