Bike Lanes

The city's latest proposal to improve safety and transit service on Potrero Avenue is slightly different than earlier versions of the plan. While the redesign would expand pedestrian space, some residents at a public meeting yesterday pointed out that it could do much more to make the street safer for biking and walking.

The SFMTA installed bike lanes on outer Sloat Boulevard last week, re-purposing two of the street's six traffic lanes between the Great Highway and Skyline Boulevard next to the San Francisco Zoo.

Thanks to Lisa Ratner for shooting this video on Polk last Friday.

On Friday at about 5 p.m., I came across a crash scene on Polk Street at Pine. A bicycle rider had been struck by a driver and thrown into another car, and he was being hauled away in a stretcher. As it happened, I was pedaling up Polk to meet with Lisa Ratner, a videographer, to get some shots of the dangerous traffic conditions on the street (stay tuned for that video later this week).

Updated 5:16 p.m. with corrections on the number of blocks.

Last month, we asked for photos of public servants parking obnoxiously, and our readers delivered. Here are some select snapshots of city vehicles parked egregiously without an emergency in sight.

A chunk of roadway at Valencia and Mission Streets would be reclaimed to create a plaza designed to make the corner more pedestrian-friendly and absorb stormwater under a project led by the SF Public Utilities Commission.

The SFMTA painted the Embarcadero bike lanes green yesterday, which will hopefully help signal to drivers that it's not a parking lane. The SFMTA Livable Streets team wrote on its Facebook page that the Port of SF helped get the paint on the ground in time for the Fourth of July and America's Cup later this month.

The Central Subway is coming, like it or not, and that means Fourth Street will get Muni Metro service starting in 2019. With that in mind, the SF Planning Department recently released the draft Central SoMa Plan (formerly known as the Central SoMa Plan), which sets the stage for upzoned transit-oriented development near new stations and street improvements to accommodate a growing population in a rapidly changing section of SoMa.