Uncategorized

Editor's note: Streetsblog San Francisco is thrilled to launch a three-part series today by renowned Danish architect and livable streets luminary Jan Gehl. The pieces are excerpts are from his book, "Cities for People" published by Island Press. Donate to Streetsblog SF and you'll qualify to win a copy of the book, courtesy of Island Press. Visit the Island Press website to find many more great titles by the nation's leading publisher of books on environmental issues.

To celebrate their one-year anniversary, and help boost our month-long fundraising push, PUBLIC Bikes has generously offered to bestow a brand new PUBLIC V7 or PUBLIC C7 bicycle on a lucky Streetsblog San Francisco reader who donates a minimum of $50 by midnight tomorrow.

Deb Hubsmith, a cycling zealot whose political savvy blazed many North Bay bike paths over the past 13 years, will step down as advocacy director for the Marin County Bicycle Coalition to focus on the national Safe Routes to School program she founded.

It's hardly a state secret that California's speed limit laws are designed to increase traffic speed at the expense of communities and urban design. AB 529, a hot piece of state legislation by Assemblymember Mike Gatto that already quietly cleared the lower house, seeks to give communities a little more leeway in setting local speed limits. The Senate has yet to assign the bill to committee, but Senate Transportation Committee staffers have told me they're expecting it "any day now."

On May 23, 1971, while 2,000 runners were racing to the finish in the 60th annual Bay to Breakers (the first year women were allowed), a diverse group of neighbors, most of them on bicycles, gathered on Lake Street to celebrate a first for San Francisco: freshly striped bike lanes. Neighbors had been demanding traffic calming measures on their street, and requested that the San Francisco Department of Public Works put in stop signs and bike lanes.

SFMTA crews are continuing the "green branding" of Market Street, installing "green-backed" sharrows for people who ride bikes across several different intersections headed eastbound between Octavia Boulevard and 10th Street.

From SPUR:

A 23-year-old San Francisco man accused of killing a pedestrian crossing Masonic Avenue at Turk Street early Friday morning while driving intoxicated made his first court appearance today but did not enter a plea.