No bike lane delay, no Mission doom loop, and the real costs of Uber/Lyft

Good afternoon! Today’s quick update on the Bob Lee murder case is that the arraignment for alleged killer Nima Momeni has been postponed until May 2. Now let’s catch up on some neighborhood news:

• Well, that was fast. In a surprisingly quick turnaround, the city began construction on Valencia Street’s controversial center bike lane just three weeks after the SFMTA voted to implement the project. The bike lane, which will run from 15th to 23rd streets, will shunt cyclists into the middle of Valencia in a 12-foot wide lane protected by thick plastic posts and raised rubber curbs. Cars will pass on both sides and will be banned from making left turns.

Despite the speedy start, SFMTA appears to be short on crucial supplies: the thick plastic posts known as K71s. That means, for now, parts of the bike lane will only be protected by the rubber curbs and thinner plastic posts that are easily crushed by cars. Construction is estimated to last eight weeks.

• When it comes to office vacancy rates, the Mission is doing pretty well––in fact, office space in the neighborhood is almost as full as it was before the pandemic. That’s in sharp contrast to the Financial District, where empty buildings evoke prophecies of “doom loops.” The Mission is a much smaller market, with smaller, shorter, and older buildings. Also, explains one market analyst, “There’s a different sort of tenant group than you would get in downtown San Francisco.”

The diversity of tenants seems to help: while the Mission has plenty of tech companies, including large lease-holders like Open AI, there’s a mix that includes small startups, schools, government agencies, non-profits, and local businesses. And while the good news may not hold, it seems that many businesses still like to rent in neighborhoods where their workers can go get poc chuc for lunch without the threat of glass raining down on them from skyscrapers.

• Please do keep walking to lunch: San Francisco, the city that spawned Uber and Lyft, has also suffered the most in emissions and congestion from them. The city clocked the highest concentration of rides, at 500 times more trips per square mile than the rest of the state, from September 2019 to August 2020, according to a study by the SF County Transportation Authority.

The study is based on an analysis of annual reports filed by Uber and Lyft to the California Public Utilities Commission. But that data is incomplete: some information has been “highly redacted” by the state, and other data suffers from “internal inconsistencies” in reporting by Uber and Lyft. Still, the report offers San Francisco a view into the real cost of the industry, and its disturbing impact on the city’s air quality, environment, public safety, and people.

More soon,

Sara