Two weeks after the city began construction on Valencia’s center bikeway, the new bike lanes are steadily making their way down the street.
So far, crews have painted green bike lanes in the middle of the road between 22nd and 23rd streets on Valencia Street. New signs that ban left turns from Valencia Street are up on every intersection from 15th to 23rd streets.
The new bikeways are still closed, and for now, bicycles are sharing a lane with cars from 22nd to 23rd streets. Trucks and cars, however, are using the center bike lanes to park and load.
Valencia Street’s center bikeways, approved by the city in early April, will move cyclists from the sides of the street to the center in both directions from 15th to 23rd streets. Plastic barriers and rubber curbs will be installed to protect cyclists from cars.
The work is estimated to take six to eight weeks, according to a spokesperson with the Municipal Transportation Agency. Now, four to six weeks are left.
Work was slow going: One worker said that, by 1:30 p.m., he was finished for the day because he was “waiting on the paint” that would probably only arrive tomorrow. Once it arrives, he can continue creating the center bike lanes. “Perhaps we can do more work tomorrow,” he added.
On 18th Street, weeks-long road paving was also underway, in an unrelated project conducted by the Department of Public Works. Orange plastic cones blocked off 18th Street from Valencia for all vehicles except buses. Coupled with the newly implemented left turn bans, vehicles going south on Valencia technically could neither turn left or right at the intersection.
“But people keep turning left,” said a traffic controller standing at the corner, in a bright orange shirt and a pair of sunglasses. “What can we do?”
Cars will continue to double park forcing ongoing traffic into the new bike lane. And as one of the photos shows cars and delivery trucks will park in new lane. Planning for delivery trucks needed to be part of this plan.
I agree and can confirm.
Basically a suicide lane.
If we held aerospace engineers to the same standards as traffic engineers, planes would fall into metro areas on a weekly basis, but there would be plenty of room to park planes near the taxiways.
Just imagine applying traffic engineering standards to the aviation industry — all the delays and congestion resulting from TSA screenings and security theater and whatnot, all of it reacting to a single isolated incident of three thousand deaths more than twenty years ago? Pish-tosh, American roads kill multiple times more people than that every single year, and we don’t lift a finger if it’d cause the tiniest decline in our sacred vehicle throughput numbers!
I’m glad we’re trying something at least!
I ride my bike through this area a lot, and Valencia has been a mess for years, with more cars in the bike lane than in the road some days. Sure, I’d like protected bike lanes, near the sidewalk, but I’m still excited to try this centerlane setup out when it’s built. Hope it doesn’t suck!
Center bike lanes do not work. Protected lanes, behind the parked cars work better. Planners have never rode a bike to commute before
The whole point of the center bike lane is not for Mission residents to get around and patronize Valencia biz; it is impossible to exit the bike lane other than at intersections.
The point of the center bike lane, similar to Muni “stop consolidation” on Mission, is to speed commuters through our community without having to stop.
The Mission is thus infinite source for shifting resources from residents to commuters and an infinite sink for SF’s woes.
Agreed that instead of ugly plastic barriers, planters/greenery would do more for the benefit of the community–cyclists; pedestrians; residents and businesses. Come on, Supervisor Hillary, get it done right!
I predict less small businesses on Valencia. Less sales on Valencia due to parking spaces removed.I predict extremely high storefront vacancies on Valencia. I predict sales tax revenues down in the mission.The bike coalition is a dirty word and so is yimby.I predict more pollution due to lack of parking. NOT EVERYONE IS CAPABLE OF RIDING A BIKE.
Not everyone is capable of driving. The only solution, therefore, is to ban cars completely, and only offer modes that EVERYONE can do, which is walking (or mobility device rolling).
If your business model relies on children being run over, it probably needs some consulting.
When are these businesses going to learn that they aren’t entitled to an endless public subsidy? If you want parking for suburban customers, then pay for it.
How many children have been run over along Valencia?
Some of us remember how Valencia looked just after the dot com bust. Every other storefront had plywood over its windows. The city has given the street away—to the restaurants for parklets and to the bikers for the center lane that no one wants,
Someone said that bike lanes do not negatively impact businesses. I doubt that this is true across the board — but in any event would like to see the data.
This often-argued point has been proven wrong time and time again. Shopping/sales are not negatively impacted by bike lanes but rather promote more stops, and longer shopping periods, ie. more money spent. Commercial vacancies have to do with the insane market demand not how people travel. And yes, not everyone can ride a bike (most of which is due to safety issues which this helps address) but there are 2 trains, 6+ buses, taxis/rideshare (which the parking removal also takes into account; allocating a number of spots for short term parking and passenger loading.) ps. I too am ‘tired of morons’.
To be fair, your point (that evidence weighs against the notion that replacing street parking with bike lanes harms local businesses) is strictly applicable to the sorts of bike lanes for which we have plentiful examples and evidence, particularly the Dutch protected style that MTA maddeningly decided not to implement.
We don’t necessarily have a similar body evidence specific to this largely novel/untested “center-running” style, which aside from the obvious usability problems for bicycling in general (particularly if it becomes a de facto parking/idling/loading/turning zone for cars, a likely outcome given that cops who’d be doing the enforcing tend to be among the most egregious offenders) also seems like it’d make it much harder for bicyclists to make spontaneous or unplanned stops at passing storefronts, if doing so would mean waiting at the nearest intersection to double back and/or swerving across car traffic mid-block to get to the sidewalk.
Not everyone can carry all their parcels on muni,along with small children and elderly or disabled persons.Muni hates cars and private ownership of all vehicles. Stealing public parking spots for private enterprise is not ok.Stealing public parking spots for rent a bikes and cars shares is private enterprise and does not benefit the vast majority of people.Closing of Market Street to cars did not make more stores open.Norstom is leaving.The mall will probably be empty in 2 years.Valencia will suffer also.I do not trust any surveys saying the moronic center bike lane is a good idea.
This configuration seems completely insane. I am a frequent bicycler on Valencia and I’m not sure I will feel safe now.
This design is only safe if drivers actually obey the “no left turn” signs – and they will not. In the last few years drivers have been breaking traffic laws at record rates because the social order is breaking down and they know there’s no enforcement. Drivers are already ignoring the signs and parking in the bike lane as noted in the article. The only thing protecting our cyclists from homicidal drivers is “thoughts and prayers”.
I predict that a cyclist will die using this center lane within the first year of installation — either killed by a driver doing an illegal left turn or swerving into traffic to get around an illegally-parked car/delivery van blocking the lane. Only then, after cyclist blood is spilled, will the city tear it out and install a safe protected lane.
Protected bike lanes along Valencia would put cyclists and (often drunk) patrons of ground floor retail in conflict. Instead of having to defend myself against cars, I’ve got to cycle on tenterhooks taking care to not hit an errand ped who stumbles off of the sidewalk and into the bike lane. Any movable object that is on the sidewalk runs the risk of ending up in the bicycle lane. This does not happen with old school Class II bike lanes.
Valencia us one of the most chill streets to bicycle as is. Why are we allowing advocates to magnify the threats on Valencia, which puts cyclists into a state of terror, while dissuading people to mode shift to cycling?
Cycling in San Francisco is inherently risky. It makes sense for cyclists to offset this risk by also obeying traffic laws, stopping at red lights (common sense if not legally required), yielding to cars and pedestrians, and using lights and reflective clothing. Bikes need to be registered and paying taxes because their riders demand ever increasing real estate on the roads.
Cycling in a dense urban area exposes unprotected riders to danger. That is part of the sport. A lot of us do high risk sports without demanding that the environment be tamed to accommodate us.
I fear your last line is too optimistic. I’ll be surprised if the city/MTA reconsiders the design that easily.
was going to post almost the same thing, Max! Enforcement of any traffic laws is key, and I have never seen that on Valencia street. It’s also all confusing, reading all those signs, while operating a vehicle, or riding a bicycle….looks more like it will be a free-for-all, with cyclists being the most vulnerable.
How about just doing the standard parking protected lanes – with those safe hit posts around parklets?
Use what works….
But the parklets… (@_@)
Thank you for adding these very nice pictures to your reporting. I think they move me to agree with the previous two posters that the treatments proposed are not appropriate for the problems depicted.
“Plastic barriers and rubber curbs will be installed to protect cyclists from cars.” How about installing planters and other greenery instead?
Planters, idono. So when you hit one by accident you get injured even better? Unrelated rant: Sounds like SFMTA is going to embark on messing up Arguello as well, although the neighbors for sure will try to stop things. Further up on Washington Blvd., the Presidio installed what I’d describe as gates where cars and bikes get to thread themselves through narrow slots. 100% guaranteed bike riders will end up hitting these metal obstructions, especially considering how they’re expected to share this with pedestrians.
Looks silly