Photo of Market and Octavia intersection by Kate.
By Steven T. Jones
San Francisco’s bicycle community is baffled by last night’s unanimous Metropolitan Transportation Agency vote to seek the removal of bike lanes at the intersection of Market and Octavia, where more than a dozen cyclists have been injured by cars making illegal right turns onto the freeway.
The logic offered by MTA traffic engineer Jack Fleck and the City Attorney’s Office (which is apparently concerned about liability issues after a couple injured cyclists sued the city) is that forcing bikes and cars to merge into one lane will prevent drivers from inadvertently turning into cyclists.
But that logic apparently only makes sense to bureaucrats and lawyers (and Mayor Gavin Newsom’s MTA appointees, none of whom seem to understand bike issues) because the plan has been uniformly criticized today by cyclists and other alternative transportation types. They say the forced merge at that busy intersection will only create more conflicts between bikes and cars.
“It makes no sense. I was really surprised they even brought it to the board,” said Leah Shahum, executive director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, which was not consulted on the proposal.
Even the Planning Department agrees this is a dumb idea, one that conflicts with the Upper Market Design Plan that was approved less than two months ago. It calls for raised, colored bike lanes to make cyclists more visible and with trees and other visual barriers to make that illegal turn less attractive to drivers.
Ironically, bicyclists are placing their hopes for killing the proposal in Judge Peter Busch, who issued the current injunction against new bicycle projects and who will be asked Jan. 22 to approve this proposal. As Shahum said, “Our hope is that the judge denies it.”