For San Francisco residents and tourists alike who want to ride their bicycles where they like (to paraphrase the words of Queen), the City is readying itself to accommodate you.
Representatives from the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition and Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) appeared this morning along North Point Street (at the Embarcadero) for a ribbon cutting ceremony to celebrate San Francisco’s first completed bike lane.
The one-mile cyclist-friendly stretch of road, which runs in both directions from Van Ness to the Embarcadero and will connect The Embarcadero to the Ft. Mason waterfront bike path, is part of a bigger plan to bring 30 additional miles of bike lanes to the City’s streets.
“We are thrilled to see the City’s dedication in getting the North Point bike lane striped so quickly and are urging the city to keep up this pace of improving streets for so many people,” said Renée Rivera, Acting Executive Director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, in a released statement. “This is the first time in San Francisco’s history that this many bike lane projects are approved and funded and we are urging the City to commit to striping 15 of these projects by December.”
The commemoration comes a few weeks after the San Francisco Superior Court lifted a four-year-old bike plan injunction that would have prevented any bike improvement projects from taking place. Instead, the Court’s decision paved the way for the City’s plans to help accommodate the 34% increase in bicycling since last year and the 53% surge over the past few years.
It also may help to assuage bicyclists and activism organizations (such as Fix Fell, the group who blocked the entrance of a San Francisco ARCO gas station a couple weeks ago) who have been frustrated over a perceived lack of safety for bicyclists.
“In San Francisco, more than 100,000 trips a day are made by bicycle–for shopping and dining as well as commuting,” said Mayor Gavin Newsom. “I know that with a safer and more robust bike network, more and more San Franciscans will start bicycling.”
