Market Street

In case you were wondering what would become of the newly empty curb space at Market and 10th Streets, where the traffic lane stripings were re-configured over the weekend, it turns out the SFMTA plans to put a bike-share station there.

The outer lanes of Market Street will be re-paved between Van Ness Avenue and Sixth Street this weekend, the Department of Public Works announced today. The work is scheduled to start on Friday at 7 p.m. and finish within 24 hours.

The SF Bicycle Coalition has released an awesome time lapse video of over 1,000 people on bikes rolling by the Market Street bicycle counter on the morning of Bike to Work Day.

San Francisco's first digital bicycle counter was activated on Bike to Work Day yesterday, and the day's official total was 3,231 cyclists on Market Street. But that's probably a significant underestimate, since many bike riders on that block choose to ride outside the bike lane where the ground sensors were installed. Many riders seem to prefer to ride in the adjacent traffic lane, which was closed to cars in 2009.

The SFMTA installed some green-backed bike stencils and upgraded ladder-style crosswalks at Market Street and Octavia Boulevard, the intersection that sees the most pedestrian and bicycle injuries in San Francisco.

Constructing raised, protected bike lanes on downtown Mission Street would cost more than building them on Market, according to SF Municipal Transportation Agency Director Ed Reiskin.

The latest news from the Better Market Street project could be a setback for implementing a safe, accessible bike network in San Francisco -- not just because construction has been pushed back to 2017, four years past the original date -- but because one of the three proposals that planners will study involves building a protected bike lane route on Mission Street instead of Market, while re-routing Muni's 14-Mission bus line on to Market in the downtown stretch.

The campaign to rid lower Market Street of the delays and dangers caused by personal cars has an unexpected champion on the SF Municipal Transportation Agency Board of Directors.

Dangerous, illegal right turns from Market Street onto the freeway at the intersection with Octavia Boulevard -- the location with the most pedestrian and bicycle crashes in the city -- may become less frequent after a long-awaited state decision that allows the city to use camera enforcement. The decision was announced by California Attorney General Kamala Harris last week.