Bike Lanes

As we reported last week, several city agencies have begun to look at ways to improve Market Street when it is repaved, including an inter-agency process spearheaded by DPW and the Planning Department.  Yet, we've still heard nothing from Mayor Gavin Newsom that suggests he'll make the transformation of San Francisco's most significant street an urgent priority. 

Just about everyone who visits San Francisco's grand Market Street is awed by its hustle and bustle, the myriad modes of transportation, and some of the beautiful architecture the city hosts. But just about everyone also agrees that Market Street has a much bigger potential as a people space that accommodates its users in more efficient and human terms. Parts of the street are in disrepair; whole blocks contain more boarded up facades than functioning businesses.

A stenciler was at work in front of San Francisco City Hall recently, painting over the green "showcase" stripe for two plug-in electric vehicles (EV) to reflect what the true green vehicle is: the bike. The bike injunction prevents the city from coloring lanes for bicyclists and this is all we get for now. We do know the MTA is testing green bike lanes at one of its Muni yards, and will probably roll out an experiment sometime after the injunction is lifted. The Presidio Trust, meantime, is conducting a green lane experiment on one of its bike lanes, and Brisbane has installed a blue bike lane on what has become a dangerous stretch of road for cyclists.

Kirkham Street is one of the Big 56 bike lane projects that hasn't raised many eyebrows. Unlike the looming battle over 2nd Street or 5th Street, the Kirkham lane will be on a relatively quiet residential street that runs east-west from Ocean Beach to 6th Avenue, where it will connect with the remainder of bicycle Route 40.  

Any cyclist who has dodged cars on the main drag of Sausalito lately will be glad to hear the city has approved a $100,000 to study the safest bike route to the north end of town.

About 170 people showed up last night at the First Baptist Church for the launch of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition's grassroots campaign to rally support for the city's long-stalled bike plan and get it re-adopted by Bike to Work Day.

While all bicycle facility improvements in San Francisco remain at a halt because of a disruptive bike injunction, other Bay Area cities are moving ahead. Take Brisbane. Our reporter, Matthew Roth, snapped this photo of a blue bike lane that was installed near the Brisbane/South San Francisco border in early January. The concept was thought up by a working group of professionals and bicyclists and Fehr and Peers, a transportation consultant firm, designed it.

I just finished an interesting journey that took me to the World Social Forum at the mouth of the Amazon River system in Belem, Brazil, and then to Los Angeles and finally home, just in time to attend a presentation last night at CounterPULSE of Rick Prelinger's Lost Landscapes III. The show consists of rare and obscure footage of life in San Francisco going back over 100 years. A few of the clips are striking reminders of how much the basic "technology" of roads and how we use them has evolved during the past century.