The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s board unanimously approved plans for a new curbside bike lane Valencia Street on Tuesday, and admitted that the transit agency should have been more cautious with experiments along merchant corridors.
That experiment, a bike lane running up the center of the street, pitted transit advocates against shopkeepers. Now, cyclists and the Valencia Corridor Merchants Association were finally on the same page: Neither are fans of the new design.
“The [merchants association] cannot officially support the side-running bike lane,” said Manny Yekutiel, president of the Valencia Corridor Merchants Association, which has fought the old design. Yekutiel was one of dozens who spoke up in the three-hour-long meeting at City Hall.
Yekutiel, echoing long-held concerns from merchants against streetscape changes, said the new design will get rid of a lot of the parking spots on Valencia Street. “We’re worried it will affect business.”
The design will remove about 79 parking or loading spots, or 40 percent of the 225 spaces on Valencia from 15th to 23rd streets, according to the SFMTA.
Although it was lambasted for months, some cyclists today lamented the end of the center lane. Erin Fieberling, a bicyclist who lives in District 9, said the current center lane makes them feel safe. It’s “a straight, clear, predictable path with no interruption,” they said, adding that it actually made them more likely to use local shops. “I use the Valencia Street bike lane most often to travel to local businesses on Valencia Street.”
For its part, the board acknowledged that the Valencia Street bikeway pilot, which started August 2023, has been a failure. “We have to be very careful about experimenting in commercial corridors,” said board vice chair Stephanie Cajina. “That requires a certain level of care that perhaps we did not perceive when we initially approved this particular item. It’s a big learning.”
The controversy surrounding the center bike lane pilot program often involved neighborhood merchants who said the project harmed their business.
But both a Mission Local analysis and the city controller’s office found that to be untrue: The bike lane had no impact on sales on the corridor. Instead, the sales decline might have reflected a general slowing of the economy.
Still, the pilot project was met with scorn, and the SFMTA decided in February to reverse course after just six months and install more conventional, side-running lanes.
The new design will include parking-protected lanes on Valencia between 15th and 23rd streets. The design will also bring changes to the parklets along the street. Most will remain alongside the curb, but three will be rebuilt into “floating parklets” separated from the sidewalk by the bike lane.
The floating parklet design is new to San Francisco, but has worked in Oakland and New York City, according to the SFMTA.
SFMTA will add more motorcycle and scooter parking spaces, and advertise two SFMTA-owned parking garages at 16th and 21st streets that are rarely full.
Paul Stanis, an SFMTA project manager, said the new design was the result of balancing safety, mobility and economic vitality.
While data the agency collected showed the center-running bike way generally made riding along Valencia Street more predictable, it did not work for everybody.
The side-running bike lane is expected to be more predictable and more familiar for people to navigate, said Stanis.
The SFMTA is expected to begin the construction in January 2025, and the process will take two to three months, depending on weather conditions.
Despite the anger from attendees, board director Mike Chen expressed a certain degree of support for the centered lane. “I want to underline that I don’t think that the center-running lane was a failure from the point of view of bicycle safety. There are maybe other places in San Francisco where this center-running lane could be appropriate.”
The SFMTA reached the final block-by-block design after making changes with feedback collected during their 10 months of community outreach. That included two community open houses in September, a mailer to nearby residents and businesses, meetings with more than 100 merchants, and conversations with those who own parklets on Valencia Street.
Additionally, the SFMTA is having a monthly construction working group meeting to minimize the impact of construction work, with inputs from merchants, construction staff, the project team and advocates.
“Finally, I just wanted to acknowledge that this is a very complicated, challenging and even, at times, rewarding project,” said SFMTA project manager Stanis. “In reality, probably 30 or 40 people have actually worked on this project at one point or another … We feel it represents the best that we can come up with given all of the input, consideration and constraints.”
“We have a lot left to do, but we are excited to get some of our weekends and nights and some of our holiday time back,” he added.
“The [merchants association] cannot officially support the side-running bike lane,”
Oh, what a surprise! They didn’t like the previous bike lane; they don’t like this bike lane; they won’t like any bike lane that they can’t steal for half the day to park vehicles in for deliveries and pickups.
As a cyclist who was once a cheerful customer of many businesses along Valencia, the past couple years have been very eye-opening – it has shown the level of contempt so many SF small business owners have for residents who don’t drive.
Exactly! We used to park our bikes in front of the police station at 17th and Valencia to eat at Puerto Alegre—till the sign appeared in the window dissing cyclists and the bike lane. ¡Adios!
The bike lane sucks. People who support things that suck, suck. I don’t think they’ll miss your business for having visited them once and deciding that they shouldn’t exist in favor of a crappy bike lane that nobody likes except you.
The proprietors of Puerto Alegre were here long before you arrived and their descendents will be here long after you leave. They’ve sprouted from long established roots while you’re little more than an weedy annual cast with the winds.
The more that petulant terrified self styled urbanists don’t patronize Puerto Alegre, the easier it will be for their loyal customers to score a table. Besides, it is impossible to get from the center running bike lane to Puerto Alegre mid block.
I think we’ll stop by PA for some enchiladas and chips and salsa tomorrow.
Don’t hold it against all the businesses. There are some cool business owners who support bike lanes and are even open to bolder changes like partial pedestrianization/one-waying. Sadly they’re quieter because they don’t want their fellow business owners to hate them and because no one’s organizing them.
Bicycle “advocates” don’t care about SF businesses or the people who deliver things to make them work. They only care about themselves and their agenda. The SFMTA experimentation and forcing of bad plans on commercial and residential corridors is untenable and a huge waste of money and time. Go figure, the cyclists say it’s not enough. They will never be pleased because their mortal enemy, people who use vehicles, will always exist. I hope Lurie is smart enough to ignore them entirely.
“Unreasonable Yuppie Transplant Cyclists don’t believe SF businesses require deliveries, news at 11.”
Having a bike lane between the sidewalk and a parklet is insane. It will just full up with people.
it would be interesting to know what oakland and new york bicyclists think of the floating parklets and if there have been any problems they’ve encountered. If the businesses really want to have a few more parking spaces on valencia, they should probably speak with the owners of the parklets to see if they would be willing to go back to not having any parklets in return for getting one or two parking spaces back. that could be as much as 50+ parking spaces due to all the space they take up.
People will get hit bringing drinks to the tables.
Not only that, the old curbside bike lane was where meter maids parked their carts while they picked up lunch at restaurants on Valencia St.
perhaps if there are enough bicyclists taking photos of the meter maids parked in the bike lanes and uploaded to 311, at least there will be some record and it will be like giving them a ticket instead of getting one from them.
The absolute trauma of having to go around an obstruction in a bicycle lane means you must be on the hook for decades of psychotherapy.
“It was FATAL that one time I read about. Oh dear!”
This is the right choice for now, especially given all the work that went into forming a consensus. Long term, Valencia needs wider sidewalks to relieve crowding (especially south of 19th St), and the obvious way to free up enough space to make that possible is to have motor vehicle traffic in only one direction.
It’s one thing to allow deliveries on Valencia and people driving to shop on Valencia (although far more customers arrive to the corridor by foot, transit and bike), but it doesn’t make any sense for cars and trucks to be using Valencia as a through street when they’re not even going to a destination on Valencia at all.
Yup, this. It needs to be one way with more pedestrian room. Heck, you could even keep all the parking that way.
Nope, bicycle fatalities are overblown and obsessively catering to their N-th degree of perceived “safety” is not realistic nor more important than the businesses that thousands of them were able make it to successfully every single day without issue. Cycling advocates need a real job because killing small SF business as if by sole intention really isn’t one.
Curb bike lanes, curb protected, parking protected or not, are more dangerous than center lanes because of inattentive motorists using driveways and turn lanes. Inattentive pedestrians staring at their phones will be be a much greater problem than with the center lane, especially at the parklets. The floating parklets are obviously an invitation for collisions. Alcohol is often consumed in those parklets and paying attention is not a hallmark of the imbibing.
The resistance of the merchants is utterly predictable, and their resistance to the center lanes rather bizarre. It is obvious the center lane was created to save parking spaces. Elimination of the center lanes would obviously lead to loss of parking spaces. While reactionaries exist in all parts of the city, including in these comments, the SFMTA is not going to abandon protected bike lanes. The reason for that is that motorists are unwilling to stay out of the bike lanes, they are unwilling to drive safely and they know that there is almost no penalty for driving badly in San Francisco. The abdication of traffic enforcement by the SFPD is bizarre and uniquely local. When the California Highway Patrol (with its very limited patrol areas) arrests more drunk drivers in San Francisco than the SFPD (which covers the entire city), you have to wonder at just what the cops are doing in this city.
The center bike lane is a complete mess unless you are just planning on biking from one side of Valencia to the other. For stopping in at a cafe or a bookstore on your way back from work, it makes no sense at all. It has always felt like a freeway bypass for bicycles to me ever since they put it in.
What planners didn’t take into account when they designed it is that in terms of interfacing with local retail, bikes are a step up from pedestrian walkers and a step down from cars, so it makes sense for us to ride right next to the sidewalk.
Finally, floating parklets are gonna work fine. I’ve never had an issue with the taco truck next to the protected bike lane down at 15th st, for exp.; customers are perfectly aware that they are standing next to a bike lane. Colored roadway, signage, and barriers to keep chairs from being pushed into the bikelane, and we’ll be all good.
As for the car parking, the SFMTA just needs to put up MUCH more visible and comprehensive signage about the 24-hr garages at 16th st and 21st st.
I don’t like the conflicts and risks that the taco truck invites.
Was cycling north on the next block north and the Greek Orthodox church was letting out. A family was chatting on the sidewalk, and a young girl was playing ring around the rosie with a parking meter veering into the bike lane with each revolution. Her father saw me coming and caught her before she swung into my path of travel.
I would rather take my chances defending myself from cars than to carry the stress of potentially colliding with an errant ped.
It took some getting used to but I started frequenting Valencia more with the center bike lane, mainly because I found parking more often with the white curbs. Also found it a more peaceful destination.
I sometimes think shopping areas are slow because everyone orders online now, even ice cream cones and lattes, but then I snap into it and realize it’s obviously the bike lane and the government.
What I’m going to miss most is the ability to pass slower cyclists.
Bike lanes will be the same width and give space for passing (granted you won’t have use of both lanes).
Let me see if I can get this straight (recapping ML and SF Chronicle coverage). Data support that the Valencia center-bike lane has improved safety. Data **do not** support that the center bike lane has harmed businesses. (Figures are from the SF Chronicle story Nov 19.) With that data, SFMTA has decided to spend more than $1M and put a commercial corridor under construction for 2-3 months (which we all know will be 4+) to implement a new design nobody likes. For what reason? The SFMTA employee comments suggest that the agency is more interested an elaborate performance of “innovation” with some self-flagellation for its failure to engage the Valencia St community last time drizzled on top. Is it too much to ask that our city Transit Agency focus on transit?
Good Lord! Valencia’s center bike lane is much safer than a curbside one will be. Cyclists and scooter riders using a curbside bike lane will be especially vulnerable to cars making turns since the line of parked cars will hide them. Also, people exiting/entering cars will cross the bike lane as will delivery personnel with handtrucks. I just returned from Bogota, Colombia, which has the largest bike network in the Americas and saw plenty of center bike lanes. I’ve seen them in Mexico City as well. Center bike lanes can be very safe.
How long will it be before SFMTA decides to return to the simple, intuitive and safer previous configuration of Valencia? Less is more, Keep It Simple Stupid.
And will lessons be learned about the downsides of going with whatever urbanist hot take is fresh at the time–sidewalk widening in the case of Valencia–that significantly constrains mobility options?
“floating parklets” are a terribly dangerous idea.
Didn’t that elderly man get run out and killed by the center designed bicycle lane? 18th St at Valencia.
An 80 year old pedestrian was indeed killed in September 2023 by a car (SUV) turning left from 18th St onto Valencia St. From the news coverage, it does not sound like this terrible accident had anything to do with the bike lane. A car making a (legal) left turn from another street onto Valencia hit a pedestrian.
So how much did it cost for this center bike lane “experiment” and how much will it cost to put it back? I guess SF has money to burn on these controversial projects.
The problem with SFMTA is they act like they just don’t give a damn about anybody who has to live with their decisions.
It’s Robert Moses all over again.
Incompetence
None of the businesses on Valencia will ever be happy.I wish there were a lot of parking spaces available, it will show them that the Valencia corridor customer base is gone, totally gone, the interest is gone. Let’s be honest, what is on Valencia ? overpriced businesses catering to a few.The vibe is gone, i can see European tourists walking around and wondering what is there to enjoy and why their guidebooks told them to visit the area..luckily there are the murals further done.As for some here who described other neighborhoods thriving, well just look what kind of stores are on those streets, their customer base, look how clean those streets are, how their parklets are well designed, with similar designs, not intrusive, how few people with drug or mental issues are living on those streets. Those are destinations places, people are just fed up with average and below average. If you do not own a car and take BART, you first have to deal with 16th/24th streets exit “scenes”..not appealing to the majority of people, not safe at all.they just go somewhere else.R.I.P Valencia.
This is so not true. Valencia is kickin’ on a weeknight or weekend.
9pm, everything is closed, and everyone is gone except at the Chapel. Gone are the days where people were bar hopping and there was a little crowd. And at 5pm, it looks like Miami in Florida where everyone is having an early bird dinner. And last, opening the bars until 4am won’t change anything, only troublemakers will patronize those places.
Work from home cyclist yuppies will never be happy. Care about the businesses.
I’m a blue-collar worker who has ridden my bicycle to work for the past 13 years. Thinking only “yuppies” are the ones riding bikes is such a narrow-minded way to understand such a complex situation. I agree that there are a lot of jerks on bikes that make the rest of us look bad, but the same is true with cars. The original bike lane failed because cars refused to follow the rules and put bicycle riders in harm’s way. BTW, I also love Valencia St. and many of the businesses there. Still, I hate how some of those businesses have scapegoated bicycles and made it a mission to eliminate them from the corridor. Bikes didn’t start this mess, unruly cars did.
Then the comment doesn’t apply to you personally. However it does apply to the “advocates” who literally will never be pleased with anything except a total ban on personal automobiles and human drivers in any capacity. These are not rational pragmatic locals, these are dishonest and deluded yuppie transplant techies who think the world revolves around their widgets and blue-collar (actual) jobs don’t matter and shouldn’t be considered. We’ll see them move back to NYC soon enough, locals who want to bicycle where they want to have no actual impediments to doing so. Save the sob stories. I’ve personally biked all over this city for decades without a problem. Cyclists are fine, yuppie us-vs-them types need to go.
Boo hoo. Stpo whining.
Valencia is a business corridor. Unless the city plans to build parking structures around the city to concentrate parked cars, they need to ensure businesses are accessible to their customers. Maybe the bike lane can run down one of the residential streets parallel to Valencia? Like northbound via Bartlett to San Carlos, and southbound via Lexington to Bartlett. Just an idea.
Dude. There’s two parking garages right near Valencia.
That doesn’t help people who run businesses and need deliveries actually picked up and dropped off at their location, nice try cyclist masterminds.
There are plenty of studies and data on how people arrive and shop along SF streets with bike lanes—hint; it’s bikes and peds to linger and spend by and large. It’s a bad argument to try to tie commerce to cars (esp here in SF).
SD,
Don’t be rationale! The SFPWD will put you on a ‘list’!
Why Valencia Street? Why not Guerrero or South Van Ness? The commercial corridor on Valencia would be spared, and could return to full vibrancy!
You’re clearly not a bicycle rider. To suggest Guerrero of S Van Ness for bikes is ridiculous.
There’s nothing ridiculous about biking on any street in the Mission, if you know how to bike in traffic – so many “advocates” want to pretend it’s impossibly dangerous. Well, I’ve done it for 3+ decades without using a “bike lane” once if I could help it. Never had a problem. Meanwhile, I’ve seen cyclists flying through red lights get T-boned and try to sue anyway. The bike brigade defines safety by accidents like that, and it’s incredibly misleading. Like when the driver in West Portal hit the gas and took out a bus stop killing 4, they wanted to change the entire traffic flow of the entire neighborhood as a result. It’s maddeningly stupid and deliberately so.
The empty slots on Valencia are property speculation. Knew a business owner pretty well around 20th and he was pretty open about being bought out to move so they could jack up the rent.
capitalism continues to find ways of profiting off of the misery of the working class and poor by valuing profits over people being housed, fed, healthy, and educated. if we can put limits on franchises coming into the city and wiping out mom and pop businesses, the same can be done for big real estate companies coming in to jack up prices and evict poor and middle class to make money off of better paid tech workers and wealthy looking for multi-million dollar mansions.
some of the reasons about why valencia might be answered by the presentation at the MTA board from 11/19/2024. https://sanfrancisco.granicus.com/player/clip/47734?meta_id=1099176
just a warning that the recording is interrupted due to an alarm that empties the building at 2:21 but returns at the 3:02 mark.
Seriously, How do those parties explain the well-being and uptick in business in some of the neighborhoods where the SFMTA has not yet killed their traffic and removed their parking? Why is Mission Street dying and why is Market street dead? How do the explain the healthy commerce in some of the shopping malls around the Bay Area that still have parking lots? Are we to believe that the owners of the businesses that are closing know less about their businesses than the analysts? San Francisco residents voted for a change in leadership. Let’s hope it comes in time to stop the wasteful spending and the anti-business culture that has centered on a two-wheeled transit policy and robbed us of our former balanced transit approach.
A number of neighborhoods with difficult parking are doing just fine in SF when it comes to foot traffic and commerce. It’s not like North Beach and Hayes Valley are suburban parking paradises. They just happen not to have a bunch of methheads, illegal vending, dirty streets, open prostitution, and generally unsavory vibes that neighborhood leaders attempt to gaslight people into believing don’t exist.
I straight up will think about going to Stonestown or Serramonte before I’d ever think of going into a commercial area of SF because of the war on cars.
Which is weird, being malls—who bend over backward to cater to cars—are all but entirely down and failing.
Nah, Stonestown and Serramonte are packed. Stonestown is back from the dead!
We still have a leftist Board of Supes that hates business on general principle, so they can’t be expected to take the concerns of businesses seriously.
we should be getting a mayor and board mainly backed by billionaires coming in soon but i’m not sure if they will be looking out for small businesses but i guess we will have to wait and see since it is what the voters wanted.
When is the city of SF going to realize that is the United States and if people can’t drive to a place in the safety of their vehicle they are not going there? Daniel Lurie won on a platform of getting back to common sense and I’m not surprised. Not everyone is going to ride around on a bike dodging buses and criminal drivers in the crazy city. Don’t get me started on the terrible Great Highway idea that will only direct more traffic to your doorstep instead of out on the cold windy and empty beach highway. Foolishness. LOL
The only LOL in your comment is the fact that you blame (to name a few) “criminal drivers” (emphasis on [car] drivers) on the reason riding bikes here is so terrible. Perhaps better bike infrastructure could bolster bike riding and make riders feel safe enough to opt for cheap, simple, reliable transportation options??
You have plenty of infrastructure and you ignore stop signs and red lights anyway. Go back to Europe.
Speak for yourself.
They did, and they speak for the entire west side actually affected by Prop K’s lies.