by Chris Kidd, The East Bay Bicycle Coalition’s Media and Communications Intern and creator of the LADOT Bike Blog.
Last month, I had the pleasure of attending a lunchtime presentation at SPUR (San Francisco Planning + Urban Research Association) titled “New Models for Bicycle Friendly Streets”. This fascinating presentation featured Andy Thornley, Policy Director for the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, Michael Moule, an engineer from Nelson\\Nygaard, and Mike Sallaberry from SFMTA’s Livable Streets division.
While practically everyone in the bay area bicycle community is aware of the huge changes in bicycle infrastructure that are taking place in San Francisco, the lunchtime presentation afforded the attendees a chance to “look under the hood” of these bike planning efforts. What we got was a road map for improving bike planning and bike infrastructure implementation.
A Shift in mindset
One of the most important characteristics of San Francisco’s success was a shift in the mindset of everyone involved. Not just the advocacy community, but the political community and the engineering community had to get on board with bicycling goals before things really began to change. Instead of saying “we’d love to do this project, but…”, people started saying “how do we overcome what will get in the way of this projects’ implementation?”.
The most eye-opening presentation came from Mike Sallabery, an engineer in the Livable Streets program of the SFMTA (side note: how awesome is it that SFMTA even has a Livable Streets program?). Mike systematically laid out each hurdle and barrier that usually trips up the implementation of innovative new bicycle infrastructure, then demolished them.
- It’s not enough to simply provide bike lanes, but to create an atmosphere that encourages new, more hesitant riders, to get out onto the streets. This can be accomplished partially through new, innovative infrastructure, but also needs to be coupled with greater attention to outreach and education of drivers an bicyclists alike. As Roger Geller of Portland’s Department of Transportation once said, “Riding a bicycle Should not require bravery”.
- He acknowledged upfront the deficiencies of current design guidelines and the need to supplement them with innovative, or experimental, treatments. The NACTO and Urban Bikeways Design Guide offer a helpful supplement to older, more auto-oriented, design manuals.
- He stressed the need for cities to take initiative on pushing new projects, like San Francisco’s Sharrows pilot project, which can lead to the adoption of new treatments in state and federal guidelines.
San Francisco has aggressively used “road diets”, not only to create room for bicyclists, but also to improve driver and pedestrian safety. The wild success of early road diets, like on Valencia Street in 1999, has led to over 40 road diets in San Francisco – the most of any city in the United States.
- While there are serious design challenges for more intense infrastructure like cycletracks, there are also a wealth of examples from other cities around the state and around the world for how to effectively address potential conflicts in a way that keeps all road users safe. Other innovative treatments, like contra-flow bikes lanes, floating bike lanes, bike boxes, and colored bike lanes were also covered.
- Throughout, Mike stressed the importance of “Complete Streets” – that is, streets that make a place for all road users and give equal importance to drivers, bicyclists, pedestrians, and transit users. His most powerful example was of a planned road diet for Cesar Chavez Street in San Francisco. This street is already at the worst “Level of Service” marker for auto-travel – the tool traffic engineers use to measure congestion.
Most cities would never dream of reducing the number of lanes on such a street (most would actually be looking for ways to expand the roadway), but SFMTA took a different view. “Level of Service” is measured only during the evening rush-hour, when traffic is heaviest – SFMTA instead looked at how much the street is used during all hours of the day. They found that, outside of rush hour, the space on the street is vastly underutilized. By taking away a traffic lane and using it to create pedestrian and bicycle improvements, San Francisco will be creating a 24-hour-a-day improvement for bicyclists and pedestrians while only impacting drivers during rush hour.
- There were many other useful tips and tools in this presentation, and you should take the time to look through them yourself.
What this means for the East Bay
While having these tools is great on its own, there’s still the question of how we put this into practice in the East Bay. While some cities have already begun implementing bicycle-friendly practices (like Berkeley’s Bicycle Boulevards), others have a long way to go. It’s incumbent upon the East Bay bicycle community to demand innovative practices from our elected officials and our city staff.
Here at the East Bay Bicycle Coalition we are doing our part to help ensure state-of-the-art infrastructure gets built on our streets. We’ve recently submitted our comments for the Fremont Bike Plan, and are keeping an eye on Richmond’s ongoing update of their Bicycle Master Plan. Additionally, we’re also coming out in force for the Lake Merritt BART area specific plan, which has the potential to transform this downtown-adjacent section of Oakland with Complete Streets treatments.
If you want to get involved, there are a few of the ways that you can make a real difference for our East Bay streets:
- If you haven’t already, you can join the East Bay Bicycle Coalition.
- You can volunteer at our events.
- You can submit your own comments for a number of different bike plans in the works.
- You can come to the community meeting for the Lake Merritt BART station area plan.
- You can attend your local Bicycle/Pedestrian Advisory Committee meeting.
- You can contact your mayor and/or council member to let them know you want improvements for bicyclists prioritized.
Or you can simply ride your bike more often, helping to grow the movement of those who prefer to get around on two wheels. However you contribute to our cause you are helping to bring more “Bicycle Friendly Streets” to the East Bay.