Cesar Chavez

Two bicycling upgrades were spotted in the eastern neighborhoods this past week: Preliminary striping for bike lanes on western Cesar Chavez Street and a "green wave" on 11th Street in west SoMa.

With an ongoing overhaul, western Cesar Chavez Street is looking less and less like a freeway these days, but the changes aren't only happening on the ground. At about 2 a.m. Friday morning, city crews took down an overhead navigational freeway sign pointing drivers to the 101 freeway -- the kind of motor-oriented infrastructure expected to be seen on freeways themselves, not on a street running through a neighborhood.

Residents are enjoying a more livable outer Bryant Street since the city implemented a road diet last month, reducing four traffic lanes to two (plus left-turn bays at some intersections) between 23rd and Cesar Chavez Streets. Neighbors joined Friends of the Urban Forest on Sunday on the block between 26th Street and Cesar Chavez to add trees and plants to two new medians -- visual signals that drivers should slow down as they enter the neighborhood from the 101 freeway.

The SF District Attorney's office has put charges on hold against the driver who killed pedestrian Francisco Huarcha-Salanic, 31, on Bayshore Boulevard on the dangerous junction with Highway 101 known as the "Hairball."

The SF Municipal Transportation Agency added "safe-hit" posts and dashed green pavement treatments to the bike lanes on eastern Cesar Chavez Street this week between Vermont and Pennsylvania streets.

Details updated 5:30 p.m.

Bike network expansions are going in at a rapid clip so far this spring. In Golden Gate Park, parking-protected bike lanes on John F. Kennedy Drive are mostly finished on the stretch in front of the Conservatory of Flowers, and drivers already seem to be picking up on the new parking arrangement.

Two bike corridors connecting the city's southeastern neighborhoods should be safer after crews finish constructing buffered bike lanes on eastern Cesar Chavez Street and a two-way protected bikeway on Cargo Way.

An SFMTA panel approved a safer bike lane plan for the intersection of Cesar Chavez and Evans Streets for recommendation to the agency's Board of Directors today, marking a key milestone for short-term improvements on the street's eastern section. The plan, which was chosen over an alternative that would have forced bicyclists to merge with trucks, is expected to receive final approval in the coming weeks with implementation to follow in late March.