New design on Valencia forces compromise for everyone
The long-awaited detailed design for Valencia Street is complete and coming up for approval. On November 19th, the SF Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) Board of Directors will be voting on the new design for parking-separated, curb-side bike lanes along Valencia Street between 15th and 23rd Streets.
After over a year of extensive discussions with our members, advocates, and SFMTA staff, we supported the conceptual design for side-running bike lanes on Valencia Street in June and are ready to see it in the ground. The new design is consistent with the northern design portion of the corridor between 15th Street and Market Street and makes it a lot easier for people on bikes to shop locally.
The broader biking community is not a monolith, and neither are our members. We know many members feel safe in the center-running bike lane and think that with more durable materials, strict enforcement of turn restrictions, and continuity along the entire corridor, this design could be a successful one. But there are safety issues with the center-running lane that have not improved in the pilot period, like the difficulty of turning from the center at intersections and the inconsistency in bike lane design along the whole corridor. Safety is our top priority. While the center-running lane is an improvement on the previous unprotected lanes, unresolved safety issues persist that would be improved by pivoting to a more familiar design on Valencia Street.
Moving the bike lane to the curb makes a lot of sense for a commercial corridor with so many competing needs and all users of the street have made compromises to make it work. The bike lane between 15th and 19th Street is going to be five feet wide with a three foot buffer between parked cars and loading, making the bike lane narrower than many recent projects. The proposed design eliminates almost 60% of parking and loading along the corridor, but the merchants agreed to it because they believe it will improve the flow of vehicular traffic through the street. We know bike infrastructure and local businesses can co-exist on the same street, and the new design will better support that relationship.
While we are optimistic about parking-separated, side-running bike lanes being an improvement to Valencia, we have serious concerns about moving parklets from curbside to “floating” (with the bike lane running between the curb and parklet) design. We’re disappointed to see three floating parklets in the new design after many stakeholders, including the SFMTA Board of Directors, shared their concerns about them in June. While we understand floating parklets maintain more parking on the corridor, floating parklets introduce potentially dangerous conflicts between people biking and staff and customers who use the parklets. The proposed mix of curbside and floating parklets is unpredictable and confusing, making the design less safe for everyone. We are demanding a moratorium on floating parklets elsewhere in the city for at least a year, and asking the Board to direct staff to conduct an evaluation study on the existing three Valencia parklets before any more floating parklets are considered in San Francisco.
As we finalize this portion of Valencia Street, we are also calling on the SFMTA to complete the Long-Term Valencia Bikeway studies and implement pedestrianized pilot blocks, so we can imagine the kind of world-class, people-centered destination that Valencia can truly become. We must also continue to push SFMTA to complete the final length of the corridor between 23rd Street and Cesar Chavez, which remains an unprotected bike lane painted between parked vehicles and the general traffic lane.
The SFMTA Board of Directors needs to hear from you, whether you support the center-running bike lane or the protected side-running bike lane. Join us for public comment next Tuesday, November 19th at City Hall room 400 at 1pm to demand that the SFMTA hold off on any more floating parklets until a study is done, and to put protected bike lanes on the rest of Valencia Street to Cesar Chavez.