On a drizzly Feb. 17 evening in First Baptist Church, near the intersection of Market and Octavia streets that has become notorious for bicycle versus car collisions, more than 200 members of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition came together to plot a major offensive.
"We honestly weren't sure how many people would come out tonight, so this is very impressive," SFBC executive director Leah Shahum told the young, engaged crowd. "We are embarking tonight on the biggest, most ambitious project that the Bike Coalition has ever taken on."
For almost three years, the bicycle advocates have been waiting. Since the city's bicycle plan was struck down by the courts in 2006 for lack of adequate environmental studies, there's been a legal injunction against any bike-related projects, leaving an incomplete network of bike lanes even as the number of cyclists in the city soared and SFBC's membership reached 10,000.
Now, with city officials expecting to have a new plan approved and the injunction lifted by this summer, SFBC has set the ambitious goal of getting all 56 near-term projects mentioned in the plan approved by Bike to Work Day, May 14.
"We're in a fine position to get the whole enchilada, all 56 projects," Shahum said, a goal that would boost the current 45 miles of bikes lanes to 79 miles and the 23 miles of streets with the "sharrow" bike markings up to 98 miles.
While some knowledgeable sources in the bicycle community say a three-month timeline isn't realistic for this whole package, the energy and coordination displayed at that meeting shows that this will be a formidable campaign with the potential to rapidly change the streets of San Francisco.
"There's nothing more to stop this city from going forward with these projects," Andy Thornley told the crowd, sounding more like a military strategist than the SFBC program director that he is. He flipped through slides and stopped at one showing members of the Municipal Transportation Agency Board, which will consider the projects.
"Your mission is to convince these seven people," Thornley told the crowd. "They are the people who say yes to traffic changes or no to traffic changes."
The crowd was divided into nine groups representing different neighborhoods in the city. On the tables at the center of each group were maps, timelines, and other documents, along with sign-up sheets that would be used to organize everyone into online discussion groups to plot strategy and discuss progress and obstacles. Large pieces of butcher paper headlined "Key Stakeholders" and "Issues and Opportunities" were laid out for group brainstorming.
But Thornley made clear that each group would work toward a common goal. "We've got to have a whole network," he said. "I don't want people to lose sight of the fact that the network is the thing."
SFBC community planner Neal Patel defined the expectations: "Every week or every other week, we'll be asking you to do something."
The groups plan to reach out to supporters and potential opponents in the neighborhoods to make decisions on preferred options within each project, rally the support of political leaders and other influential people, generate ...
There are policies to that effect that have been put on hold as well by the injunction in addition to the halt in striping new lanes, such as installing bike racks, policies that are as important as any bike lanes.
When the City was first restrained in 2005, it was on the cusp of allowing bikes on MUNI metro cars. I'd imagine that bikes on the subway would serve more cyclists than some bike network segments. But not a peep on that or the rest of the bike plan from the SFBC.
There are a host of other policies in the 2002 bicycle plan that is reaching the end of the administrative CEQA process. The Bike Plan called for the cops to enforce against both motorists and cyclists, and it seems that the cops have been able to do that without being called in contempt of the injunction while the City has had to beg the court for safety improvements with marginal success. Funny how that works.
The EIR still needs court clearance after administrative and legislative approval and might be further enjoined upon appeal. Implementation of those policies need to be triaged as well with an eye towards fast tracking those policies that address pressing safety needs and meet the needs of most cyclists first.
Since this bike network is the 1997 bike network and has not been revisited, there are several killer intersections and segments which have faced changing land use and transportation circumstances that remain unaddressed in this plan, such as 10th/Polk/Market and 13th/Duboce/Howard/South Van Ness, not to mention Market and Octavia.
Success is not measured in the number of segments thrust through a system that cannot handle them at that speed, but by the products of the strategic application of political power to maximize real change, by how safe cycling is. That will involve a mix of network and policy implementation.
Also, the EIR revealed that several segments would remove auto lanes and slow down MUNI. I'd oppose in general moving forward on those segments until that conflict can be dealt with in a way that does not slow down transit. When transit runs well, people don't drive and cycling is safer.
Using Rob Anderson as a counter to the SFBC in articles like this really deprives the cycling community of cogent critiques of the SFBC and does little more than enable continued dysfunction. We can read cartoon coverage in the Chronicle.
Just as the SFBC became consumed with Healthy Saturdays irrespective of the collateral damage to other progressive projects such as putting a lid on luxury housing in the Mission, the SFBC is likewise prisoner of the 1997 Bicycle Network. That shift from focusing on the changing needs on the ground to focusing on the ego of invested effort can make the city a more dangerous place to bike.
Steve's journalistic blind spot for the strategic myopia and ego-focused narrow approach of his progocialite friends is evident in this piece. I'm sure the SFBG has other reporters who could bring more objectivity in the coverage of this critical issue.
This whole mess is a lot like the mess on Wall Street, as in we cannot count on the people who got us into this mess to chart a course out of it.
-marc
Just because I don't share your bitterness toward the SFBC doesn't mean that I'm not fairly reporting this issue. Like it or not, they represent this city's bicycle community, just as Anderson represents the faction that opposes them. If you really think the SFBC is doing such a disservice to the biking community, you should do some organizing and form your own group instead of spending all your time and energy on the Internet angrily attacking the progressive movement that you claim to support. I'm starting to suspect that you're some kind of double agent, because you certainly seem to do more harm than good.
Steven T. Jones
Just because I don't share your bitterness toward the SFBC doesn't mean that I'm not fairly reporting this issue. Like it or not, they represent this city's bicycle community, just as Anderson represents the faction that opposes them. If you really think the SFBC is doing such a disservice to the biking community, you should do some organizing and form your own group instead of spending all your time and energy on the Internet angrily attacking the progressive movement that you claim to support. I'm starting to suspect that you're some kind of double agent, because you certainly seem to do more harm than good.
Steven T. Jones
What are the journalistic ethics of reprinting a press release verbatim put out by your progocialite friends' nonprofit without disclosing that friendship to your readers? And when asked to address that, what are the ethics about attacking me ad hominem? The principals of the SFBC, like so many nonprofits, are tempting targets for ad hominem attack, but I keep it to policy.
Just because the SFBC is a large group does not mean that the policies they propose should move forward without criticism. History has proven the SFBC wrong more often than right over the past 8 years on the policies and strategies. Left to their own devices they will continue to be wrong.
The nonprofiteers lost Eastern Neighborhoods. The nonprofiteers lost Prop B last year. The nonprofiteer coffee clatch model is not working for labor right now on the budget acoplypse. That model did not work for Healthy Saturdays, a watered down "victory" exacted at the cost of the Mission having to take on luxury housing. The nonprofits lost Prop 8. The list goes on. Please consider this trail of political carnage that has transpired recently under the watch of the nonprofiteers before you accuse me of being a double agent.
I believe that those who get paid to advocate and have identified sell out points, who must make nice with staff to maintain access are the ones who are selling out our neighborhoods, progressives and liberals, Senior Action Network aside.
You are confused: They get paid to fuck shit up. I don't fuck shit up for free.
Just because Rob Anderson was a plaintiff in a successful CEQA lawsuit which humiliated your friends does not give him any position to comment on implementation of the bike plan. Why would you want to print the position of someone who hated bicycles other than to frame your friends' as coherent, ambitious and audacious in comparison, with no cogent critique of their plan offered, just Anderson framed as a knee jerk buffoon? Did you call the AAA for a quote?
The Bicycle Advisory Committee is the most representative bicycle body in the City with each supervisor appointing one member. Tthe political calls on how to proceed should be made in sunshine as part of a public process, rather than by progocialite noontime weekday coffee clatches because we know that does not work. Did you manage to contact anyone on the BAC to find out their opinion in addition to Anderson?
The question an advocacy journalist should be asking is whether the course put forth is the best course, in this case, the safest course, and if not, what corrections should be made. But your social proximity to the principals precludes your critical distance and a myopic plan is lauded, the watchdog sleeps in, no questions asked.
Just as I laughed hearing KQED's Forum this morning where some lamented the demise of the Chronicle because it would--get this--remove a watchdog from the scene--your soft ball puff pieces comfort the comfortable and in so doing further afflict the afflicted.
Not to worry, you preserve your progocialite "activism as lifestyle choice and social scene" relationships at the expense of life and limb for cyclists who do not exclusively travel on the bicycle network.
-marc
I'll bet I'm not unique. I'll bet lots of other folks like me would LOVE to move to biking to work (instead of MUNI in my case)-- IF WE COULD DO SO WITHOUT RISKING OUR LIVES. GET SOME CARS OFF THE STREETS TO MAKE THE WORLD SAFER FOR MORE BIKERS!!!
Until bicylists act like adults then they will be continued to be treated as second class citizens.
They are not above the law and they are a danger to themselves and to others.
If anything, traffic laws should be relaxed to account for the reality that cyclists have a better field of vision and are, for the most part, perfectly capable of safely navigating intersections without heed of traffic signals designed to control the flow of automobile traffic. The law may treat bicycles as motor vehicles, but this isn't necessarily the right thing to do. I would argue that, rather than regulating them as such, the law should be changed to account for the fact that they're obviously quite different.
And though you may find cyclists annoying, they're hardly the public menace that you make them out to be. Lest you forget that even the most reckless cyclist isn't anywhere near as dangerous to the public (or themselves) as a negligent driver.
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