Earlier this month, The Frisc reported that even though San Francisco talks a big game about transit and safety on our streets, the bike and pedestrian improvements proposed along Townsend Street near the Caltrain station would have to wait. It didn’t matter that 4th and Townsend, Caltrain’s corner, is a pinch point for cars, buses, cabs, bikes, scooters, and pedestrians.
Despite ever-growing numbers of people coming and going all the time, the city wanted to hold off on the Townsend Street improvements and coordinate work with the Downtown Extension Project, which would be at least five years away, by the most optimistic estimates.
Seething over the most recent cyclist death, the San Francisco Bike Coalition didn’t appreciate the delay, and Sup. Jane Kim weighed in as well, calling the project a priority for her last months in office. (She’s termed out this year.) Activist group People Protected, among others, had volunteers stand on painted asphalt, like human traffic cones, on Townsend to separate cars from bikes.
The next week, dozens of riders, walkers, and others turned out for the SFMTA board meeting July 17. About 30 people spoke for moving the improvements forward. Kim expressed urgency for safety’s sake as well.
You won’t believe what happened next. The agency decided to do the improvements this year after all. “We don’t think we need to wait” for the rail extension to Transbay, an MTA official said at the board meeting.
Now we are no longer agonizing over the details that were raised earlier, about the overhead wires for the trolley buses, or how to cover the costs from which eye-popping budget.
Come December, after the full MTA board signs off on the project, construction crews will start reconfiguring Townsend Street from 8th all the way up to 4th Street. Here’s a look:
The green strip is exactly what bike advocates and the transit agency have been working on for a couple of years: a protected lane for bicycle travel that can’t be blocked by cars turning or doing pickups and drop-offs at the busy station. Also note the enlarged island for Muni and shuttle passengers, as well as the signal at the intersection that lets bikes cross 4th without cars turning into them. It’s reconceiving the street so that it can be safely used by everyone.
We can say that this time the system worked: People made a lot of noise, sent letters and emails, turned out at meetings, and the city responded. There are other lessons to be drawn from this, though. Lives are literally on the line. Activists are eager to turn the MTA’s attention to other parts of the city’s high-injury network, especially the Embarcadero, where a car mowed down a pedicab driver in the unprotected bike lane.
The most significant takeaway is that there isn’t anything other than inertia keeping San Francisco from being the forward-thinking, innovative, and socially inclusive place it says it wants to be.