San Fran is a dying city. Crime, drugs, illegal, homeless, gangs, bullies and corrupt politicians. For several years, part of the economic collapse has been caused by the restrictions on where cars are allowed to drive—closed streets, slow streets, high parking costs—limited parking. The main street, Market Street, is closed to cars. Now they are fighting over the location of bike lanes. Who cares—will you be able to move to Texas while riding your bike?
“A new San Francisco biking network proposal encountered fierce opposition Monday night at a community open house in North Beach, with many fearing it could become the next Valencia Street.
“Again, no decisions have been made,” presenter Christine Osorio, the Municipal Transportation Agency’s project manager of the Biking and Rolling Plan, kept reassuring the audience during a 20-minute presentation. Not only that, the project is not going to touch areas of great concern to the locals: Columbus Avenue and Polk Street.
“There are also some complex merchant corridors that we are not going to be able to figure out through this plan in this neighborhood,” she said.”
This is what happens when a city is dying and those remaining fight over the crumbs.
Valencia bike lane debacle becomes obstacle to new SF biking network
by YUJIE ZHOU, Mission Local, 7/9/24 https://missionlocal.org/2024/07/valencia-bike-lane-debacle-becomes-obstacle-to-new-sf-bike-lanes/
A new biking network proposal in San Francisco encountered fierce opposition Monday night at a community open house in North Beach, with many fearing it could become the next Valencia Street. Photo by Yujie Zhou, July 8, 2024.
A new San Francisco biking network proposal encountered fierce opposition Monday night at a community open house in North Beach, with many fearing it could become the next Valencia Street.
“Again, no decisions have been made,” presenter Christine Osorio, the Municipal Transportation Agency’s project manager of the Biking and Rolling Plan, kept reassuring the audience during a 20-minute presentation. Not only that, the project is not going to touch areas of great concern to the locals: Columbus Avenue and Polk Street.
“There are also some complex merchant corridors that we are not going to be able to figure out through this plan in this neighborhood,” she said.
It was standing-room-only at the Joe DiMaggio Playground community room, where about 60 audience members, including about a third from the North Beach neighborhood, inundated Osorio with a slew of skeptical questions about the as-yet-undefined bike lanes.
The SFMTA offered three scenarios with specific street plans aimed at building a safer and more connected citywide biking network. Each had some trade-offs for the community to choose or mix with other ideas.
- Scenario A: Highly protected and separated bike lanes that will include a lot of parking removal; in District 3 the network would be built on Broadway, North Point, Post, Battery and Sansome.
- Scenario B: Less parking removal, bike lanes would be painted, and heavy traffic calming, including speed limits of 25 miles per hour, would be enforced. This would affect Larkin, Pacific, Jefferson, and Jackson, as well as a few streets around Columbus Avenue.
- Scenario C: No new bike lanes but heavy traffic-calming zones with speed limits kept to 15 miles per hour in areas around schools. This would mean less citywide connectivity, but also less parking removal.
The three scenarios were developed after more than 100 community discussions across the city over the past 18 months, according to the SFMTA.
The North Beach open house was one of 11 community meetings the transit agency will have over the next two months in each supervisorial district. People are welcome to comment on any neighborhoods.
The SFMTA is hoping to have a specific bike lane plan in the fall. Final approval will come after the SFMTA board vote early next year. When the plan is fully implemented, six to 10 percent of San Francisco streets are expected to have bike facilities. At present, 3 percent of San Francisco’s streets have separated bike lanes.
The north star of the project, expected to be achieved in five years, is to have every San Franciscan within a quarter-mile of a “high quality biking and rolling facility,” according to the SFMTA.
Attacks came from all directions. “Just giving us choices on what we’re supposed to do with Columbus Avenue … is unfair,” said one participant concerned about bike lanes on that street. Osorio reiterated that there are no Columbus Avenue bike lanes in the three proposed scenarios.
Josephine, a retired school teacher who lives in North Beach, said “I’m a big walker. I’m really disappointed by the title. Walk is not included.”
The plan talks about the dangers of driving, but “never talked about educating the rollers and the cyclists, they need to pay attention to laws too,” said Sammy Zoeller.
It’s “ridiculous” that “you are gonna change everything,” said one audience member.
“Where does the money come from?” asked another.
“You’re a brave soul. You didn’t get the easiest win tonight,” Jay Farber, a North Beach resident, later told Osorio. The meeting — as well as the hodgepodge of grievances — “went as expected,” said the latter.
She might have been prepared by the fallout surrounding the center Valencia bike lane, which was controversial from its outset and blamed after its 2023 launch by small businesses for driving down income.
No matter that data showed that the bike lane wasn’t the reason for slow business and small businesses actually did better than owners stated. The opposition only grew and, after firmly standing by the center-running bike lane for months, in June the SFMTA opted to move the Valencia route to curbside.
Regardless of its actual impact on small businesses, the Valencia center bike lane played a central role in Monday night’s civil but confrontational discussions.
“Respect should be done to businesses first, which wasn’t done, apparently, on Valencia Street,” said Marc Bruno, vice president of the District 3 Democratic Club.
Otherwise, it’s best just to “maintain the status quo,” he said. “People, including me — I admit I’m this way — feel like if something works, don’t fix it, don’t break it. We feel North Beach works very well.”
When the SFMTA came to us for community input, said Daniel Macchiarini, owner of Macchiarini Creative Design on Grant Avenue in North Beach, “We said, ‘What are you going to do to Columbus Avenue? Are you gonna make it like you did in the Mission? No, thank you. We need our businesses here, vital.’”
“And they actually listened to us,” he said.
“I think it’s legitimate for merchants to have concerns about what happens on their street,” said Viktoriya Wise, SFMTAs’s director of streets.
In addition to the subject matter of the meeting, some participants were disappointed at the structure of the meeting itself, which was co-hosted by North Beach Neighbors. “This is an event that was planned with one neighborhood group to the exclusion of all others with a political motivation in mind,” said Greg Giachino, vice president of Telegraph Hill Dwellers.
Supporters of the Biking and Rolling Plan, though modest in number, did present at the event. “The fear of loss is a lot more motivating than other options,” said Russian Hill resident Danny W., who believes the city should be generally car-free.
Maya Chaffee, an advocate for bikes and public transportation, said people used the Valencia center bike lane as an excuse for a lane that kills business “when, really, it’s not.”
District 3 supervisor candidates seized the opportunity to engage with constituents, with four of six attending, including Danny Sauter, former president of North Beach Neighbors, and Eduard Navarro. Both Sharon Lai, a former SFMTA board member, and Moe Jamil mentioned the need for a holistic transportation planning approach. Lai wanted to see meetings co-hosted with other neighborhood groups, otherwise it’s “potentially siloing and alienating other groups.”
Formerly known as the Active Communities Plan, the Biking and Rolling Plan partners with the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, and aims to accommodate new residents who would move into the 82,000 new housing units required by the state by 2031. There simply won’t be enough room for all of them to drive, the SFMTA figures.
Meanwhile, the agency found out in a self-sponsored 2023 survey that 29 percent of San Franciscans ride a bike, scooter or other micromobility device weekly, and 80 percent are interested in biking and alternatives. The current biking network has gaps with a mere eight percent of them being protected or separated lanes, according to the SFMTA.
