Since last week, a collection of barricades and tape has latticed San Francisco’s most controversial bike lane
The Valencia Street Center bike lane in San Francisco began deconstruction last week. The news of its deletion came with equal parts celebration and hope — faith in that dueling curbside bike lanes would offer respite (and relief from safety concerns) for both riders and business owners alike.
SFMTA’s pilot center bike lane pilot was doomed from the get-go. The transportation agency chose Valencia Street to install the lane due to its amenable elevation grade, linearity, and proximity to businesses. (Valencia Street was also among the first car-free corridors; the street later adopted rotational pedestrian-only evenings.)
In ideology, the idea of a center bike lane in the Mission District seemed like a ballpark win. Communism, too, is a supposition that seems perfect on paper. But when implemented in the real world — with real-world humans and with real-world variables, all set inside real-world conditions — both falter in grand fashion.
Valencia Street’s center bike lane had no safe way to enter or exit it; riding into the center lane required traveling perpendicular to traffic at certain intersections … at the mercy of cars that may or may not make a legal or illegal left or right turn. No hard borders prevented cars from accidentally driving into it. The same was evident in separating through traffic in the lane, itself; instances of people colliding with one another in the lane were frequent, sometimes resulting in serious injury. People passing in an opposite-traffic lane is an anathema to most, especially those who travel mostly on one-way curbside bike lanes … but in the center bike lane, it’s commonplace.
On average, about three people were injured in SF’s center bike lane a month — a figure that’s likely grossly underreported. By the time it ended last week, at least 260 collisions were recorded inside the bike lane and businesses recorded dips in foot traffic and profit. The Valencia Street Center bike lane was not an abject failure … it was a resounding, resonating, thunderous failure that only the most stubborn would say otherwise.
And just as chaotically as it came to fruition, the bike lane’s destruction has proven equally turbulent.
Deconstruction of the bike lane began early last week with just a few day’s notice to the public. SFMTA workers were seen barricading off the bike lane and getting to work stripping away the green paint, soft traffic borders, and speed bumps. Noise from City vehicles was met with utter cognitive dissonance: There was now no safe option for bikers to travel along Valencia Street.
SFMTA has estimated that production of the newly approved curbside bike lanes, which will run along the same length as the center bike lane they replace, will take around three months. (We won’t be holding our breath, mind you.) But that construction, coupled with the center bike lane’s ongoing deconstruction, has left a stark, sharp void in safe bike passage.
It’s a choose-your-own-adventure-biking situation as of late — do you drive in tandem with traffic, praying they see you? Do you become a bemoaned sidewalk cyclist? Do you simply just walk your bike on the sidewalk? Do you weave in and out of the barricaded parts of the center bike lane in an act of defiance … that, strangely enough, offers the objectively safest route? The choice is yours.
San Francisco’s contentious center bike lane failed in spectacular fashion. Even in its death, the chaos remains unavoidable and unignorable, inviting a kind of Mad Max-style of commuting.
Those curbside bike lanes along Valencia Street can’t come soon enough … more so because they should’ve been there from the start.
