PRESS RELEASE: San Francisco Passes the Biking and Rolling Plan, Shaping the Future of Our Streets

SAN FRANCISCO — On Tuesday March 4, 2025, the SFMTA Board of Directors voted unanimously to pass the Biking and Rolling Plan, the first update to the city’s bicycle plan in 15 years. The Biking and Rolling Plan is the product of nearly 3 years of work and and an unprecedented outreach and engagement effort by the SFMTA, and will shape the future of biking and rolling and how people will get around San Francisco for the next 20 years. 

Promoting biking and rolling is written into San Francisco’s Charter, which states “bicycling shall be promoted by encouraging safe streets for riding” and mandates “a safe, interconnected bicycle circulation network.” It is the SFMTA’s responsibility to provide access to safe streets, high-quality and affordable micro-mobility options, clean air, community spaces and more. Passing this plan fulfills SFMTA’s job as articulated in the city’s Charter. 

Throughout the development of the Plan, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition’s SF CYCLES campaign has pushed the SFMTA to make the draft plan more ambitious and accountable, by including specific goals and timelines to demonstrate commitment to sustainable, healthy, people-first transportation. The Plan as approved lacks many of these mechanisms, but the SF Bicycle Coaltion will continue to press for amendments to integrate these changes in the coming months and years. 

Christopher White, executive director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, celebrated the Plan’s passage. “We are gratified that the Board directed staff to return in 9 months with a proposed roadmap for creating Slow School Zones to be approved within a year, as we and our members have demanded,” he said. “They’re hearing the voices of over eighty thousand San Franciscans who are daily bike riders and the hundreds of thousands more who would ride more often if they had safe infrastructure.”

In response to SFBike’s advocacy, the final version of the approved plan also includes a map defining a base grid of crosstown routes, a crucial element to make the Northstar Network a reality. SFBike will pivot their advocacy to ensure that SFMTA defines a plan to create that grid within the next five years.

Director of Advocacy Claire Amable, in her public comments before the board, underscored the importance of the Plan’s passage for fulfilling many of the City’s goals, saying, “providing affordable, healthy, sustainable transportation options is simply good policy and gets us closer to our City’s climate goals.”