This week, responding to citywide grief over a family’s death at the hands of an out-of-control driver, Mayor London Breed promised measures to reduce traffic death and injury in San Francisco. It got plenty of attention. But much more quietly, City Hall’s long-term — and long awaited — plan to transform SF streets into a comprehensive bike-friendly network has been delayed.
As The Frisc has reported, it’s been clear for some time that SF’s 10-year plan to eliminate traffic deaths by 2024, known as Vision Zero, has been a failure. And on a rainy February evening at the SF Filipino Cultural Center in South of Market, it was clear that a newer plan to make streets safer was hitting speed bumps.
About a dozen neighbors gathered to hear about the first overhaul in 15 years of the city’s bike network. It was the third meeting just in SoMa (and likely not the last) to discuss the Biking and Rolling Plan, as planners are calling it.
A map showing an updated bike network in SoMa was on display, but biking wasn’t top of mind for many attendees.
Some asked about crosswalks that light up to increase visibility. Others complained it was hard to maneuver cars around protected bike lanes. Marti Dulalas wondered how people in her neighborhood would use bikes and scooters when they can’t store them securely. “Everybody is living in small spaces and can’t fit them in their homes,” said Dulalas, a 27-year SoMa resident.
People milled around poster boards with lists of the group’s issues. With little stickers in neon colors, they were asked to vote for what’s most important. “If we don’t engage in this meeting, then SFMTA has to guess what we want,” said David Woo, a land use analyst with the SOMA Pilipinas neighborhood group who was leading the meeting.
In previous meetings, Woo said, concerns included pedestrian safety, cracked sidewalks, and policies to make pedestrians, cyclists, and people using wheelchairs safer.
A representative of the SF Municipal Transportation Agency, which is in charge of streets and transit, stood by but declined to give his name or answer The Frisc’s questions.
The meeting was one of many that have peppered SFMTA’s calendar across the city this year. SFMTA launched the plan, first known as Active Communities, in July 2022, hoping to capture momentum from pandemic “slow street” closures, the transformation of JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park into a car-free space, as well as more piecemeal upgrades of streets around the city to slow traffic and encourage bicycles. (In many spots, promised upgrades haven’t come fast enough.)
SFMTA has also vowed to include participation of neighborhoods historically left out of transportation planning. The final blueprint — policies and a map charting the next 10 to 15 years of work — was slated to emerge this spring. But last week, SFMTA rerouted the timeline; the final map and policies are now due in early 2025.
SFMTA spokesperson Michael Roccaforte said the change is at the request of community groups in the Bayview, Tenderloin, Western Addition, SOMA, and the Mission, who wanted more time. “It’s important that the policies do not perpetuate harm on communities that have been institutionally underserved,” Roccaforte wrote in an email.
SF Bicycle Coalition director of advocacy Claire Amable applauded the longer timeline: “This is really about building consensus.”
A river of alligators
Without a new citywide plan in place, SFMTA has continued to install new bike lanes: Bayshore Boulevard, Howard Street, and 7th Street are among the locations. The agency reports having 472 miles of bikeways.
But some miles are more protected than others — even along stretches of the same street. Former BART director Tom Radulovich, a high-profile bike advocate, described his commute along Folsom Street: In SOMA, the Folsom bike lane is painted green and highly visible. But as it moves into the Mission, the lane becomes just a white painted line that disappears for a block at 14th Street around Foods & Co., leaving bikers to weave through what Radulovich calls “a river of alligators” — cars that cross the faded bike lane to enter and exit parking lots.
“A lot of the safety treatments in one neighborhood don’t really connect you to other neighborhoods,” the Bike Coalition’s Amable said.
Strengthening these connections are a key to the Biking and Rolling plan. In SFMTA surveys, a majority of people say they prefer roads with fewer cars, like the city’s slow streets, or where there are physical barriers between them and car traffic. Slow street supporters have long urged the city to create a 100-mile network that includes underserved neighborhoods and makes longer bike travel safer.
Both SOMA and the Tenderloin are dense and loaded with one-way streets that serve as pass-throughs for Muni, emergency vehicles, and commuters driving to and from freeways. Many are also part of the high-injury network — the 12 percent of SF streets where most collisions happen. Last year, SOMA and the Tenderloin had the most pedestrian fatalities in the city, as well as the only two deaths involving standup scooters.
Better bike lanes could also ease congestion on crowded sidewalks and get more people to mode shift, says Eric Rozell, co-chair of traffic safety for the Tenderloin Community Benefits District. “People who are on the fence about biking are waiting for conditions to change before they start.”
Community advocates in the Mission, Bayview, and Western Addition did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Mode shift — and trust shift
The new bike plan, whenever it emerges, depends on SFMTA gaining trust of communities like the Bayview, the Tenderloin, and most recently the Mission, where it’s currently mending fences over Valencia Street.
Two years ago, a mere 13 percent of 618 respondents supported shifting to center-running bike lanes on Valencia. SFMTA moved ahead with the one-year experiment nonetheless, and six months in, it faces potential legal action from business owners who claim financial harm.
SFMTA’s Roccaforte said the agency plans to apply lessons from Valencia to the new bike planning process: “We need to engage small businesses and merchant corridors early and often.”
SFMTA officials have also said publicly that the Valencia project has consumed staff attention, potentially to the detriment of other work.
In the Tenderloin, Rozell said the agency has done that work, doing monthly check-ins with the traffic safety task force and other nonprofits about street safety. “It’s an open, honest conversation about what changes may be needed instead of them just putting in things the community doesn’t want,” said Rozell.
The next public check on the plan comes in June. Community groups can weigh in as the SFMTA board hears early versions of the plan: policies, programs, and a map of current bike lanes and racks that should help identify the gaps to fill in the network.
The delay, however, means adding a year or so to the process, which also means another year potentially life-saving changes are put in place. But SFMTA has budget concerns — a $240 million budget deficit looms. It’s counting on voter approval of a massive regional bond in 2026, so delaying the Biking and Rolling Plan might be the only fiscal choice.
Delay could also push decisions about the final version beyond this November’s elections. As Breed’s Vision Zero 2.0 event yesterday showed, she and her rivals realize street safety might be having a political moment. (They all contributed opinion pieces to the SF Standard after the deadly West Portal crash.) However, the calculus isn’t necessarily tilting toward bikes and pedestrians; former interim mayor and candidate Mark Farrell has already called for putting cars back on Market Street.
Could less politics be a silver lining? Radulovich thinks election year pressure could warp the Biking and Rolling planning process: “Would I rather have a wishy-washy election year map? No, I want what’s going to make it safer for cycling.”
Kristi Coale covers streets, transit, and the environment for The Frisc.