Two of the most heavily used bike lanes in San Francisco intersect in the city’s Mission District, at Valencia and 17th streets, where there’s a taqueria, a police station, an upscale furniture store and a famous sex shop. 

One set of lanes cuts east-west, from the giant rainbow flag in the nearby Castro across the Mission into Potrero Hill. As with most bike lanes, these flank the parking lane, are generally unprotected from cars and, for the most part, don’t offend anyone. The other, running north-south through the ever-trendy neighborhood, has lately become a cultural flashpoint, a fight on par with the conflict over tech shuttle buses. 

Four months ago, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency relocated the north-south bike lanes along Valencia between 15th to 23rd streets from the sides of the street to the center, zipping them together for the span of eight blocks before unzipping them again. In the process, several dozen parking spaces were eliminated, too.

On that section of road, plastic bollards and firm barriers separate cyclists from vehicular traffic, with a buffer zone on either side. In itself, this “cycle track” configuration might be little more than a procedural tweak by a city that’s always tinkering with its streetscape, from lane-narrowing “road diets” to mileslong rapid transit projects for buses.

But something about this change in this place just hits different, as they say, perhaps owing to its perpetual popularity as a destination and its convenience as a through route. Here, solo drivers, Ubers, Lyfts, robotaxis, cyclists and delivery vehicles are ceaselessly jockeying for asphalt across Valencia’s 82 feet, 6 inches of width. 

Kevin Ortiz, co-president of the San Francisco Latinx Democratic Club, spoke during a protest this week criticizing Valencia Street’s center-striped bicycle lanes. | Source: Courtesy Roger Rudick/Streetsblog

Grumbling about this eight-block stretch has been building since summer. But the anger erupted Tuesday when several dozen small business owners occupied the street, chanting and holding signs calling on the city to remove the lanes, as Streetsblog first reported. 

The protest came just a few days after the bar and live-music venue Amado’s closed, with its owner claiming that sales dropped 80% after the bike lane was installed and created a hassle for musicians due to a lack of parking.

Opponents have seized on the bike lane as more evidence that the city runs roughshod over the small businesses that fill its coffers with tax revenue and give it character. But how does moving a bike lane by a few feet destroy a business? 

More Than Just a Bike Lane

Walk down Valencia, and it’s impossible to miss the pink-and-white signs in the windows of many shops that read, “This Bike Lane Is Killing Small Businesses and Our Vibrant Community.” 

Yasmin, a Middle Eastern restaurant that already endured arson and a legal imbroglio with its landlord, has one. So do two auto shops, businesses with something of a direct interest in car culture. Ditto for Curio and Amado’s, restaurants and live-music venues that serve alcohol.

“Everybody’s focused on the bike lane, but it’s really about a bureaucracy,” said Bill Dickenson, who sits on a steering committee of the San Francisco Small Business Coalition, which organized Tuesday’s protest on Valencia. “The SFMTA is a government agency that has gone rogue in many ways.”

Several businesses along Valencia Street have posted signs in their windows that read, “This Bike Lane is Killing Small Businesses and Our Vibrant Community,” with a QR code for the San Francisco Small Business Coalition. | Source: Astrid Kane/The Standard

In Dickenson’s view, the powers that be have pit cyclists against small businesses unnecessarily, and it’s a canard that the center-running bike lanes are part of a flexible pilot program that can be tweaked based on public input, which is the city’s current position. The transit agency giveth, and the transit agency will never, ever taketh away.

“It’s not a pilot!” he told The Standard. “There were millions and millions in there, and the [San Francisco] Bike Coalition kept pushing for more infrastructure. This is a misuse of public funds. A ‘quick-build’ would be chalk and paint.”

An April 2023 planning document appears to put the cost at $590,000, funded by several previous ballot measures, but SFMTA confirmed to The Standard that $1.5 million had been spent so far, with the total amount yet to be determined.

From the perspective of Valencia merchants, the past three years have been an unending nightmare of public-health restrictions, rising costs and a likely permanent reduction in people eating out. Now the same city government whose transit agency radically altered Van Ness Avenue to the consternation of merchants there and whose Department of Public Works has a multiyear corruption scandal has rammed through a project nobody seems to want. 

Asked if he and other small-business owners would prefer the previous bike lanes or no lanes at all, Dickenson demurred. But he claimed many people are unhappy with the current configuration, like senior citizens now forced to circle the block while trying to find parking near the corner grocery store. Or residents who live just off Valencia and are finding more cars parked on their streets these days. 

When pressed, Dickenson said he merely wants something that’s better-designed. Ticking off features, he described something much like Valencia’s previous iteration.

“Something with two directions on either side that allows public-safety first responders to move the way they used to, that allows cars to pull out,” he said. “Why did they put the curbs in there? A sixth-grader can look at this and say this doesn’t work.”

The center-striped bike lane—technically a cycle track—is part of a pilot program by the SFMTA that is subject to community feedback. | Source: Gina Castro/The Standard

Voicing a fairly widespread belief, Dickerson said he believes ride-share companies like Uber paid the city to remove parking spaces to free up room for pickups and dropoffs.

Reached for comment, a spokesperson for Uber told The Standard, “The SFMTA regularly reaches out about issues impacting safety and efficiency around the city. We did not discuss the removal of parking spaces.”

For its part, the transit agency says it’s heard business owners’ concerns and has restored some of the 70 parking spaces that were removed.

“We temporarily adjusted the type and duration of many of the loading zones on Valencia Street between 15th and 23rd streets and on several side streets (18th, 19th, 20th, 22nd) to create more general parking availability in the neighborhood,” SFMTA spokesperson Stephen Chun told The Standard in a statement. 

From October until this month, Dickenson was the interim operations director of Amado’s, the now-closed bar. But the bike lanes weren’t the only challenge for that longtime home for underground music and performance this year. In June, Amado’s suffered a flood, resulting in $500,000 in damages. A crowdfunding campaign that aimed to raise $50,000 toward repairs has garnered just half that.

Asked how many Amado’s patrons drove to a venue with, at most, a handful of parking spaces on the block, Dickenson responded with statistics about an unspecified competitor’s bottom line in the period during and after Covid. 

A cyclist passes Amado’s, a recently shuttered bar and music venue at 998 Valencia St., whose owner attributed its closure to the new bike lanes. | Source: Gina Castro/The Standard

“We reached out to a number of businesses and—I won’t name them—but one well-known business owner has a restaurant on Valencia and a restaurant somewhere else in the city,” he said. “The other place saw a 3% dip, and Valencia saw a 50% reduction when the bike lane went in.”

Already a Compromise

Despite the business owners’ complaints, study after study shows that bike lanes typically yield positive economic outcomes for businesses along their corridors. 

During Covid, when Valencia Street was temporarily pedestrianized, Yelp’s data concurred. But the idea that bike lanes are bad for business has entered the cultural bloodstream, seemingly as axiomatic as the erroneous belief that homeless San Franciscans mostly come from somewhere else. 

Pedestrians enjoy wide open space on Valencia Street in 2020, when it was closed to vehicles on weekends under the city’s Slow Streets program. | Source: Paul Chinn/SF Chronicle/Getty Images

The transit agency could strengthen its case by releasing promised metrics on the Valencia Street pilot project, but Chun said that it’s going to be a while.

“The data-gathering started later than anticipated,” he said. 

This opacity is clearly infuriating to small-business owners. But it is also a challenge for advocates who want to know if cyclists are using the street less or if drivers are zooming through intersections. 

“It’s incredibly frustrating that the SFMTA hasn’t given us the evaluation data they promised us at quarterly milestones,” said Claire Amable, a Tenderloin native and the director of advocacy for the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. “We’re four months in, and we were supposed to get it at three, six and nine months.”

The bicycle coalition hears feedback from its members, who seem to be evenly divided on the current state of Valencia, and the organization has offered suggestions for improvement while allowing the fire department to maintain emergency access. Amable says bike lanes are most successful when everyone embraces them but notes that the existing configuration on Valencia was the product of a protracted back-and-forth.

“This design was already a compromise based on merchant feedback from 2020,” Amable said. “It was presented as the only solution by the city because it preserved the most parking options, and SFMTA recently converted loading zones back into parking spaces, which we hope alleviates merchant concerns. But the answer is not more cars, but more people-centered spaces.” 

No Amount of Parking Can Solve the Problem

John Oram, a tech worker and sometime blogger known as Burrito Justice who came up with his own “Burrito Plan” for Valencia Street, sees a simple explanation for the business owners’ grievances.

“They based their business on double-parking, and now, they can’t do that. As soon as somebody double-parks, it blocks traffic,” he told The Standard, adding that since the changeover, some opponents have shown their hand. “Every single complaint about the bike lane, the next thing they say is, ‘Oh, I have $200 in tickets.’”

To him, Valencia Street’s primary issue is one of scarcity, with too many types of users competing for too little space. 

“There’s no number of parking spots you can add to solve this problem,” Oram said. “We’re in a city, and by the way, there are several 200- to 300-parking spot garages right off Valencia.” 

In 2022, Oram penned an opinion piece for The Standard, outlining his Burrito Plan as an “equitable way to distribute the three main road users—cars, pedestrians and cyclists—that involves minimal disruption and low-cost barriers.”

It called for converting Valencia to a one-way street, with bike lanes moved to one side and fully protected, and the remaining space allotted to ride-shares, delivery vehicles and people running errands—the users who shout, “I’ll just be here for a minute!” when parking enforcement turns around the corner. 

Over the summer, the cycle track’s buildout was criticized for being slow and haphazard, but some brave riders used it despite the warning signs. | Source: Jeremy Chen/The Standard

“In study after study, time after time, city after city, in any dense area, business owners grossly overestimate the number of people who are driving,” Oram said. “Who says, ‘Oh, I’m going to drive to Valencia because parking’s really easy’? It’s always been difficult! It’s just a little more noticeable 1702069577.”

Even as many locals push back on the idea that the city is in a doom loop, they’re quick to suggest the city seems to be creating one in the Mission. As Oram wryly noted, the cry that “Valencia is dead!” may be a poor marketing strategy, and some merchants seem intent on alienating the potential customers who are pedaling past their establishments twice a day. 

It’s worth noting that most of the major streets that parallel Valencia have been reconfigured in some way. Folsom Street was narrowed and restriped a decade ago, South Van Ness Avenue not long ago went from four lanes to two, with pocket lanes for easier left turns. For its part, Mission Street got mandatory turn-offs and “red carpet” lanes meant to give packed buses the right-of-way—and small businesses hated that, too.

Valencia Street is one of several major north-south thoroughfares in the Mission District whose layout has been remade in recent years. | Source: Justin Katigbak/The Standard

Why Do People Hate Cyclists So Much?

People hate bike lanes, at least in part, because people hate cyclists. And in fairness, many cyclists give non-cyclists more than a few things to hate. They pedal against traffic. They blow red lights. They wear expensive-looking Lycra jerseys that feel like flashy overkill on city streets. The stereotype skews toward six-figure-earning, middle-aged neckbeards mansplaining about derailleurs. And there’s that eternal whiff of superiority embodied by those “One Less Car” signs sometimes taped to the backs of bike seats, which manage to pack eco-smugness and a grammatical error into three syllables. It should read, “One Fewer Car,” if you want to be like that.  

At the same time, San Francisco is home to many physically fit, environmentally conscious people, plus the city charter’s explicit transportation policy is to prioritize alternatives to driving. And, whatever elitism may cling to cyclists, it’s simply true that every ride in a San Francisco bike shop will be cheaper than any new car at the dealership. 

Ostensibly, the changes to Valencia were largely undertaken for the benefit of cyclists. Several riders The Standard spoke with seem to appreciate the rejiggering of a heavily trafficked, high-injury corridor. In particular, the terror of being “doored” has been minimized.

But just as it’s possible to lament how all cars look alike while mocking the Cybertruck, it’s possible to be a daily cyclist while hating the Valencia Street cycle track, which was so haphazardly installed that pranksters installed guerrilla signage. 

Valencia’s current configuration has received mixed reviews from riders, including Sohan Murthy, right. | Source: Gina Castro/The Standard

Even fully built, many riders dislike the new layout, with its awkward flow, overdesigned signals and a general feeling like they need to crane their necks in an owl-like, 270-degree fashion in order to make a left. When ambulances use it—and it’s pretty hard to argue they shouldn’t—it’s difficult to get out of their way safely. 

“I’ve still seen some crazy stuff, like a car hopping over and doing a U-turn, or swerving in here,” said Sohan Murthy, a West Oakland resident who was riding to a friend’s house. “I don’t know if this is better than before.”

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SAN FRANCISCO — A two-way bike lane down the center of busy Valencia Street in San Francisco’s Mission District was supposed to make it safer for cyclists, but the unorthodox design has caused confusion and is even being blamed for some crashes.

Bruce Halperin lives near the corner of Valencia and 23rd Street in San Francisco. He doesn’t own a car. His main form of transportation for both him and his dog is his bicycle.

“I do all my shopping, I patronize restaurants and what not on Valencia Street. It’s my main route to work on days when I work downtown. So yeah, I use Valencia for basically everything,” said Halperin.

Halperin says Valencia Street has long been an issue for cyclists. The often busy thoroughfare’s narrow lanes and limited parking all combine to create safety concerns.

ALSO READ: Bike lanes coming to middle of busy Valencia Street in San Francisco

Earlier this year, San Francisco officials announced the launch of a pilot program to test out a new center-running bike lane on Valencia between 15th and 23rd Street.

It’s a design they said they believed would make the street safer for all. 

“We’ve restricted the ability of drivers to make left turns. So banning left turns and separating the traffic with the center running bike lane reduces the risk to pedestrians. Somebody was killed at this intersection walking across the street with a green light just a few months ago. Secondly, we’ve physically separated the cyclists from the moving traffic,” said SFMTA Streets Director Tom Maguire.

Halperin says he was nervous about how well the new design would actually work, but he initially tried to keep an open mind.

“Once it was approved, I was willing to give it a chance and the rollout has been an absolute disaster I think,” said Halperin.

He says in just the few weeks the bike lanes have been fully open, he has already witnessed multiple crashes.

“In one, the woman was injured. She has a gash in her head and had to be taken away by ambulance. And I think that’s going to keep happening,” said Halperin.

He said the center lanes make it difficult for cyclists to get on and off the road. He also has already seen multiple cars driving over the protective barriers and down the bike lanes.

But the worst part he says are the turn lane boxes that force cyclists to stand within inches of passing cars.

“And the car traffic is just whizzing right by you and there’s no physical protection whatsoever. It’s really scary,” said Halperin.

Still, SFMTA officials are standing by the design. They argue that, in the long run, this design will be a safer option.

“We think that this a big step forward for safety on Valencia. It does not solve every single problem and it’s not perfect, but it’s a big step forward,” said Maguire.

Halperin still doesn’t agree. His hope is that the city removes the center lanes as soon as possible and goes back to a more traditional side-lane design.

Until that day, he says he has no choice but to use the lanes since they’re right outside his front door.

“I’m young. I’m relatively confident as a cyclist, but it’s still scary,” said Halperin.

The pilot program is expected to last a year. SFMTA says the first report on how the lanes are working will come out in the fall.

More from CBS News

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SAN FRANCISCO — New bike lanes are planned to emerge in one of San Francisco’s busiest corridors, but instead of traditional bike lanes to the right of traffic, these lanes will run right down the middle of Valencia Street in the city’s Mission District.

The new bike lanes will begin at the intersection of 15th Street and Valencia and extend eight blocks south to Valencia and 23rd. This is a pilot program that will last at least a year.

The city believes moving bike lanes to the middle of the street will improve safety by helping cyclists avoid any cars and trucks that stop to load and unload on that stretch of street. However, many cyclists fear the lanes will create new safety issues.

This reporter spoke to a local cyclist about what she thought of the project. Caetie Ofiesh has been cycling around San Francisco since she moved here 10 years ago.

“I use this bike to get to the grocery store, to work, to wherever I go, to restaurants, almost every day,” Ofiesh said, adding that she loves how convenient cycling is, not to mention that it’s just fun too.

“Sometimes, especially when I’m on my way home from work, that’s the best part of the day,” she said.

But San Francisco is a busy city. cars, buses, trams and pedestrians; They all have to share the road with cyclists, which can cause some problems.

“I avoid something almost every day,” Ofiesh said. “I’ve been hit by a car before. Luckily only once.”

For years, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) has tried to find creative solutions to keep everyone on the streets safe.

In April, the SFMTA approved a new pilot project that will move the Valencia Street bike lanes from the curb to the middle for eight blocks.

“If we just look across the street from here. Instead of the bike lane I’m currently standing on, which in turn is often full of double-parked cars, the bike lane will be where the bus is currently parked,” said SFMTA Streets director Tom Maguire.

He says the project will not only help cyclists but also pedestrians, as cars will no longer be allowed to turn left after the bike lanes join the centre.

“It’s going to get cyclists away from parked cars and ban left turns so we protect pedestrians from those turning vehicles,” Maguire said.

But not everyone is convinced the plan is a good idea. Ofiesh said she and many of her cyclist friends had concerns.

“You know at the intersections, if a car has to turn left or a cyclist has to turn right, what does that traffic sequence look like and is everyone prepared at each and every intersection?” said Ofiesh. “The other thing I worry about with the middle bike lanes is that cyclists clash without much margin for error and you know we’re not locked in steel boxes, we’re just on our bikes.”

Maguire says he just hopes everyone gives the project a shot.

“We’re committed to going back to our board and coming back to the public with a lot of transparency and robust data on what’s working and what’s not working,” Maguire said. “We would not be proposing this unless we felt it would represent a significant improvement in safety over the way the road looks today.”

Ofiesh says she understands SFMTA is trying and despite her concerns she will still try the new lanes once they are built.

“I’d like to be wrong. I’d love for this to work and be an improved experience for everyone, but I’ll definitely be careful,” Ofiesh said.

The city says construction on the project is expected to begin in late April, with lanes due to open to cyclists in mid-May.

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The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency is considering a plan to move bike lanes on busy Valencia Street.

It’s one of the busiest spots in the Mission District and is currently the focus of a proposal to move sheltered bike lanes to the middle of the street.

“Here’s what we’re excited about: left-turn restrictions for vehicles, use of sturdier materials like the K-79 bollards and 4-inch high rubber curbs over the usual dual soft-hit posts typically included in the quick build projects. said Janelle Wong, executive director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition.

The plan calls for the elimination of 70 parking spaces along the eight-block stretch in favor of loading zones.

Many entrepreneurs and employees in the area had serious concerns about the proposal.

“I think it makes it more dangerous for cars and bikers,” said Eiad Eltawil, owner of Rossi Galley.

He said Valencia already had a shortage of parking spaces, which became even more extreme when parklets were added during the pandemic.

He said his customers, who come from all over the city, are already having a hard time finding a place to park and shop.

Other business owners say erecting bollards and raised curbs in the middle of the street and restricting vehicles from turning left will make navigating Valencia all but impossible for delivery drivers — especially since busy parallel streets already have left-turn restrictions.

Not only companies raising questions about the setup of the bike lanes in the middle of Valencia Street, but also cyclists are critical.

“I don’t think the space has any way of accommodating that many types of lanes and it just sounds very dangerous to put people in the middle of traffic,” said cyclist Joseph Roseberry.

“As a cyclist, I don’t want to be in the middle because traffic comes and goes, and to do that would basically be pinning a person,” said Debbie Wiggins.

The proposal was presented to the SFMTA board on Tuesday and drew many public comments – both for and against.

The post San Francisco Considers Plan to Transfer Bike Lanes to Heart of Valencia Avenue – NBC Bay Space appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Note: GJEL Accident Attorneys regularly sponsors coverage on Streetsblog San Francisco and Streetsblog California. Unless noted in the Story, GJEL Accident Attorneys will not be consulted for the content or editorial direction of the Sponsored Content.

Click here to join the fight for protected Dutch-style cycle lanes in Valencia Here. Download your own flyers Here.

In less than two weeks, over 600 people have already written to the mayor, the SFMTA board and others, urging the city to halt its push to build cycle lanes in central Valencia. They strongly support the Better Valencia Plan, a push by advocates to demand that the city deliver on its 2020 promise to extend the successful Dutch-style sheltered cycle lane (from the Markt to the 15th) to the rest of the street .

This is entirely consistent with the city’s own outreach, conducted in 2022, which showed that only 13 percent, or 80 people, supported the center-led design over a three-month city-led outreach period that also included about 600 respondents arrived. The SFMTA board is scheduled to vote on the plan on April 4.

“Valencia dealers I’ve spoken to also support Better Valencia’s plan for protected roadside bike lanes,” said Luke Bornheimer, a “slow streets” mayor and one of the advocates who campaigned for a car-free JFK at the forefront Valencia for protected cycle paths based on the Dutch model. “They understand that not only would it be better for safety and the climate, it would also be better for business.”

As Streetsblog readers are likely to know, in 2018 SFMTA included a “Center Running” design as an option for the Valencia street (see configuration below). This design, a failed concept adopted by some surviving examples around the world, violates security best practices. Running in the center is almost unknown in the Netherlands, Denmark or anywhere else with a really successful and ubiquitous cycling infrastructure. The only thing that makes it good is preserving roadside access for motorists. It was almost universally rejected in 2018 during city public relations. In 2020, SFMTA completed designs to extend the successful Dutch-style sheltered cycle lanes (from Market to 15th and from Duncan to Cesar Chavez) to more of Valencia and to add sheltered crossings. The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition strongly supported this plan, but later changed their view (under new leadership).

A look at the center-running, unprotected bike lane city officials plan to build to wedge cyclists between moving cars and trucks with no physical protection other than plastic posts specially constructed to allow motorists to drive directly over them. Image: SFMTA

Some proponents have argued that a bike lane running down the middle is the way to make the street pedestrianized. Of course, one does not follow from the other. Even Tom Maguire, deputy head of SFMTA, conceded in a recent email to Bornheimer: “The park sheltered design you advocated last week wouldn’t necessarily preclude a placemaking pilot, but it would severely limit options that could be explored.”

A reminder that the design that Bornheimer “began to advocate for last week” was the plan that SFMTA drafted and presented to the public in 2020, before the mayor ordered SFMTA not to touch the parklets or that Disturbing car loading, Vision Zero and safety be damned.

Seen in Valencia on Saturday. The same city officials who want proponents to trust they want a central walking lane at some future, unspecified date to ease pedestrian traffic have removed a fallen tree from Valencia’s lanes and neatly placed the timber on a bike-sharing Station and stored on top of the existing bike lane, putting cyclists’ lives at risk – further proof that this city’s officials always put rider’s comfort ahead of cyclist’s safety. Photo: Streetsblog/Rudick

To simplify Maguire’s statements, the Running vs. Parking Protected center has nothing to do with placemaking, which all advocates of safe and livable roads support. The other argument for center running is that it’s “better than nothing.” In fact, there are indications that the road will be more dangerous than it is now when bike lanes running down the middle are added (see tweet and links below).

I was surprised to find out that the DC Bike Path Assessment Report was co-authored by a planner who is now SFMTA Liveable Roads Director!

What it says about safety is discouraging: collisions increased, even accounting for the increased number of cyclistshttps://t.co/7rZH9KETFX pic.twitter.com/cNvDmKU8vW

— zachlipton@mastodon.xyz (@zachlipton) September 21, 2022

To paraphrase Copenhagenize, figuring out how to build safe cycling infrastructure has been a decades-long struggle riddled with failed experiments and tragedy — but the Dutch and Danes have a 100-year lead over the US SFMTA, which is literally talking about it to repeat the same experiments with people life and limb at stake. As Copenhagenize put it, “If you wouldn’t put pedestrians in a middle lane between moving traffic, why the hell would you put cyclists there!”

Register for join the fight for protected cycle paths based on the Dutch model in Valencia. Download flyers Here.

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