Pedestrian Safety

Walk to Work day started badly this morning--very badly. A volunteer--the name withheld for privacy--was hit by a car somewhere on the way to the event, which started at Market and Duboce. "This is insane," said Cathy Deluca, incoming acting director of Walk San Francisco. "People should be able to walk the streets of San Francisco without putting their lives at risk."

The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (SFBC), for the first time ever, is opposing a bike lane.

Despite a handful of small setbacks, East Palo Alto's dream of providing a safe crossing over the 101 Freeway for people riding bicycles and people walking is nearly a reality. Construction of the "East Palo Alto Highway 101 Ped/Bike Overcrossing," a 12-foot wide bridge over Highway 101 between Newell Road and Clarke Avenue, could begin as early as this summer. The bridge will provide a long-awaited connection between the city's east and west sides.

Streetsblog did a survey tour of Oakland bike infrastructure last Friday with Walk Oakland Bike Oakland (WOBO) president Chris Hwang. The group's mission statement, from its web page, is a familiar one for safe-streets advocates: "We want every person who lives, plays, and works in Oakland to feel safe and comfortable walking and bicycling, and that they know how to make their neighborhood a better place to walk and bike."

The Silicon Valley Bike Vision report shows what peninsula cities are doing right, as well as what they could do better to improve conditions for bicyclists and encourage more people to ride. It serves as a vision of what bicycling could be like, and provides a general roadmap on how to get there.

Representatives from San Francisco's Planning Department, the Municipal Transportation Agency, and Public Works were on hand last night at John Muir Elementary School to hear more public comment on the Lower Haight Public Realm Plan, a project that promises, among other things, better bike and pedestrian amenities for the neighborhood.

Last Wednesday, March 8, at 9:15 am, Mary Ann Blackwell was riding her bike down Martin Luther King in Oakland, on her way to the MacArthur BART station, to get to an appointment in San Francisco. She turned left onto 40th, to reach the station entrance. The long-time cycling advocate saw something familiar to cyclists throughout the Bay Area--a car, in this case a black sedan, stopped on the bike lane. “There wasn't even a car against the curb, but he didn't pull over,” she told Streetsblog, during her first trip back to the location since the incident.

Yesterday afternoon, thousands of people strolled, biked, skate boarded, and just generally had a good time on Valencia Street in the Mission, during the first Sunday Streets of 2017. After a long, wet winter, everyone seemed in especially good spirits on such a warm day. That said, there were serious overtones to the festivities and advocates of all stripes were out, pushing for some truly worthwhile causes. For example, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, its booth manned by volunteers Paul Valdez and Clay Woolam, was out building membership and making new connections.

Recently, District 8 Supervisor Jeff Sheehy committed to protected bike lanes in his district from Octavia to Duboce on Market, as part of the Upper Market Street Safety project. But despite Sheehy's support, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) leadership delayed a key hearing and, according to a report in the SF Examiner, the protected bike lanes were "quietly removed from the approvals process altogether."