District 6

Last Friday, two drivers ran over and killed 44-year-old Melissa Kitson of San Lorenzo at 7th and Howard Streets, the second pedestrian fatality in San Francisco this year.

Despite living in one of the city's densest residential neighborhoods with one of the lowest rates of car ownership, Tenderloin residents have endured some of San Francisco's most dangerous streets for walking since traffic engineers turned most of them into one-way, high-speed motorways in the 1960s.

Bicycling in San Francisco is getting better since the bicycle injunction was lifted in 2010, and concrete progress on projects like the critical Fell and Oak Street bikeway is very encouraging. But this week also made bicyclists in SF painfully aware that as the SF Municipal Transportation Agency gets closer to completing the projects in its Bike Plan, it will need to elevate its game to keep up with the nation's leading cities. The upcoming release of the SFMTA's Bicycle Strategy is a can't-miss opportunity to pick up the pace.

The developing plan to overhaul Second Street with protected bike lanes and pedestrian safety upgrades took another step forward yesterday when staff from the SF Municipal Transportation Agency, the Department of Public Works, and the Planning Department presented more refined design options to the public.

Second Street could get protected bike lanes, sidewalk extensions, lane reductions, greening and more under options presented to residents last night by the SF Department of Public Works and the Municipal Transportation Agency.

Police are still looking into whether charges could be filed against the taxi driver who allegedly ran a red light at Eddy and Larkin Streets Saturday, causing a car crash that killed pedestrian Edmund Capalla, the SF Examiner reports. The driver has reportedly yet to be arrested or cited.

Updated 6:57 p.m.

A new buffered bike lane was striped on 8th Street last week, re-purposing a traffic lane for bicycles on one of SoMa's fast, one-way motorways. The new configuration, which removes bicyclists from the door zone and provides a much wider lane, is an improvement over the four speed-inducing traffic lanes and skinny bike lane that previously existed. Still, many say it's just a small step toward a truly safer street.

Speed limits have been lowered from 30 MPH to 25 MPH on Howard, Folsom, Harrison, and Bryant Streets in the South of Market area, the SFMTA announced yesterday.