Bike Lanes

Seventeenth Street seems like it is quickly on its way to becoming one of the city's busiest bicycle routes, and with SFMTA crews extending the bike lanes east of Valencia this week, it'll be even more cycle-friendly.

Working in 80 degree weather, smiling SFMTA crews installed two green bike boxes in both directions of Market Street at Van Ness Avenue today, the latest pieces of innovative infrastructure to grace the city's main thoroughfare, which continues to become a much friendlier street for people who bike, walk and take transit.

Our daily urban lives shape our imaginations in so many ways. Few things box us in like our everyday transit options, and the patterns of traffic that shape our sense of public space. These patterns themselves are historical of course. A quick look back at the famous Market Street film shot a few days before the 1906 earthquake shows how chaotic and unpredictable the flow of traffic was when San Francisco's main artery hadn't yet been paved and standardized. Similarly, leaving the U.S. and visiting other countries provides a fantastic opportunity to experience other assumptions and possibilities for urban space, and surprisingly perhaps, a different range of vehicles.

I just spent a few days in Quito, Ecuador, a remarkably beautiful city of a couple million sprawling 40 kilometers north-to-south through a series of valleys and plateaus in the Andes, surrounded by snow-capped volcanoes and rugged green mountains. I interviewed Heleana Zambonino from Quito for Streetsblog a while back, and wanted to see for myself the dynamic bicycling scene she described.

Mayor Ed Lee's comments to Streetsblog earlier this week that he would like to "quickly" see a physically-separated bike lane trial on Fell Street along The Wiggle came as exciting news to bicycle advocates who are proposing a continuous green stretch along the curb from Scott to Stanyan Streets.

The SFMTA installed separation improvements on the Laguna Honda Boulevard bike lanes and added a raised pedestrian crossing on St. Francis Circle last week, tacking on a pair of safety features for vulnerable street users in two western neighborhoods of San Francisco that are notorious for high volume, high-speed car traffic.

Bicyclists have begun taking advantage of the new bike lanes being installed this week along the western section of the 17th Street corridor, with many riders saying they began feeling a greater sense of safety just as soon as the first stripes were laid down by Wednesday from Valencia to Church Streets.

A redesign of Folsom Street in the Mission District aimed at calming motor traffic and improving conditions for walking and bicycling is one step closer to becoming a reality. A proposal to add bike lanes and bus bulbs is now on its way to the SFMTA Board of Directors.

A long-awaited blueprint to significantly improve safety and livability conditions on Cesar Chavez Street was approved by SFMTA Board today, culminating nearly a decade of community input and planning.