Streets Issue 2013

Nice builds

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5
Nice builds

marke@sfbg.com

STREETS ISSUE “Oh, we’re doing pretty well right now,” a hunky contractor with Cahill Construction said with a wink at a chic party a couple weeks ago. He was referring to the building boom that’s hitting SF, its slender cranes teetering across our skyline like a stilettoed bacherorette party drinking its way down Polk Street. In terms of new build, 2010s SF is the new 1990s Berlin (somebody wrap our Reichstag, already). And while some of the design is surprisingly gorgeous, and we thankfully haven’t fallen yet for too much trendy starchitect stuff, a lot of it is a bit perfunctory to say the least. For a region that produced visionary architects from A.G Rizzoli to Ant Farm (and the often gorgeous infrastructure of your personal computer), you’d think we could push beyond stacked glass boxes lined in travertine and looming USB-like forms a tad more.

Practicality intrudes, of course, and while we wait for this, one of the richest and most creative places on earth, to develop a contemporary street vernacular to replace those awful ’90s SoMa live/work lofts, there’s a lot of loveliness hitting our streets, This year’s American Institute of Architecture SF Awards, which took place April 25, were abuzz with great, recently completed projects that focused on ground-up design that was practical, sustainable, inventive, and just plain neato. Here are a few winners that caught my eye, mostly because I had seen them in action on my weekly walks through the city and beyond. Their worth a closer look on your own jaunts. (See more winners at www.aiasf.org.)

RICHARDSON APARTMENTS

Designed by David Baker + Partners (snappy sage of green design Baker is SF’s closest thing to a starchitect) and run by Community Housing Partnership, this Hayes Valley supportive housing complex is named for Drs. Julian and Raye Richardson, who started Marcus Books in the Fillmore, the country’s oldest black book store. It houses 120 formerly homeless tenants as well as several businesses, and its swoop of natural materials and neighborhood-brightening color “seek to repair the site of a collapsed freeway with homes.”

 

OAKLAND MUSEUM ENTRY PLAZA

You usually go to a museum to see (worship?) others’ creativity: Oakland Museum’s interactive entry plaza and event space, designed by Jensen Architects, allows you to express your own. Usable white garden furniture hangs from a giant blackboard — make a space to chill, and write out your thoughts. Simple and stunning.

 

OURCADIA

The parklet movement began in San Francisco in 2010 and has now spread throughout the world, decommissioning parking spaces for more humanely amenable uses. (Maybe parklets are our new native architectural vernacular? Hope so.) Now some of the sharper ones are being institutionally recognized, like this nifty zag outside farm:table restaurant in the Tenderloin, designed by Ogrydziak/Prillinger Architects and Reynolds-Sebastiani landscape architects. Funding by, duh, Kickstarter.

 

HAYES VALLEY PLAYGROUND

Hayes Valley has gotten so congested at this point, its need for some space to breathe is critical — and with patricia’s Green being pretty much overrun and Hayes Valley Farm about to disappear under a cloud of construction, it’s only getting worse. This groovy clubhouse and playground design by WRNS Studio (in association with the Trust for Public Land) updates the 1958 Parks and Rec space with some bright color, fun contraptions, and spacious feel, creating a safe space for kids to “foster an appreciation of nature and social gathering.”

 

LAND’S END LOOKOUT

Perched above Sutro Baths, on a cliff exploding right now with colorful blooms, this exceedingly graceful 4,050 sq. ft. National Park Service visitor center is one of my new favorite places in the world. It contains a smart little cafe, oodles of info on the natural surroundings and nearby historical hot spots, and a superfriendly staff. But the design itself, by EHDD, fits so perfectly into its Point Lobos surroundings (and puts further to shame the industrial barn-like Cliff House next door) that you may find yourself lingering beyond a cappuccino to enjoy the light and light-filled space, waves frothing on the rocks far below.

 

ONE KEARNY LOBBY

A walk through the Financial District at night is a journey into Mad Men nostalgia — further back, even, as elaborately sculpted Neo-Gothic lintels from the early 1900s beckon over entranceways, lit dramatically by the spacious lobbies within. Contemporary takes are worth searching out as well. Redeveloped century-old beauty One Kearny’s tiny new lobby, designed by IwamotoScott Architecture and entitled Lightfold (because we brand our lobbies now), is a wee swooner of luminescent stalactites, a.k.a. “an array of digitally-fabricated wood veneer lanterns” and bright, odd angles. Like all good entryways, it draws you fully in.

 

SFO T2

The glistening, organic-futuristic San Francisco International Airport Terminal Two “elevates the passenger experience with design strategies that reduce traveler stress, promote progressive sustainability measures and highlight the airport’s art installations.” It also kind of makes me not want to leave.

The zero-sum future

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74
The zero-sum future

tredmond@sfbg.com

It’s going to take longer, sometimes, to get from here to there. Acres of urban space are going to have to change form. Grocery shopping will be different. Streets may have to be torn up and redirected. The rules for the development of as many as 100,000 new housing units in San Francisco will have to be rewritten.

That’s the only way this city — and cities across the country — can meet the climate-change goals that just about everyone agrees are necessary.

Jason Henderson, a geography professor at San Francisco State University, lays out that case in a new book. He argues, persuasively, that the era of easy “automobility” — a time when people could just assume the ease and convenience of owning and using a private car as a primary means of transportation — has come to an end.

Henderson isn’t suggesting that all private vehicles go away; there are places where cars and trucks will remain the only way to move people and supplies around. But in the urban and suburban areas where most Americans live, the automobile as the default option simply has to end.

“In 10 years, there will be less automobility,” he told me in a recent interview. “It’s a simple limit to resources.”

And the sooner San Francisco starts preparing for that, the better off the city and its residents are going to be.

 

BIG NUMBERS

Henderson’s book, Street Fight: The Politics of Mobility in San Francisco, focuses largely on the Bay Area. But as he points out, the lessons apply all over. The numbers are daunting: Cities, Henderson reports, “use 75 percent of the world’s energy and produce 78 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.” He adds: “Transportation is the fastest growing sector of energy use and [greenhouse gas] emissions, and this fact is in great measure owing to the expansion of automobility.”

And the United States is the biggest culprit. This nation has 4 percent of the world’s population — and 21 percent of the world’s cars.

To turn around the devastating impacts of climate change, “America will need not only to provide leadership, but also to decrease its appetite for excessive, on demand, high-speed automobility.”

And buying a lot of Priuses, or even electric cars, isn’t going to do the job. “Americans must undertake a considerable restructuring of how they organize cities, and that must include the rethinking of mobility and the allocation of street space.”

The Bay Area is about to enter into a long-term planning cycle that, according to groups like the Association of Bay Area Governments, will involve increased urban density. ABAG, according to its most recent projections, would like to see some 90,000 new housing units in San Francisco.

That’s got plenty of problems — particularly the likelihood of the displacement of existing residents. Henderson agrees that more density is going to be needed in the Bay Area — but he’s surprisingly bullish on the much-denigrated suburb.

“It’s actually quick and easy to retrofit suburbia,” he told me.

And like so much of what he discusses in his book, the primary solution is the old, venerable, human-powered contraption known as the bicycle.

“Existing communities like Walnut Creek are eminently bikeable,” Henderson told me. He suggests expanding development in three-mile circles around BART stations — after getting rid of all the parking. “We could easily get 20 to 30 percent of the trips by bike,” he noted.

In fact, he argues, it’s easier to put bicycle lanes and paths in the suburbs than in San Francisco. The streets tend to be wider, there’s more room in general — and it’s fairly simple to provide barriers from cars that make biking safe for everyone.

In fact, a lot of European cities are less dense than San Francisco — and have far fewer drivers. Even in California, the city of Davis is famous for its bike culture; “In Davis,” Henderson said, “There are all these children riding their bikes to school.”

 

ACRES OF PARKING

One of the most profound changes San Francisco is going to have to make involves coming to terms with the immense amount of scarce space that’s devoted to cars. Parking spaces may not seem that big — but when you combine the 300-square-foot typical space (larger than many bedrooms and offices) with the space needed for getting into and out of that space, it adds up.

“Parking for 130 cars amounts to about an acre, and the aggregate of all non-residential off-street parking is estimated to be equal in area to several New England states.”

Cars need more than a home parking space — they need someplace to park when they’re used. So in a city like San Francisco that has more than 350,000 cars, a vast amount of urban land must be devoted to parking. In fact, Henderson estimates that parking space in San Francisco amounts to about 79.4 million square feet — or about 79,400 two-bedroom apartments. Off-street parking alone takes up space that could house 67,000 two-bedroom units.

And it’s hella expensive. Building parking adds as much as 20 percent to the cost of a housing unit. He cites studies showing that 20 percent more San Franciscans could afford to buy a condo unit if it didn’t include parking.

But the city still mandates off-street parking for all new residential construction — and while activists have managed to get the amount reduced from a minimum of one parking space per unit to a maximum of around eight spaces per 10 units, that’s still a whole lot of parking.

And if San Francisco is expected to absorb 90,000 more housing units, under current rules that’s 72,000 more cars — which means a demand for 72,000 more parking spaces near offices, shopping districts, and parks. Crazy.

So how do you get Americans, even San Franciscans, to give up what Henderson calls the “sense of entitlement that we can speed across town in a private car?” Some of it requires the classic planning measures of discouraging or banning parking in new development (AT&T Park works quite well as a facility that is primarily accessed by foot and transit). Some of it means putting in the resources to improve public transit.

And a lot of it involves shifting transportation modes to walking and bicycles.

San Francisco has had significant success increasing the use of bikes in the past few years. But there are limits to what you can do by tinkering around the edges, with a few more bike lanes here and there.

There are, for example, the hills. And there’s grocery shopping for a family. Those things need bigger shifts in the use of urban space.

San Francisco’s street grid, for example, sends travelers straight up some nearly impossible inclines. Young, healthy people in great physical condition can ride bikes up those hills, but children and older people simply can’t.

Henderson suggests that the city could install lifts in some areas, but there’s another, more radical (but less energy-intensive) solution: Reroute the grid.

If city streets wound around the sides of hills, instead of heading straight up, walking and biking would be far easier. That would involve major changes, particularly since there’s housing in the way of any real route changes — but in the long term, that sort of concept should, at least, be on the table.

Bikes with cargo trailers make a lot of sense for shopping, Henderson told me — and once big supermarkets get rid of all that parking, the price of food will come down.

 

THE POLITICS OF NEO-LIBERALS

The biggest challenge, though — and the heart of Henderson’s book — is political. Transportation, he argues, is inherently ideological: “It matters how you get from here to there.” And he notes that progressives, who are willing to think about social responsibility, not just individual rights, see the choices very differently than the neo-liberals, who in this city are often called “moderates.” If the neo-libs have their way, he says, the changes will be too little, too late, and mostly ineffective.

Because Americans are facing a series of choices — and there are no solutions that preserve the old way of life without sacrificing the future of the planet. It’s entirely a zero-sum game: We can slow global climate change, or we can keep driving cars. (Oh, and electric cars — which still require large amounts of power, mostly from fossil-fuel plants — aren’t going to solve the problem any time soon.)

We can shift to bicycles and transit as our primary ways to get around, or we can leave our kids an ecological disaster of unprecedented scope. We can overhaul the entire way we think about urban planning — to make streets friendly to bikes and buses — or we can go down a deadly path of no return.

We can accept the fact that moving around cities may be a little slower, particularly while we adapt. Or we can join the climate-change deniers. “There are a lot of neo-liberals out there who say we can’t start controlling automobility until we have a gold-plated transit system,” Henderson told me. “But this is not a chicken and egg problem. First you have to create the urban space. Then you can build a better system.”

Yuh look good

Andrew Lam
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0
Yuh look good

STREETS Only our deep-seated disinclination against street harassment prevented us from hollering at these sterling examples of the Bay’s blazing style sense. We respectfully snapped their pics instead: the trio of gents in town for their 50th high school reunion sporting pencil mustaches and monochrome, Agathe Guttuhaugen’s surreal ombre locks and coordinated cap brim, Amber Asaly’s midriff. All good excuses to take to the sidewalk this season in search of fashion stimulation.

 

Alex Pingis. Photo by Cortney Clift

Amber Asaly. Photo by Stephanie Sesin

Brian McGrath, Jeffrey Tucker, and Donald Owen. Photo by Cortney Clift

Elena Miska. Photo by Jessica Wolfrom

Virgil Gabaldon. Photo by Jessica Wolfrom

Agathe Guttuhaugen. Photo by Cortney Clift

Parking breaks

Andrew Lam
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9
Parking breaks

steve@sfbg.com

This was the moment these indignant motorists had been waiting for. The elected supervisors were finally going to get the unelected bureaucrats at the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency to back off of plans to manage street parking and install new parking meters in their Western SoMa, northeast Mission, Potrero Hill, and Dogpatch neighborhoods.

Anger and frustration over the parking program has been building for more than a year (see "Pay to park," 1/24/12), and when Sup. Mark Farrell called a May 2 hearing before the Neighborhood Services and Safety Committee, SFMTA’s critics put out the call and dozens showed up to voice their displeasure.

Farrell opened the hearing with a clear statement about where he stands on the issue: "I am very much against expanding parking meters into our residential neighborhoods." He also expressed opposition to the SFMTA’s extension of meter hours to evenings and Sundays and said that would be the subject of another upcoming hearing.

"I think we’re frankly on the wrong track," said Sup. Malia Cohen, who isn’t on the committee but showed up just to voice the frustrations of her District 10 constituents and to help grill SFMTA head Ed Reiskin. She repeated the populist criticisms of the SFMTA, calling its goals "unattainable" and its critics "reasonable," and accusing the agency of not having a comprehensive parking management plan.

"I look forward to you saying, ‘I quit, you win, no more parking meters,’" Cohen said to Reiskin, throwing red meat to the seething crowd, which erupted into loud, raucous, sustained applause and shouts of appreciation at the comment.

Those comments frame a defining problem in San Francisco: The city can’t get to its sustainability and climate-change goals without reducing car use (see "Zero-sum future, p. 12) — but even mild attempts to reduce parking create populist furor.

When Reiskin took the podium to deliver his presentation, he struck an even, diplomatic tone, saying that he understands people’s concerns about the issue. "Parking is a challenging, sensitive, and difficult issue. Parking matters to people," he said.

But then he went on to explain that voters and previous supervisors charged the SFMTA with managing the city’s entire transportation system — Muni, cars, bikes, cabs, pedestrians, and parking — in accordance with the city’s Transit-First policy, which calls for active promotion of alternatives to private automobile use in this dense and growing city.

Then he responded directly to Cohen’s challenge: "I would have to respectfully decline the suggestion that we don’t manage parking. We have an obligation under the Charter to do so."

BALANCING ACT


Reiskin rejects the frequent accusation that SFMTA is anti-car — and the suggestion that the agency should focus on improving Muni before it can realistically expect people to rely less on private automobiles. The reality, he said, is that the city can’t make Muni or bicycling more attractive without regulating automobiles in general and parking in particular.

He said drivers who circle the blocks looking for parking spots constitute 20-30 percent of traffic in this highly congested city, and they are the worst sorts of drivers to have on the roads. They clog traffic by stopping frequently or double-parking, they drive in bike lanes, they do dangerous U-turns, and they are often inattentive and distracted, presenting a danger to pedestrians and cyclists.

The agency’s SF Park program tries to alleviate some of that problem by using market-based pricing at meters and garages to promote turnover in high-demand areas and to ensure the availability of parking spots. But in Potrero Hill and the few other parts of the city that still have unregulated street parking, other issues arise, such as out-of-town commuters parking for free all day and limiting availability in a region slated for lots of new development in the coming years.

"Parking management matters," Reiskin said, adding that without it, "we won’t be able to achieve our goals of having an efficient transit system."

He cited policies in the Eastern Neighborhoods Plan that the supervisors approved that call for parking management and noted growth projections that could draw another 100,000 people into San Francisco in the next 20 years.

"The competition we feel today in the public right-of-way will only grow more intense," Reiskin said.

Farrell argued that families and many individuals need cars to get around: "The use of a car is simply necessary." Reiskin acknowledged that cars are still the top transportation choice in San Francisco and they will remain so for the foreseeable future. But he said that each person who opts to use a bike, Muni, or to walk is an important gain in the efficiency of the overall transportation system, given how much space cars take up, so eliminating free parking is an important incentive.

"There is a clear relationship between transportation choices and costs," Reiskin said. "If there is free parking, a lot more people will choose to drive."

Farrell then repeated the other big criticism that gets aimed at the SFMTA over its parking management program, that it’s simply a "revenue grab" that uses meter and parking citation revenue to make Muni and cycling improvements. But Reiskin said the $200 million in revenues from parking have been fairly consistent, with increases in meter revenue being offset by declining revenue from citations (which he attributed to longer meter hours and new payment options) and lowering the rates in city parking garages to make them more competitive with street parking.

"We’re lowering your rates as much as we’re raising them," Reiskin said after noting that, "We’d much rather get the revenue through the meter than through citations."

Finally, Farrell got down to the crux of the criticism from car owners: why can’t everything else wait until the SFMTA makes Muni more efficient and attractive? This is a car-dominant culture, and people won’t take the bus until it’s easy and reliable. Bike advocates make a similar argument, saying completion of a safe system of bike lanes is the only way to substantially increase cycling in the city. But Reiskin said the SFMTA has to do everything at once lest traffic congestion slow the entire system.

"I know it’s a challenge for you, but it’s a challenge for us with how to respond to it as well," Reiskin replied to Farrell. "I don’t think we have the luxury of putting one part on hold while we make up for decades of underinvestment in public transit."

Sup. David Campos said he understands the frustrations of his northeast Mission constituents and he thought the SFMTA was right to delay the implementation of parking management programs there (the revised plan comes out this summer). But he noted that many of his constituents can’t afford to own a car and they need SFMTA to actively promote other transportation options: "We do need to find a way to do everything and balance this out."

FRUSTRATION WITH SFMTA


No neighborhood epitomizes the tricky balancing act on parking polices more than the northeast Mission, with its tight mix of residential and production, distribution, and repair businesses in a neighborhood where growing parking demand will be exacerbated by plans to convert the parking lot at 17th and Folsom streets into a park.

That was where the anger at the SFMTA’s approach to parking reached a fever pitch last year, spawning opposition groups such as the Northeast Mission Coalition. Angela Sinicropi, who heads that group, is calling for new preferential parking permits for local residents and the PDR businesses in the area.

"It’s not a preference or a choice. Vehicles are a necessary part of these businesses," said Sinicropi, who owns a photography business called Syntax Studio. "We need long-term, all-day parking."

She said her members appreciate SFMTA staff working with residents, but they’re still frustrated by the agency’s reliance on parking meters as the main parking management tool. Others simply slammed the SFMTA — which was set up as an independent agency that would be somewhat immune from political pressures — as out-of-control.

"The problem with the MTA is their lack of transparency and accountability," Rob Francis said.

"MTA has lost its way. They shouldn’t be focused on parking. They should focus on transit," said Potrero Hill resident Jim Wilkins. "As taxpayers, we pay for the streets. We pay to maintain those streets. So we should be given priority on those streets."

"Keep things as they are and be respectful of taxpayers," said Walter Bass, a Potrero Hill property owner, blaming the "bike people" for skewing the agency’s priorities. "SFMTA has lost the privilege to manage parking in San Francisco."

Reiskin sat in the front row listening to angry tirades against him and his agency for more than an hour, yet he stuck by his position that managing parking is far from a privilege — it is a difficult duty and one he doesn’t intend to shirk, even as he tries to heed the public’s concerns.

In the end, the supervisors didn’t really chasten the SFMTA, as its critics had hoped for.

Farrell seemed content to declare, "There are no other plans to expand parking meters throughout San Francisco," after Reiskin said he’s not planning to go beyond the five parking management areas now being created.

"I hope MTA was listening to the public comments and concerns," Cohen offered, hoping the hearing will somehow alleviate the shitstorm from some of her car-driving constituents.

And Campos closed with perhaps the only real conclusion that could be drawn from this hearing: "This won’t be the last time we’ll be talking about this issue."

Editor’s notes

Andrew Lam
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1

EDITORS NOTES It’s a good thing the Giants were at home Friday night, or I might have tried to drive across the Bay Bridge. Always a bad idea after work, always a worse idea on a Friday, when the backup starts somewhere around SF General Hospital. I spent almost two hours getting past Berkeley one Friday when I thought we could leave at 3:30 and beat the traffic. When the Giants are in town, it’s impossible.

It’s so crowded nobody drives there any more. Or something like that. I didn’t.

Instead, I got on my bike and rode to BART, took the Richmond train to North Berkeley, and rode a few blocks to a birthday party on University Avenue. Cost $7.70, I think, for the round trip. Took less than an hour each way, including biking home up Bernal Hill. The late train back was party central, with the bridge and tunnel crowd all decked out in club finery and a woman singing full-volume along with her phone.

“How was I?” she asked me. “Ready for American Idol,” I said.

I could have been stuck in traffic.

This is how life is going to have to be in the future, and it’s not a bad picture. One of the main reasons I like riding my bike in San Francisco, and I hate driving, is that I know exactly how long it’s going to take me to get somewhere on two wheels. On four, it could be 15 minutes, or it could be an hour.

The thing is, we’re so used to the idea that cars are the fastest way to get around — and in some places, sometimes they are. If we fixed up the city the way we should (which would mean changing not only the lane patterns but the directions of some streets) cars would almost always be the worst and slowest way to go most places.

Either way, in this Bike to Work Day issue, were explore the idea that speeding around town at 30 miles an hour in your personal can isn’t a natural right of all people. In fact, Jason Henderson, a professor at San Francisco state who I interviewed argues that the most environmentally sound thing we can do in urban areas might be to … slow down.

Hard to imagine, that. This city runs on speed: Tech speed, work speed, party speed, frenetic speed … I can’t imagine not being in a serious rush for a large part of my day. It’s nice, sometimes, to think about the alternative.

Bike hot spots

Andrew Lam
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16
Bike hot spots

steve@sfbg.com

When a four-year-long court injunction against new bicycling improvement projects in San Francisco was finally lifted in 2010, there was great hope in the cycling community that the city would rapidly move forward on completing its long-planned network of bike lanes.

Feeding that optimism, Mayor Ed Lee, Board President David Chiu, and other top officials set ambitious goals to increase cycling, even though they did little to provide funding that was up to the task or overcome political opposition that inevitably arises to projects that take space from cars (see “20 percent by 2020,” 5/8/12).

San Francisco is still a long way from emerging into even double-digits in terms of the percentage of vehicle trips taken by bike, and a big part of that is many people don’t feel safe or comfortable fighting with cars for space on the roads. They want bike lanes throughout the city, ideally more of the physically separated cycletracks that debuted a few years ago on Market Street.

So, on Bike to Work Week 2013, we’re taking a look some of the cycling hot spots in the city, places where the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition and other advocates have been pushing for pivotal bike safety improvements, the opposition they’ve encountered, and the status on those improvements.

Polk Street: This has become the hottest of hot spots in recent weeks, with an SFMTA plan for cycletracks shot down by local residents and businesses who complained about the loss of parking spaces on this narrow and increasingly congested corridor. SFBC is organizing to restore the bike lanes, starting with a May 14 event at its office.

Masonic Boulevard: Cars turning left from Fell onto Masonic, which bisects the bike-friendly Panhandle, used to be one of the most dangerous spots in the city, a problem that was largely solved with a special bike-signal light. Next, the SFMTA is proposing to take a lane from cars on that fast-moving thoroughfare and install bikes lanes all the way to Geary, with important funding decisions on that project coming up this summer.

Fell and Oak Streets: There’s finally been some recent progress to this short but important east-west connection after years of delays and broken promises. Cycletracks on each busy street to connect the Wiggle to the Panhandle were approved in October, with an appeal denied the next month as Fell got new striping. But it was only in the last week that Oak finally got two blocks of temporary bike lanes, with parking spaces still standing in the way of the final block.

Second Street: After years of political haggling and community meetings, the SFMTA is finally on the verge of approving bicycle and pedestrian improvements on this dangerous car-clogged artery. The latest plans call for one-way cycletracks running next to the sidewalks on both sides of the street separated by a raised median with street trees separating riders from rows of parked and moving cars. Look for community meetings on the project in June.

Caesar Chavez Boulevard: This busy street got some much needed improvements earlier this year, with good bike lanes on the eastern portion, clearer signage for automobiles approaching the confusing maze as Chavez crosses I-280, and pedestrian safety improvements. Now the city just needs to continue what it started and complete the bike-lane link all the way to Valencia.

Market Street: Cyclist demand is causing mini Critical Masses everyday during the morning and evening commutes on mid-Market Street. Yet despite the fact that the last two mayors long ago called for private cars to be removed from this showplace thoroughfare, Market is a traffic mess and will probably remain so for awhile without fresh political will. The Better Market Street project has delayed improvements to 2017, and its planners this year offered the daffy idea of banning bikes from Market and forcing them over to Mission.

Mansell Street: Improving people’s ability to safely ride bikes to and through McLaren Park, the SFMTA has designed and approved a road diet along Mansell that includes a two-way cycletrack and pedestrian path from Brazil to University, after a series of multilingual community meetings.

Embarcadero: To help improve access to and views of the waterfront during this year’s America’s Cup, the SFBC is aggressively pushing for a pilot project with a two-way cycletrack along the bay side of the roadway. Meanwhile, the SFMTA is now doing a long-term transportation study that will inform approval of the Warriors Arena and the Giants/Anchor Stream development at Pier 48, which will hopefully fund the Blue-Greenway bike path along the waterfront.

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