As city employees began disassembling Valencia’s divisive center bikeway on Tuesday, the street became a “choose your own adventure” for cyclists.
You turn onto Valencia and see that your usual protected lane now has enormous “bike lane closed” signs blocking it off at each intersection. Do you:
- Join traffic, swerving around double-parked cars, just like old times?
- Make a detour eastward, to Capp, Shotwell or Folsom streets?
- Defiantly continue to bike down the middle, awkwardly maneuvering around the blockades in your way?
Cyclists did all of the above.
Wearing a visored helmet, Mitul Kapadia waited at the intersection of Valencia and 17th streets and evaluated his options. After 10 years of cycling, he felt like he had seen every possible configuration of shared road custody for bikes and cars. Biking down the center of Valencia had not been ideal, he said, but at least the strip, protected by plastic barriers on either side, offered “some sentiment of safety.”
Now “everyone is free to get run over wherever,” he said. Kapadia works at the University of California, San Francisco, as a doctor, specializing in concussions.
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors’ unanimous vote in January to move the bikeway from center to curbside came after over a year of public debate.
On Tuesday morning, neon-vested workers from Public Works and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency began prying up speed bumps and scrubbing away the green paint that marked where cyclists should wait at intersections. As workers move north from 23rd Street, the SFMTA said, an entire block at a time may be closed with advance notice. Most of the time, however, traffic will continue in both directions.
Removing the center lane is the first phase of construction, according to SFMTA. Next, the street will be repaved, and a side-running lane will be added “as quickly as possible” for use in the next two months. The new side-running bike lane will be “parking-protected,” with cars between cyclists and the street, and will incorporate “floating parklets.” These will be separated from the sidewalk by the bike lane. Overhead lines that power Muni between 16th and 17th street will also be removed. All told, the transition will take two to three months to complete, depending on weather conditions.
In the interim, it seems, there will be bicycling anarchy. Cyclists, signs say, “may use full lane.”
The revolving door of Valencia bikeway iterations left cyclist Scott Blum pondering the “failed experiment” of the center lane as he rode down Valencia, hugging the curb as tightly as possible.
He suggested that, in the future, Valencia and Guerrero streets could be switched to one-way traffic, allowing more space for a protected bike lane. He also noted that, while the city deserves credit for its effort, every time a new lane is added for bicycles, it seems to be “overrun” by e-bikes, motorcycles and electric scooters.
Maya Gill was among this motorized crowd as she nonchalantly rode a Lime Scooter down the closed center lane. Anywhere safe, open and accessible seemed like fair game, she said, even if the “closed” signs suggested otherwise.
But she was no adrenaline junkie. “That’s dangerous as shit,” Gill remarked as an e-bike blazed through car traffic ahead.
Pedestrians also took note of the center lane’s demise. “They closed the center lane!” exclaimed Jack Wilkins to his friend, Steven Towler, as they walked his dog, Lucy, across Valencia Street.
As both a cyclist and occasional driver, Towler said he could understand the confusion and frustration around the shape-shifting lane. But, overall, he had been happy with the experiment in biking infrastructure for how it protected cyclists from intemperate car drivers (and passengers). “I don’t want to get doored every 15 feet.”
Those who had been advocating for an end to the center lane, meanwhile, relished their victory.
“Replacing the flawed center bikeway is a significant step towards a Valencia Street that is better for business, safer for people, and more effective at helping people shift trips from cars to bikes and other sustainable transportation,” wrote Luke Bornheimer, the executive director of Streets Forward, in a statement.
Bicycles, like horses, can raise negative feelings from those who don’t ride them, said Jeffrey Vroom, serenely, as he waited for the light to change. He had been keeping up with the long, polarizing bikeway saga.
His own chosen adventure, however, is to stay out of the drama and in his lane. To that end, he had opted to pedal down Valencia through traffic, wearing a reflective neon yellow windbreaker to help announce his existence to cars.
“We can all get along … find a middle ground,” said Vroom. “Well, more like a side ground.”
Can I use a swear word? No. That would be uncivil. The Valencia businesses that hated the center bike lane hate ANY bike lane. They will never be happy. No bike lane will let them double park. That’s all they want. Double parking. I look forward to the coming comedy.
That’s not the case. After SFMTA ended the 26, they put in a bike lane configuration that “the Valencia businesses” were mostly at peace with. Then SFMTA started removing curbside parking, and the grumbling began. Including ironically Valencia Cyclery, with the point that removing parking limits customer drop-offs and -pickups. That was all still prior to the pandemic.
There will be discontent until parking is figured out, ideally returned to pre-pandemic configuration if you go ask the storefront businesses on the corridor. I.e: Remove the gentrifier bike stations (one’s already going around the corner to 28th Street), revert the semi truck loading zones to regular parking, and so forth.
Business want the “pre-pandemic configuration” for exactly the reason Stephen said above: because they (and customers, and delivery drivers) can illegally double park in it all day and just turn it from a bike lane into a second parking lane, as they did for those years previous.
The absolute horror of going around a car illegally parked in a bike lane, within line of sight of a police station, on a street with 13mph timed lights!
This must have been a level of oppression that requires stopping the show and reconfiguring the street. The City should provide psych counseling services to help those traumatized cyclists cope with their trauma.
Hello! Cyclist here to remind you that parking in bike lanes does in fact have consequences: https://www.ktvu.com/news/4-year-old-girl-dies-after-bike-accident-near-lake-merritt
Lake Merritt aka Valencia Street, SF.
2024, September aka just now.
“4 year old died? Sweet talking point!”
#Cyclists
4 year olds should not be bicycling on busy city streets, #realitywinsthisdebate
Businesses and customers, deliveries have a vested interest in having people and things delivered to their restaurants. Get this, they call it “being in business” and the SFBC “non-profit” dark money groups are apparently against that and whine about it constantly.
Again, no. Double parking became prolific with the rise of dashing dinner instead of going out. It was former head of SFMTA Jeff Tumlin who came out claiming (lying) it wasn’t economically feasible to enforce parking rules on Valencia (and 16h Street). Effectively he said there was no choice other than throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Which, fas forward a few years, leads us to our toxic present.
Before urbanists insisted that sidewalks be widened for vibrance, there was a center lane where service vehicles would park. SF should demolish the wider sidewalks and restore the street to its configuration that best served cyclists and businesses.
But the parking can never go back to the way it was until all the parklets go. Some of the businesses demanding the removal of the center running bike lane are extremely hypocritical. e.g. Yasmin’s owner staging a hunger strike over the bike lane whilst not removing their eye sore/homeless encampment/never used parklet on 19th street that takes up 2 parking spaces. What a joke!
They use the parklets to make money, but still need deliveries and customers. It really shouldn’t be this difficult for 2-wheelers to understand. Calling them hypocritical is hypocritical.
It is not ironic for a business that sells children’s bicycles to expect for parents to drive that bicycle home in a car instead of tailing the toddler as she scales the 21st Street hill. Ditto for those who are not rigorous cyclists or who are bringing a broken bike in for repair.
In a word, BS. You force things down people’s throats that don’t fit, then get upset when they don’t tolerate your lies and it’s THEIR problem?
Let’s turn Valencia into a bike lane. ALL of it. I choose to ride my fat ass right down the middle of the lane with traffic. I can ride 12 MPH but I’m choosing a slower pace.
Cars? Honk all you like. I don’t care. We get to share the road.
I encourage all other bikers to do the same. I don’t want to ride in a narrow curbside lane with scooters and e-bikes. Cars, is that too slow? Too bad. Try Mission, Dolores or S. Van Ness. Sorry not sorry.
What you describe is how it used to be, and as a cyclist, I also thought it was fine. Mellow traffic conditions? I can edge to the shoulder to allow cars to pass. Lots of foot traffic, cars parked/double parked, doors swinging open, etc? Use the full traffic lane. No big deal. Signals were all timed for like 12mph anyways, it’s not like Valencia was a speedway. The thing wasn’t broken, why fix it?
I didn’t mind the old configuration so much during the day, but weaving in and out of the double parked door dash/uber eats drivers at night along 18th and 16th, always felt very unsafe. I asked repeatedly for basic traffic enforcement on the law breakers. Would have been fine with the old configuration with a little more rule following by those drivers. Ironically many are now shifting to e-bikes for their deliveries…
If only there were an outpost for law enforcement at 17th and Valencia.
How many times have you been killed? Nobody is getting all the supplies their retail/restaurant needs from e-bike, I call full BS on that claim.
You mean we should ride on Valencia just like we ride on every other street without a bicycle lane, taking the lane when we need to, only you want us to also be a dick on purpose for no reason, just to fuck with other road users you don’t like?
Let’s vote to send the Bicyclist Lobby back to Europe instead. Save the $, SF gets back to work and the whiny busybodies of Bernal can get a life/job perhaps.
Bicyclists aren’t businesses, don’t produce anything SF needs. Too bad, go back to Europe and whine there.
I am a paying customer at many establishments along Valencia and a tax payer in the city. That’s not something that SF needs? Interesting.
One customer demands all other customers be inconvenienced, oh the macro-economic focus is strong in this one. Cyclists don’t think beyond their handlebars apparently?
“every time a new lane is added for bicycles it seems to be “overrun” by e-bikes, motorcycles, and electric scooters.”
The only one of those not legally supposed to be in the bike lane are motorcycles. Their not overrunning the bike lane; that’s where they’re supposed to ride. Btw, E-bikes and electric scooters are not motor vehicles under state law. Someday, maybe I won’t be the only person who seems to know the rules.
As for the center running bike lane, it was known to be a failed configuration before it was installed; because countless other cities has already tried it and found it to be dangerous.
I guarandamntee you that as soon as this configuration gets built, motorized, heavy fast e-bicycles will stop in the bike lane to run into a restaurant for just a minute to pick up a deliver.
I don’t care what state law says, speeds and weights of e-bikes relative to speeds and weights of regular bicycles put both pedestrians and regular cyclists at risk. Going contraflow at with >> 250# at 35mph coming at me doing < 200# doing 20mph? You do the physics and the math.
Actually no, total energy is the velocity squared, NOT the mass. A fast moving bicycle does as much damage at similar speeds because the weight difference between bicycles and e-bikes isn’t that great. Bicycles certainly can and do hit 35, I do. The difference is that ebikes allow novice riders to hit those speeds without effort, whereas someone like me going 35 on a bicycle requires years of experience to be comfortable doing it. One bad decision on either can be fatal, let’s be clear eyed on that.
Bicycles of all types should just ride in existing traffic lanes like adults always have.
Close Valencia to cars from `16th to 24th and re-imagine the street with bike and bus lanes with areas for outdoor seating. In other words, what has been done in Mexico and Europe in a lot of the older town centers.
Deliveries could be allowed during the off hours.
Uh, please don’t compare cities in other countries with SF which is just not on the same ranks in regards to size, civil pride, common sense, history, modernity, etc.
I just got back from Guadalajara where many main thoroughfares have a sectioned-off lane for buses and cyclists. No crazy color schemes and barriers, just a low profile curb separates the lanes. Buses and cyclists are coexisting on the same lane.
On the other hand, big part of the city is not pedestrian friendly and not at all developed for that.
I travelled last summer for 4 months in Europe and many cities i visited have different models for traffic participation of pedestrians and cyclists. The framework though is vastly different from that in the US and SF.
For example modern technology is applied to a very large extent (modern low floor trams; modern pollard system to close off sections; etc.) and an extensive public transport system is in place covering not only the municipalities but entire countries. To a much larger extent people don’t have and don’t depend on cars. This applies to a much smaller section of the population in SF. If your work, life, family, etc. takes place only in SF, great! But if you have work, family, recreation hobbies and such outside of SF or even outside the Bay Area you are screwed without a car.
Also, SF in contrast uses tools, methods and technology not much different what we had 100 years ago.
Close the bicycle lobbyists and send them to Mexico and Europe.
Cheaper and more effective, better use of time.
i really liked the center bike lane, it made me feel safe biking north and south across the city. it made it easier to use my bike to go the mission and do some shopping there rather than just stay in my neighborhood. just wanted to share this perspective since most of the narrative is about how the bike lane was bad for business, but i definitely went to the mission more because of it. the side lanes will be OK too, but i wish there was a plan for rerouting traffic in the mean time. i hope they will keep the no left turn rule for the corridor. i found this made intersections much much safer! and i will miss the security of knowing drivers won’t turn into me as i cross intersections. i got hit by a driver making a right turn without looking last year.
Clever bit of politicking from SFMTA. This is basically the original plan that the Valencia merchants screamed out. Now they are cheering it.
All it took was lots of time and money but SFMTA gets the design they wanted in the end.
The new configuration putting cyclists back into the gutters and removing yet more parking is going to be a hate-hate for everyone. The two-way center running lane was close to a good idea and likely would have survived had it been placed on one side of Valencia with two lanes of car traffic on the other side, just as bike boulevards have been configured in super bike friendly cities as Paris.
I for one won’t be riding in the side running lanes as you can’t easily pass slower riders, so I will be out in the flow of traffic. But any cyclist, even when going with the flow of traffic, in a “car lane” where there exists a gutter lane for bike is like a fly buzzing the face of drivers who think the “car lane” is for their exclusive use.
Oh man, I in theory love a parking protected bike lane, but I hate it combined with floating parklets. anyone who rides on Telegraph in Oakland knows what a mess that is. Patrons never think to look for bikes, stand in the lane, pull out chairs into the lane, let their kids wander into the lane, etc. You end up going much slower and much more defensively because every parklet is a potential new pop out hazard.
Ride in the lanes like an adult. Become a man.
Feel sorry for the workers who have to tear up and build another one, not the people who design and thought up this mess. The workers get it from the neighbors, the planners and designers hide in their offices, if they even show up for work.
ahem- center bike lane was a success in about every measurable way (safety number #1), except in the minds of the public. The reason for this is Mission Local (and the like) kept calling it a failure despite evidence to contrary and is still kicking it on the way out. Not sure why they picked that narrative to champion at all costs, but it’s weird.
Will Mission Local report on the inevitable rise in bike accidents when the side lanes are put in? Will they report on their role in causing the increase in bike accidents? This is what I will keep an eye on.
this is absolutely right — mission local talks to a lot of small business owners who superstitiously blame the bike lane for a business downturn on Valencia street, despite no evidence that’s the case. Classic correlation not causation thing. Mission local never bothers to get an explanation for why people think removing the center bike lane is going to “improve business.”
“small business owners who superstitiously blame the bike lane for a business downturn on Valencia street, despite no evidence that’s the case.”
No evidence? Are you suggesting that those business owners do not know how to keep a set of books for their enterprise? And do not know whether trade is up or down?
In fact they are the ONLY people who know that for sure. You and I can only guess.
Hardly. Being able to do math and see that you’re down is not an indication, let alone confirmation, of what’s causing it. There have been plenty of studies on bike lanes and their impact on various commercial strips in the city and all point to moderate but measurable increases in foot traffic and sales. Perhaps (obviously) the city-wide downturn is more likely to blame, rather than where bikes get to travel or fewer parking spots. If anyone should get some shaming, it’s the droves of people who opt to have every other meal, coffee, or trinket delivered to them by Doordash, Amazon, etc., rather than hoofing it a few blocks to support the businesses in their neighborhood/city.
Maybe if wait staff did not expect a 20% tip plus 5% healthcare supplement than I’d eat out more. Or maybe I’d eat out more if I could park?
Otherwise Uber etc. works better.
“There have been plenty of studies on bike lanes and their impact on various commercial strips in the city and all point to moderate but measurable increases in foot traffic and sales.” – Cherrypicking Horsecrap.
Mission Local was actually quite fair and careful on this issue, even running a data driven story some months back claiming to show that merchants were wrong, and the bike lane has not hurt sales along the corridor.
As a frequent rider, I personally always hated the center running lane because it keeps bikers farther from the shops. I like the new plan better. I do wonder if it could be implemented with fewer parking space losses however.
The center bike lane is/was aesthetically grating, and robs the corridor of a sense of place and destination that the storefront businesses need to at least keep going.
Certainly the center lane was ugly. But cars and trucks double parked along Valencia definitely add a certain European flair to the corridor.
European flair doesn’t pay the bills for local shop owners, but thanks for the flair ideas? Lol Cyclists. Go back to Europe and flair all you want bro.
Wrong in every respect, thanks. Bike accidents are not a big problem.
Businesses going belly up because of MTA waste and fraud is.
“in the future, Valencia and Guerrero streets could be switched to one-way traffic, allowing more space for a protected bike lane.”
Guerrero is a major connective artery to San Jose Avenue and thence to 280. It is also the one north-south link where vehicles can make decent progress, enabling other local roads to be quieter. It cannot be one-way.
And I say that as someone who thinks the city should have more one-way streets, as almost every major city on the planet uses them because they are more efficient.
Bike lanes are for bicycles. The City should have a few select streets that have discreet bike lanes- that allow access from one end of the City to the other..but no more. I’ve had it with all the effort of making these things- the stanchions and paint- for riders who ignore rules of the road. Half the bicyclists dont even use them. The City puts all their effort into the bike lanes, and not enough into basic street safety. Street lights, bots dots, loading areas and painted lane markings are not maintained. The streets are dangerous at night, especially rainy nights. I really do think the priorities should be recalibrated.
I would argue that bike lanes are actually for cars: They come from bikes being pushed into the gutter, and cyclists demanding at least enough space to ride in the PUBLIC right of way. They are placed in the most convenient location for cars, not bikes, in space that is not useful for cars (ie the door zone, over bumps and grates, awkwardly winding through and around obstructions that cars would hit, on non-through streets or streets with large amounts of stop signs or cross traffic.) All this to keep the main traffic lane clear for PRIVATE motor vehicles.
It’s public AND private motor vehicles that the city depends on. Or did you Bicycle Coalition geniuses think restaurants and stores all run on pedal power? You’re huffing your own BO again.
Per usual, no mention or comment from the hundreds of residents of the 400 block of Valencia.
Yes, families live here. Our expectation is more of the same from SFMTA — being ignored. Add a painful month of bike lane reconstruction that will not address our basic needs of access to our garages and front doors. It only gets worse.
At the very least the city could have posted about the change. Just like before they put in the center lane, no signs or notice and driving, walking, and biking were all a free for all. Once again they just started in with no preview, no alternate routes or detours shown. Why? I already saw an ambulance yesterday at 20th and Valencia. Communication might make some of these changes go better.
The major difference between cyclists and equestrians, this article fails to note, is you will extremely rarely come across a huge steaming pile of excrement left in the public way by a cyclist.
The latter group, in contrast, literally craps on everyone, and deserves every ounce of abuse they so earn.
” you will extremely rarely come across a huge steaming pile of excrement left in the public way by a cyclist. ” – What a huge steaming pile of cyclist.
Before the center-running bike way was installed, we had a serviceable “non-protected” bike lane with traditional, easy to predict patterns. Parking, loading zones, the works. Bliss! Except illegal car parking plus a total lack of enforcement created a public safety nightmare (hello, SFPD? Just calling to say, you suck). If you stop your car in a bike lane you’re a ratty human, flaunting your selfishness and laziness. Cars aren’t the problem, car drivers are. I personally applaud every cyclist I see who rips side mirrors off offending double-parkers.
I’ll be sure to stop in a bike lane more often because of your unhinged vitriol, thanks!
Solution: I bicycled the adjacent street, safe, easy, done. I, and many many others, peddled without any dodging and avoided an always traffic crowded street… why would anyone do otherwise?
SFMTA is intent on undermining cycling and pedestrians. For a motor thoroughfare, it would be required to have a plan to reroute the traffic, and would be implemented in a systemic manner to minimize disruption. For sidewalks and bike lanes it’s ad-hoc: Put a sign up blocking the sidewalk or bike lane “Closed” (ie “you figure out how to get there”). Zero regard for the safety or time of pedestrians and cyclists. Zero thought. Everyone is upset. And it all gets pinned on pedestrian and cycling infrastructure.
If the busybody non-profits had a clue they wouldn’t pick these fights in the first place, granted.
The bike lane doesn’t need to be on Valencia! It should be moved to Folsom or Harrison.
Valencia can be a shared traffic street focused on the neighborhood businesses that always defined it
‘Neighbor dad’ you sound an awful lot like a troll who doesn’t even live here. Folsom and Harrison already have bike lanes so who even knows what you’re on about. And what if the cyclist is traveling to a business on Valencia or heading up to Hayes Valley from Noe Valley? You think they should travel a half mile east and then another half mile west again on SOMA streets? Try looking at a map. Oh and btw, after many, many years of riding up and down Valencia I can tell you that a huge percentage of drivers are just using Valencia to travel through the neighborhood, not stopping anywhere. So much for your theory that these are neighborhood folks ‘focused on the businesses’ nearby.
Totally agree. Again, what are all those knuckleheads doing on Valencia? It looks like they just want to be a bunch of a-holes. Just move all their stupidity outside business areas, to Crissy fields for ex., and re-open Market street, JFK, and the Great Highway as it should be!. They are just freeloading on car’s drivers who pay a license, taxes on gas to improve the roads and circulate. Basta!!!
I bike to work along Valencia. It is the quickest way to/from my house.
So you don’t want to be inconvenienced. #cyclists