A Huge Bike

Kristi Coale

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There have been a lot of eyes on Valencia Street lately, where experimental bike lanes that run down the center of the street are about to open. The one-year trial hasn’t officially begun, yet it’s already raised ire because of recent crashes on Valencia involving bikes and cars.

It’s unclear if the bicyclists were trying to use the new lanes, which aren’t yet open. But the alternatives are unsafe. The controversy underscores the tension between this temporary fix, which most people involved see as a compromise at best, and long-term change that might lead to one of the most dramatic reconfigurations of a neighborhood street that San Francisco has seen in a generation.

“I hope to God that three years from now this is not the design,” SF Municipal Transportation Agency director Jeffrey Tumlin said Sunday, taking part in a ride to inspect the project’s progress.

Some advocates highlight the success of closing part of Golden Gate Park’s JFK Drive to cars. “World class cities have pedestrian shopping districts, and we were thinking of a way to bring the vibrant public life that’s been happening on JFK Promenade to other parts of the city like Valencia,” says Robin Pam, an organizer with KidSafeSF, a group that fought for the JFK closure.

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Could something similar happen with Valencia Street’s dense commercial district? Pam and others are keeping a close eye on a smaller piece of the bike-lane pilot, which the SFMTA board unanimously approved in April. This “pilot within a pilot” will make one or two blocks more available to people instead of cars, a concept called “placemaking.” Details, including the specific blocks, will come later, but there is at least $210,000 in federal funds earmarked for it.

The funding measure (see page 359) considers options for one-way car traffic or none at all, and a variety of bike lane patterns.

The idea has backers in high places. SFMTA board member Manny Yekutiel said the pandemic closure of parts of Valencia Street, now being revived on Saturdays through November, should be a blueprint. “This was the potential of what Valencia could be like, a real space of community gathering and joy,” he said at the April meeting. Yekutiel also highlighted the one-way street idea at the time.

‘I hope to God that three years from now this is not the design.’ — SFMTA director Jeffrey Tumlin

Yekutiel has a vested interest: His café and community space, Manny’s, is on Valencia and 16th Street, and he is the president of the Valencia Corridor Merchants Association.

Support hasn’t been unanimous. One street safety advocate calls it “dangerous” and “flawed.” But as emails obtained through a public records request show, Yekutiel and others privately negotiated for the center lanes for months, leading to the unanimous board vote in April. As one board member noted, there were no other proposals on the table.

One key to the vote was the support of the SF Bike Coalition, which was part of the behind-the-scenes discussion, according to the emails. The coalition eventually endorsed the plan in a March 8, 2023 newsletter.

When contacted about the dealmaking, executive director Janelle Wong said, “If we are to improve Valencia — an important commercial corridor for the city and an important bikeway and street for cyclists and pedestrians — this pilot is key.”

Two major factors that won Wong over: the chance to prohibit left turns from Valencia, and limits on speed. Wong hopes both will lead to fewer cars and a safer street.

Burrito inspiration

Flat, free of buses, and an obvious connector between the Mission and mid-Market Street, Valencia has been a major bikeway for years. It got its first lanes in 1999. But it’s also part of the high-injury network: the 12 percent of SF streets where 68 percent of all crashes happen. In January, 64-year-old pedestrian Wan Mei Tan was killed by a driver turning left at Valencia and 16th.

A plan for a “parking-protected” bikeway (see pages 8 and 9) was put on hold by COVID. The pandemic also brought more parklets and food delivery services, whose drivers block the bike lane, adding more stress to the street. “I’d get tapped by a car once every two months or have to swerve to avoid them,” says Avi Ehrlich, who bikes to work at the indie comic retailer Silver Sprocket.

Post-pandemic, something different was needed. The transit agency began outreach last summer, and the results showed a mere 13 percent of 618 respondents supported the center bike-lane idea. Opponents feared inadequate protection from cars, poor enforcement of double parking and illegal turns, and concern that exiting the lane mid-block would be unsafe.

Around the same time, John Oram, a designer known online as Burrito Justice, sketched out an idea — two-way bike lanes on the side, one-way car traffic, and wide sidewalks for dining and walking — that inspired many community members, including Pam.

But SFMTA had limited funds after the failure of a June 2022 bond measure that would have brought $400 million in funding for street safety, according to Tumlin. The Valencia changes had to be made with “quick build” measures that don’t require permanent infrastructure changes.

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Behind-the-scenes emails show what happened next. Community members including Pam started a new advocacy group, Friends of Valencia, and pushed SFMTA via Yekutiel to develop a longer-range plan. The center-running bike lanes would be a bridge to something very different — perhaps resembling the Burrito plan and its one-way lane of car traffic.

Chris Keene, a tech executive who has worked with KidSafeSF on Slow Streets and JFK, met with Pam and SF Bike Coalition members to hash out a multi-step plan.

On October 9, Keene emailed Yekutiel to say that KidSafeSF and the bike coalition would support the lanes provided there was “some protection like armadillos or similar” for bicyclists, as well as left-turn restrictions for cars. In return, the group wanted SFMTA’s “commitment to a longer-term design with one-way car traffic and fully-protected lanes … including a study that prepares for signal changes and one-way car traffic.”

Yekutiel responded quickly and offered to forward the proposal to SFMTA staff. Keene proposed “an informal discussion” with staff “to see if these changes work for them.”

In an October 10 email to Yekutiel and others, SFMTA director of streets division Tom Maguire called Keene’s message “a promising lead” and suggested a meeting date with Friends of Valencia.

These email chains and conversations resulted in an outline of proposals that were included in the final resolution.

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Friends of Valencia leader Amandeep Jawa says the center bike lanes are an interim step that’s “got to be better than what we’ve had,” but he underscores that the “second pilot” — the one or two blocks still to be determined — is the main attraction. “We want to help Valencia live its best life, and it thrives in Sunday Streets and other instances where there’s a better story for pedestrians and bikes,” Jawa says.

The “better story” has gotten off to a bumpy start.

Ignoring the signs

SFMTA began installing Valencia’s center bike lane between 15th and 23rd streets on April 24th. Since then, reports of at least three injuries have brought cries of “I told you so” from detractors. But the lanes, along with signs, traffic signals, and new parking and loading zones along the curb, aren’t finished yet.

The agency has even mounted “Bike Lane Closed” signs, but bikers and scooter riders have ignored them. If cyclists don’t want to mix in with car traffic, as SFMTA has advised during construction, nearby routes are no safer. (The nearest slow street is Shotwell, six blocks south.)

Safe streets advocate Luke Bornheimer criticizes the arrangement, even if temporary, and recently said drivers have yelled at him to get into the center lanes.

“This is bordering on liability for SFMTA to maintain the bike lane is closed. It’s open as far as human behavior is concerned,” says Bornheimer, who opposes the center-lane design. (He is promoting a rival proposal, “Better Valencia,” that calls for a protected curbside bike lane.)

The project should be ready later this month, says SFMTA spokesperson Stephen Chun. A recent visit shows why critics like Bornheimer are concerned. The lanes are protected by low-lying rubber strips called “bus-lane curbs,” which set the lanes off from vehicle traffic but don’t keep it out. On a recent ride, I saw trucks parked in the bike lanes, and a car drove over the bus-lane curb to make a left turn at 19th Street, ignoring the no-left turn sign. (Left turns are prohibited along Valencia between 15th and 23rd.)

Dedicated signals at 15th and 23rd Streets are supposed to help bicyclists transition from the center lane to the curbside bike lanes. They’re just like ones that “have been installed throughout the city, so users of the road should have some familiarity with them,” says SFMTA spokesperson Stephen Chun.

Will drivers — and everyone else using Valencia — get the message? Several merchants along the bustling corridor said they’ve not gotten enough information.

Over the din of a late lunch crowd, Tacolicious manager Pablo Claudio tells The Frisc that he’s heard little about the project, except when reporters ask or when employees and customers complain about the lack of parking. “All I can see is that it makes driving on Valencia more frustrating, but delivery drivers will always find a way to double park and get their orders,” he notes.

SFMTA has done plenty, says Chun, including outreach last summer and fall, several mailers to all addresses in the area, meetings with two merchant associations, and flyers and door-to-door outreach just before construction began in April.

This effort will continue throughout the pilot as SFMTA “is open to feedback” and wants “to continue working with merchants, especially in regard to the curb management,” says Chun. Still to come are new parking and loading zone signs, social media and blog posts, and outreach to merchants about the dual-use loading zones.

Still, the center lane design is one SF has never seen before, and it’s already clear the protection isn’t a deterrent to illegal driving. So the more education the better, it would seem.

On that front, SFMTA’s track record on slow streets isn’t promising. It has posted small purple signs but no written rules such as speed limits, despite encouragement from the SFMTA board. In the first four months after approval, only four of the original 16 slow streets met a lower speed target — an average of 15 MPH — that the program has set for itself, prompting private grassroots efforts to monitor traffic.

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Valencia will also have targets for lower vehicle volumes and speed. SFMTA will stretch tubes across the road to count traffic, mount cameras to monitor car and bike behavior, and conduct a survey of merchants, residents, and passersby.

If the center-lane experiment leads to a radical rethinking of Valencia, there will be many more infrastructure changes in the next few years. The more everyone understands how to move along the street safely, the better SF’s chance for a future with fewer cars.

Kristi Coale covers streets, transit and more for The Frisc.

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