GJEL

How to walk on city streets, and to fear cars while doing so, is something that's taught to small children everywhere. Once those kids grow up and get driver's licenses, however, teaching the same kids to avoid running over other people doesn't seem to be a major part of the curriculum.

On the two southernmost blocks of Polk Street, between Market Street and City Hall, the new contra-flow protected bike lane creates a unique street layout for San Francisco. For the first time on a downtown street, people on bikes are accommodated in a way that people in cars are not. Bike traffic goes both ways, while cars only go one.

About 50 on-street car-share parking spaces could be approved at an SFMTA engineering hearing tomorrow. That's your chance to write in, or show up at City Hall, to support a smart move by the SFMTA: placing car-share vehicles in convenient locations citywide, and putting everyone within easy reach of this alternative to car ownership.

A City Hall hearing scheduled for Monday is your chance to weigh in on the SF Fire Department's insistence on wider roadways to accommodate fire trucks, which has undermined and watered down a number of livable streets projects.

Doing the Wiggle should be a little easier, thanks to new green-backed sharrows and plastic posts installed by the SFMTA last week. These help bike commuters navigate the entrance to the Duboce bikeway, at Market and Buchanan Streets.

The Polk Street contra-flow protected bike lane connecting Market Street to City Hall is set to be unveiled at a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Friday at 11 a.m.

At Rosa Parks Elementary School in the Western Addition, the bike racks are filling up. Even with San Francisco's hills and often far-flung school assignments, Dorie Apollonio thinks she and her family have helped start a trend at the school ever since they started dropping the kids off by bicycle from their home in Parnassus Heights.

It's happened again: street space was re-allocated from cars to people, and the unbearable traffic jams opponents warned of have failed to materialize. In fact, some of them even like the result now.

Here's a little change of pace from the bad news this week. The Polk Street contra-flow protected bike lane, connecting Market Street northbound to Grove Street and City Hall, appears almost ready to go. A Department of Public Works spokesperson said the agency is shooting for a tentative opening date of May 2 or 5 and plans to hold a ribbon-cutting ceremony.