For decades, the city has known that bicycle infrastructure in the Inner Sunset is riddled with problems, but failed to make adequate and timely changes.
Another wake-up call came in early March, when a dump truck struck a cyclist at the intersection of Seventh Avenue and Irving Street and dragged her for about 20 feet, leaving the cyclist with life-threatening injuries.
Again, the crash raised the question of how an intersection neighbors describe as “like a freeway,” has not been made safer.
Mission Local found attempts to make Seventh Avenue safer for cyclists going back at least 20 years, but these attempts don’t usually come to fruition without a “fight,” said Emma Hare, a legislative aide for District 7 Supervisor Myrna Melgar.
Minutes from the city’s Bicycle Advisory Committee meeting in 2006 mention a plan to add striped bike lanes down Seventh Avenue from Lawton Street to Kirkham Street, calling it a “community consensus.” That happened.
But making changes on the blocks between Kirkham and Lincoln further north were more contentious, according to those minutes. Implementing bike lanes there would take out parking near intersections and remove the left-turn lane for cars.
Today, the blocks north of Judah Street ended up only having “sharrows,” which are bikeways marked by two chevrons indicating that bicycles share the lane with motor traffic. That decision created a gap in the biking network on Seventh Avenue.
“Sharrows are just the weakest thing that a transportation agency could do,” said Christopher White, executive director of San Francisco Bike Coalition.
The change from a bike lane to a road marked with sharrows is also dangerous, White adds, because it forces cyclists and drivers to merge together in ways that will inevitably lead to conflict.
“They are not effective at keeping people safe,” he said. “They are hardly better than nothing at all.”
Seventh Avenue, near where the crash happened, is described by locals as a hectic street that is dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists. Irving Street, a main commercial corridor for businesses and pedestrians, is also on the path of the N-Judah light rail. It routinely has double-parked cars and trucks.
“Many drivers racing or running the light or making aggressive turns in what is a very small intersection,” said Marta Lindsey, a spokesperson for WalkSF, who had biked through the intersection just a few hours before the crash.
She had witnessed “countless close calls” there, and said the high volume of traffic with so many pedestrians and cyclists was a “deadly combination.”
The San Francisco County Transportation Authority began working on an Inner Sunset transportation study in the summer of 2024, at the request of Supervisor Melgar. Its final report will be published in late spring.
An initial assessment published in November 2024 found that “dedicated cycling facilities are limited, and the existing routes are high-stress” in the Inner Sunset. Despite this, it added, many people walk and ride their bikes in the neighborhood, especially on weekends.
SFMTA is “moving away” from using sharrows, said White. But it is not moving fast enough.
Ideally, White continued, the city should review all sharrows and bikeways on roads where the speed limit is over 20 mph, and upgrade those bikeways to protected bike lanes, he said. It should “audit” bike corridors with rapid lane changes, like Seventh Avenue, and standardize them.
The Inner Sunset transportation study proposed this exact solution, recommending replacing the sharrows on Seventh Avenue with a painted bike lane, and removing the center left turn lane entirely.
This change would have no or limited impact on parking spaces, said Stephen Chun, the San Francisco County Transportation Authority spokesperson. Once approved, it would take two to five years to implement, depending on funding availability.
The agency is also proposing a long-term plan to examine the best routes for cyclists through the Inner Sunset. That plan will take more than five years and requires further study and funding. It will consider both routing changes and street redesign to encourage cyclists to use them.
That could mean additional improvements on Seventh Avenue, or designating an alternative route for cyclists, on Sixth Avenue, Fifth Avenue and Hugo Street. That plan would route cyclists away from the car-traffic-heavy Seventh Avenue.
Hare, the legislative aide, said that she has heard from both drivers and cyclists that the city needs to “get bikes off” the Seventh and Irving intersection entirely.
The intersection of cars, trains, bikes and pedestrians creates conflicts, Hare said, and “the safest thing we can do is to stop the conflict. Don’t put everything everywhere all at once.”
It’s unusual for so many different people using so many different modes of transit to agree, Hare said. “We don’t get that very often.”
This solution, however, does not help cyclists trying to get on Irving Street, Hare said. “We are still working on that.”
The city giving itself 5 years to *study* traffic in the sunset, and 1-2 years to paint some new lines on the road, reflects a ludicrous lack of ambition and a callousness toward human life. in developed, functioning countries these changes happen in months. we can and should demand better.
something this article does not mention is that the “sharrows” force cyclists to ride between, and often cross, the Muni tracks. this is in and of itself hazardous because bike wheels can get stuck in the grooves; i’ve fallen off my bike this way and so have several friends.
Regarding 7th Avenue, Irving Street, Lincoln, and other Inner Sunset streets: one major change that would improve all these would be to enforce speed limits by cameras and tickets for any excess over the posted limit. Ticketing should extend to city buses.
Maybe we can make these changes BEFORE someone loses life or limb, instead of right after?
People are always going to bike on 7th whether it is designed for bikes or not, because it is the flattest, most direct route connecting the southern part of the city to Golden Gate Park. Saying you can remove bikes from 7th Ave is only slightly less ridiculous than trying to remove the bikes from Valencia in favor of Shotwell street.
The city should direct people to 5th/6th/Hugo while also making 7th safe too. We don’t need 5 years of studies to show this.
Exactly. And I’m curious to know if these ‘studies’ ever examine why so much parking is even allowed on a stretch of road with no businesses. I suppose it’s better to have it there than on 9th Avenue where Muni Line 44 (#15 in ridership), #43 (#20 in ridership) go—those blocks of 9th ave need a red-carpet lane. And let’s not even get started with the sheer distraction of this discussion at all—the injured cyclist was on Irving headed west towards 7th, so why even get in the weeds with how drivers behave on 7th? This is more of a question of why so much private-vehicle parking is even allowed on a commercial street with LRVs and businesses needing deliveries. We’ve seen countless videos of the N Judah (the highest-ridership Muni Metro line) getting held up by drivers double parking. The obvious solution is to take away that parking, create commercial-truck-only-zones, and direct vehicles to side streets…and I guess convert some areas to 90-degree parking which I’m not a fan of, but I guess has the benefit of slowing cars down.
Hey, gosh, maybe “so much” (really not enough) parking is allowed because people in the neighborhood need it to park cars they use to go to work all over the Bay Area and others use parking to–OMG!–park and walk to the many businesses that give the Inner Sunset its buzz. Perhaps we should adopt the attitude of 1960’s freeway designers who almost ran a freeway through the Inner Sunset: neighborhoods aren’t organic places to live; they are to be redesigned as thoroughfares to meet the needs of those in power. In that regard, SFMTA, SFBC, and Caltrans are on equal footing.
I wish this map also showed the location of the bike share docks in the neighborhood. 7th between Irving and Judah (northeast side), 10th and Irving (northeast side), in the park at MLK and 7th Ave. Getting going from any of these to the southbound bike lane on 7th up to the only east-west bike lane on Kirkham is not easy and as someone who lives and walks/bikes/drives in this part of the neighborhood, infrastructure (including bike share locations) absolutely influences behavior.
This is one of a host of traffic concerns with the Inner Sunset. Another problem is the inability for cars to make a left turn coming out of the park onto Lincoln. This forces traffic through the neighborhood on 9th ave, adding to massive congestion at peak times. Enforcement of double parking fines along Irving would help, as well as having reserved street parking for delivery drivers that local restaurants would pay for is another possible solution. Commuter traffic between UCSF and 7th ave is another issue that could be lessened with advance greens at a couple of intersections that would make turning onto 7th easier and safer. And yes, 7th and Irving is a death trap for cyclists and pedestrians. Cars and cyclists pick up a lot of speed on 7th coming from Laguna Honda and then they hit a congested area. It’s an abrupt change where some don’t slow down enough, and some not at all.
Over the last 30 years of working on Irving street I have seen several accidents of cars pedestrians and bicyclist. My co worker witnessed the latest tragedy. So with my own traffic study, I feel the safest and best way to handle this situation is to close off 7th Avenue to bicyclist, install speed cameras at 7th and Irving get rid of the park-lets. This last accident was because of double parking. Everyday I see bicyclist flying down 7th Ave. Sometimes even faster than the cars. One bicyclist I saw get hit by a car driving down 7th Ave who was turning right. The driver was not at fault. The bicyclist was fling down the hill on his right side the driver didn’t even see him coming. For those who do not know it 7th Ave, it is a very narrow avenue all the way to the park. It would be like riding your bike on 19th avenue. I myself will avoid driving on 7th. Getting rid of desperately needed parking or the turning lane will not fix this. The bicyclist will continue to fly down 7th Ave. I bet even closing off the street to them, they’ll do what they want to do. So why change a much needed road for cars just to accommodate bicycles when there is a much safer route one block over on 6th Ave which already has bike lanes installed.
This prolonged controversy is total stupidity. Eighth avenue from Lincoln to Kirkham is safer than 7th, calmer (little traffic), more pleasant to ride, and less steep. Yet for decades, SF and SFBC have fixated on 7th Ave, to neighborhood opposition. Sure, Eighth is one block out of the way. Get over it. It’d be cheaper to install a light at Eighth and Irving, synced with the light at 7th, than to study this for several more years or reconfigure traffic throughout the area. The controversy here is emblematic of how SF fails: by encouraging particularized advocate-driven agendas to consume political time and sway SF from solving its serious problems.
First of all, why ride your bike on a busy street when they obviously are aware there is a safety issue. It’s like saying oh it’s a thorough fare so it’s convenient so I ride my bike down 19th ave. Not saying it’s a fault of bicyclists, but sometimes we need to make smarter decisions.
Because maybe you want to ride your bike to patronize a business like Gordo or Sanfranpsycho.
“The agency is also proposing a long-term plan to examine the best routes for cyclists through the Inner Sunset. That plan will take more than five years and requires further study and funding. It will consider both routing changes and street redesign to encourage cyclists to use them. ”
How many comprehensive bicycle plans has the City developed over the decades that include plans for the inner sunset?
Why are none of those plans being used to drive decision making?