Oppose reinstating left turns on Valencia

Posted on by Claire Amable

Next Tuesday, the SFMTA Board of Directors will vote on whether to alter the already-passed Valencia Bike Lane project design by implementing three left turns on Mid-Valencia, at 17th Street, 21st Street and 23rd Street. 

This proposal comes at the direction of the Mayor’s office, after much pressure from merchants who believe reinstating left turns will improve traffic flow and congestion on Valencia. However, safe street advocates know this will make congestion worse and make Valencia less safe. 

Citywide, left turns account for 40% of pedestrian traffic fatalities, according to SF’s Vision Zero data. Even though they are currently not allowed on Valencia, data shows that left turns already are a source of danger: illegal left turns are the number one cause of crashes along the corridor since the installation of the center-running bike lane. We are concerned that allowing left-turns inconsistently along the corridor will create more confusion, and therefore danger, for all users of the road. 

To minimize the safety concerns left turns introduce, SFMTA traffic engineers are proposing three traffic light cycles per intersection. 

  1. Northbound lane has the green light and can make left turns while the southbound traffic lane and pedestrian light are red. 
  2. Southbound lane has the green light and can make left turns while the northbound traffic lane and pedestrian light are red. 
  3. East-west cross streets have the green light while both Valencia lanes are red. 

While this approach will certainly curb the danger left turns create for people who bike and walk, a three-phased light cycle at each of these intersections will significantly slow down traffic on the corridor and will not achieve the merchants’ desired outcome. 

Lastly, as a best practice, SFMTA staff frequently say it takes 90 days to normalize behavior change, and the most useful evaluation data is after that three-month window. Adding left turns within that 90-day window, while road users are still adjusting their behavior to the new lane design, will muddy evaluation data and further increase potential confusion, endangering vulnerable road users even further. Equally concerning is that, without clear data delineating results for the new street design before left turns are introduced and after, any increased traffic congestion caused by reintroducing left turns will be blamed on the bike lane design, rather than the real culprit.

Left turns are not part of the Mid-Valencia design that was approved by the SFMTA Board of Directors last year in November. In order to implement them, the SFMTA Board must approve them as a separate item next Tuesday. 

Your San Francisco Bicycle Coalition will be showing up to oppose the implementation of left turns on Valencia. RSVP below to join us to give public comment — your voice matters.

RSVP for the hearing!

JOINT STATEMENT: Mobility advocates respond to Mayor Lurie’s push to allow AVs on Market Street

Posted on by San Francisco Bicycle Coalition

Decision is a major step backward for transit service, safety, and creating a thriving boulevard.

Kid Safe SF, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, San Francisco Transit Riders, and Walk San Francisco join together to denounce Mayor Daniel Lurie’s decision, announced this morning, to permit autonomous vehicles — specifically Waymos — onto Market Street. For the past five years, Market Street has been free of private cars, resulting in a far safer corridor, with faster, more efficient transit service. Undoing those successes, the result of two decades of work by city agencies, elected officials, and advocates, moves San Francisco in the wrong direction. It is a step backward to a chaotic, dangerous Market Street that serves no one’s purposes, including businesses.

By moving forward with this effort, the Mayor hampers Muni’s recovery and makes Market Street significantly more dangerous for people walking, biking, scooting, and taking public transit, who must cross lanes of traffic to access boarding islands. Muni buses and streetcars, which have sustained 14% greater speed and efficiency since the removal of cars, will be slowed as well. With hundreds of thousands of people riding Muni and over 30,000 bike trips on Market each month, not to mention the countless pedestrians walking the corridor, the negative impacts will be enormous. The Mayor’s action also upends the robust, decades-long public process that led to car-free Market Street. 

“Mayor Lurie’s unilateral decision to give Waymo free rein on Market Street is dangerous, undemocratic, and inequitable,” said Dylan Fabris, the community and policy manager at San Francisco Transit Riders. “Allowing Waymo exclusive access to Market Street essentially creates a nearly two-mile-long City-sanctioned monopoly for the Google-owned tech company – all while the City is cutting vital Muni service on the same corridor. Transit riders will now not only need to deal with increased transfers and delays brought on by upcoming service cuts, but also the delays and hazards caused by a fleet of new Waymo vehicles flooding Market Street.”

“This is a dangerous decision made with a shocking lack of process,” says SFBike’s Executive Director Christopher White. “If we want Market Street to reclaim its rightful place as a commercial and cultural destination, it should be safe and welcoming to people. Prioritizing safe, affordable ways of traveling, like walking, biking, and transit, achieves that aim. Handing the street over to a single private company flies in the face of San Francisco’s values and goals.”

“This plan will slow down Muni, add congestion, and undermine years of progress toward a more efficient and reliable transit system and a safer, more accessible Market Street,” said KidSafe SF co-founder Robin Pam. “With Muni facing service cuts this summer and a $322M deficit next year, San Francisco can’t afford to give up the gains in Muni efficiency we’ve already made. The path to a thriving downtown is to make it a neighborhood that people want to live in and visit by building new housing and revitalizing our public spaces, which we can do without undercutting our vital public transportation.”

“Bringing vehicle traffic back to Market Street won’t solve its problems, and will only create new ones,” says Walk San Francisco Executive Director Jodie Medeiros. “We know that a Market Street with more cars is dangerous for pedestrians, cyclists, transit riders, and drivers. Before car-free Market Street, half of the city’s ten most dangerous intersections were on Market Street, with almost three people injured each week on average. Mayor Lurie should focus on increasing foot traffic, not vehicle traffic.”

The organizations jointly call on the Mayor’s office to rescind this decision and focus instead on making Market Street a desirable destination with shops, culture, and foot traffic – becoming the vibrant Main Street our city needs. 

For more information, historical context and data about car-free Market Street, please refer to our fact sheet.

Media contacts: 

Oak Street Quick-Build approved by the SFMTA Board!

Posted on by Rachel Clyde

Last Tuesday, April 1, the SFMTA Board of Directors voted unanimously to approve the Oak Street Quick-Build! We’re excited to see this project finally be approved and moving forward to implementation.

Despite opposition turning out to the hearing, we were able to have double the amount of public comments in support of the project. Thank you to our amazing members who spent their Tuesday afternoon sitting in City Hall with us. It truly makes a huge difference for our city leaders and departments to see the community support these projects. 

We heard from SFMTA staff that it was extremely helpful to have those meetings early in the design process with our members at Flywheel Coffee. Your feedback and participation helped shape this project and got us here today.

This project is a huge win for San Francisco – as our population grows in the next decade and we continue to battle a warming planet, we need to expand capacity for sustainable modes of transportation.

The Panhandle area represents an extremely important east-west connector for people biking and rolling and we need to create more, safe bike ways for people to utilize.

This stretch of Oak Street and where it intersects with Masonic Ave are both on the High Injury Network – the small percentage of San Francisco streets that see the most severe and fatal traffic collisions. We hear frequently from our members about how dangerous the intersection at Masonic is and we know this quick-build will be a big step toward improving the safety here for everyone.

We learned in the SFMTA Board meeting that due to a Department of Public Works repaving project, construction of the bike lane won’t take place until the beginning of 2026. Since the road is about to be repaved, it doesn’t make sense to repaint the road and build the bike lane, just for it to be torn up in a few months. 

In the meantime, the SFMTA will be creating the double turn lane and signal separation with pedestrians at Masonic Ave, implementing daylighting that is happening in tandem with the quick-build, and building the short off-road portion of the bike lane. In early 2026, they will reduce the traffic lanes from four to three and build the parking-protected bike lane. 

We want to give a special thank you to former Supervisor Dean Preston and his staff for pushing this project forward for years and also thank current Supervisor Bilal Mahmood for jumping in to champion this project so we could continue without a hitch.

We are able to do this kind of long-term advocacy because of the support of our members and donors. Your contributions allow our staff to advocate on your behalf and ensure your voice is heard by city leaders. 

Donate to SFBike today!

We look forward to celebrating the completion of the Oak Street Quick-Build with you! 

SFBike stands with Supervisor Joel Engardio

Posted on by Rachel Clyde

After the passage of Proposition K in November 2024 that approved transforming the Great Highway into a permanent park, opponents began efforts to recall District 4 Supervisor Joel Engardio as a way to punish him for his support of Prop K.  

Your San Francisco Bicycle Coalition does not stand for this and recently our Board voted to support Supervisor Joel Engardio against the recall attempt; we do not believe this is an appropriate use for a recall. We need city leaders to take bold actions to fight against climate change and that is exactly what Supervisor Engardio – and other elected officials who supported Prop K – did.

“When our elected officials stick their neck out for street safety, climate, and car-free projects like this one, we need to stand behind them,” said Roan Kattouw, President of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition Board.

The recall campaign has until May 22 to get 10,000 valid signatures of District 4 voters who support putting the recall on the ballot. Until then, the Stand with Joel campaign is organizing volunteer mobilizations to get the word out. 

We want to turn out SFBike members to support the campaign. Use the link below to sign up for a volunteer shift.

Volunteer for the campaign

Oak Street Quick-Build finally going to SFMTA Board

Posted on by Rachel Clyde

Your San Francisco Bicycle Coalition is excited to finally share that the Oak Street Quick-Build is going to the SFMTA Board of Directors for final approval on April 1st! Our advocacy with our members and partners worked – we convinced City leadership to stop stalling the project and put it on the agenda. 

While we still have one big step – approving the Quick-Build – we know it took of hundreds of stakeholders, residents, city staff, to bring us to this moment. For those that attended a meeting, sent an email, shared your input or contributed in any way, thank you for contributing to important bike projects. 

Now is your last chance to voice support for the Oak Street Quick-Build! Show up to the SFMTA Board meeting at City Hall on April 1 at 2pm to give public comment in support of the project. We’re anticipating some opponents to turn out to the meeting, so we need to show strong public support for the project. 

If you can’t make it in person, send an email to the SFMTA Board of Directors by Monday March 31 asking them to approve the project.

Email the SFMTA Board

New park on the Great Highway officially opening April 12, 2025!

Posted on by Rachel Clyde

Since San Franciscans decidedly voted in favor of Proposition K back in November, we’ve been excitedly waiting for the day we realize the vision of our city’s newest park. City agencies and stakeholders have worked tirelessly towards that vision too, working through the many steps required to transform an underutilized road into a thriving park space. 

Luckily, the preparations are almost complete and the grand opening is coming on April 12, 2025! 

The Upper Great Highway will officially and permanently be closed to vehicle traffic starting Friday, March 14, 2025. Between March 14 and the grand opening on April 12, there will be a lot of construction happening on the Great Highway and immediately surrounding it. SFMTA will redo the intersections of Sloat and Lincoln, SF Public Works will do their annual sand relocation, and the new park features will be installed. If you are biking or walking in the area during this month, please move with caution and patience. 

Your San Francisco Bicycle Coalition will be providing free valet bike parking at the grand opening on April 12. Come find us and say hi! We will also be providing some activities, including our ever-popular Freedom From Training Wheels drop-in class.

The city is working on other crucial upgrades to the project in the meanwhile. 

Traffic improvements: A new traffic signal was installed at 41st Ave and Lincoln Way, intersecting with Chain of Lakes. This was a confusing, 4-way stop intersection, now with the traffic light, it will be more clear to navigate and will help reduce congestion. SFMTA will continue to tweak the intersection as they observe traffic patterns. 

Repaving: The Department of Public Works completed their sewer and repaving project on Sunset Blvd as of January. The project includes adding new curb ramps and bus stops, repaving the entire stretch of Sunset Blvd and more. The completion of this project will help improve the flow of traffic as cars are diverted from the Upper Great Highway to Sunset Blvd. We have heard from the SFMTA that Sunset Blvd is actually under its carrying capacity for cars, so it will easily absorb redirected cars. 

New bike infrastructure: The SFMTA is working on improvements to Sloat Blvd. Now with the California Coastal Commission’s approval, construction on the Sloat Blvd Quick-Build, which was approved by the SFMTA Board in July 2023, will finally begin this spring. This includes a new two-way protected bike lane, pedestrian improvements, and bus islands. The SFMTA has also installed a new traffic signal at Sloat Blvd and Skyline Blvd to reduce congestion and confusion and improve visibility and safety of people walking and biking in this intersection. 

Improved intersections: The SFMTA is also working on redesigning the intersections of Great Highway & Lincoln and Great Highway & Sloat. Since the creation of a permanent Ocean Beach Park will forever change the way cars move through those two intersections, they need to be restructured to address this change. The Board of Directors approved in December creating a U-turn with a stop sign at Sloat and Great Highway for vehicles and traditional traffic signal phases at Lincoln and Great Highway for vehicles to turn separate from people walking and biking. They will also add designated bike lanes to reduce mixing of vehicles and bikes. 

Friends of Ocean Beach Park are working around the clock to provide activation and art to the new park. There will be murals, sculptures, playground facilities, bike racks, benches, a pump track, and more installed in time for the grand opening. 

Notably, the Recreation and Parks Department has decided, with stakeholder input, to designate the ocean-side lanes of the new park as a slow space, while the city-side lanes will be a shared path (similar to the multiuse path in the Panhandle). The goal is to create a shared space like the JFK Promenade that isn’t too rigidly dictated, but also encourages users to be alert and aware of their speed and surroundings. 

Follow us and Friends of Ocean Beach Park on social media to get the latest updates. @sfbike @oceanbeachpark

Attend the Grand Opening!

Celebrating the start of speed safety cameras

Posted on by Rachel Clyde

After years of advocating at City Hall and in Sacramento, San Francisco will finally have speed safety cameras operating on our streets this month. 

33 speed cameras were installed across the city in the last couple of weeks and will be turned on starting March 20, 2025. 

We are excited to see speed cameras installed at several intersections on major bicycle thoroughfares, including: Fulton and Arguello, Sloat and Skyline, Ocean and Frida Kahlo, Geneva and Prague, and Embarcadero and Green.

We know that speeding is the number one cause of fatalities and serious injury on San Francisco’s streets and is especially lethal for vulnerable road users like seniors and children. Just in the past couple of months we’ve seen several collisions at Fulton and Arguello that were a direct result of speeding and in 2024 there was a pedestrian fatality at this intersection. This pilot program will encourage drivers to slow down and make them more aware of their speed.

Any violations given out in the first 60 days will all be warnings; after that, fines will be given to any vehicle speeding 11 miles per hour or more over the speed limit. Citations will start at $50 and go up to $500 for the most egregious speeding (100 mph over the limit). 

Assembly Bill 645 (AB 645), the law that permitted the pilot program, passed in California’s congress in October 2023. For the past year, the City has worked to obtain final approvals, hire a contractor and manage all the details to install the cameras. AB 645 allows 6 California cities to pilot this program for 5 years and San Francisco is the first city to turn their cameras on. 

Speed safety cameras are a proven tool to reduce speeding and severe and fatal injuries on our streets. Finally, San Francisco can use this life-saving technology to slow down speeding vehicles on our streets and save lives.

Attend the celebrations

The Oak Street Quick-Build is delayed again!

Posted on by Rachel Clyde

The Oak Street Quick-Build was approved internally by SFMTA engineers back in November and was supposed to go to the SFMTA Board of Directors for final approval in December and then again this week on March 4, but continues to be delayed. 

We are seeing a rising tide of opposition to bike, pedestrian and street safety-related projects across the city and the opponents are getting organized. We’ve seen project after project get delayed for insubstantial reasons and we can’t let the Oak Street Quick-Build become the next victim. We need these street safety improvements and we can’t wait any longer.

We know how essential projects like this are to move our city closer to our transportation and climate goals, and our leaders know that this project has tons of public support and will do so much good for the community. 

Yesterday, Supervisor Bilal Mahmood (District 5) shared a video on Instagram voicing his support for the project and the need to move it forward. This is a direct result of our advocacy work, demanding that he step up as a champion for the Oak Street Quick-Build. We need to keep the pressure on and push Supervisor Mahmood to find a way to move the project forward to the SFMTA Board and implementation as soon as possible. 

We want to flood his inbox, so please share this ask with your network and help us get a new protected bike lane on Oak Street. Let’s put our people power behind the Supervisor and SFMTA staff and get Oak over the finish line.

Send an email to the Supervisor and SFMTA leadership in support of the Oak Street Quick-Build, encouraging them to get it on the agenda.

Send an email

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

Posted on by San Francisco Bicycle Coalition

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.”

Open Letter About Left Turns on Valencia Street

Posted on by San Francisco Bicycle Coalition

Along with our fellow advocates, we are frustrated by the SFMTA revisiting Valencia Street’s approved design and reintroducing left turns along the corridor at the Mayor’s urging. This is unsafe and will be ineffective in improving traffic flow. Last week, we sent the following open letter with our concerns to Mayor Lurie and SFMTA Director Julie Kirschbaum.

Dear Mayor Lurie and Director Kirschbaum,

As construction begins on curbside parking-protected bike lanes on Valencia Street, the undersigned organizations write to express our grave concerns regarding the reintroduction of left turns along the corridor where they are currently illegal, and the implications of that decision for the most vulnerable road users. Citywide, left turns account for 40% of pedestrian traffic fatalities, according to SF’s Vision Zero data. Even though they are currently not allowed, data shows that left turns already are a source of danger along the corridor: illegal left turns are the number one cause of crashes along the corridor since the installation of the center-running bike lane, and two pedestrians have been killed along the corridor since the start of 2023 by people making left turns in cars. We are asking you to keep left turns prohibited on Valencia between 15th and 23rd Streets.

Valencia Street is one of the most important streets in the City for walking and cycling, and is directly adjacent to one of the City’s busiest public transit corridors. We understand and are sensitive to the financial struggle of merchants along the corridor, and that they want to retain local vehicular access. We also hear their concern that, facing parking loss, they wish to see car traffic circulation improve. We are open to exploring ways to enhance local vehicular access so long as the safety and comfort of other street users are not compromised. However, there is good reason to predict that reintroducing left turns will not help circulation, and would likely impede it. This is because the geometry of Valencia does not allow for dedicated, signaled left turn lanes. Anyone wanting to make a left turn from Valencia will therefore need to stop their vehicle at the intersection and wait for opposing traffic to clear. Any other cars behind them on Valencia will be forced to wait behind that stopped car until it is able to make a left turn.

Not only will traffic fail to improve, but the corridor will become far less safe as a result. The backup of cars behind someone making a left turn will induce pressure on the person driving, encouraging them to speed through the turn at the first possible opportunity. In such situations, people driving often experience “inattentional blindness,” in which they only see objects or people they are consciously looking for — in this case, oncoming cars — and fail to anticipate or see other things, like people stepping off a curb into the crosswalk or biking in the bike lane. These dynamics create deadly risks for people walking, biking, scooting, connecting to public transit, or using mobility devices on Valencia.

The current proposal would reintroduce lefts at six intersections: three left turns in the northbound and three in the southbound directions but staggered such that only one left would be allowed at each intersection. This irregular distribution will likely confuse people driving, leading to unpredictable and inconsistent behavior. Unpredictability is one of the most dangerous factors to introduce onto streets, putting vulnerable road users at even greater risk. 

Mayor Lurie, we know public safety is your number one priority, and that you understand traffic safety is public safety. We believe keeping Valencia as safe as possible is aligned with your goals. 

If left turns are implemented on Valencia, then the SFMTA must study and mitigate the hazards introduced by left turns, including:

  • Immediate ongoing study and quarterly public reporting of vehicle behavior at intersections, assessing the frequency of excessive speeds on left turns, close calls, and other indicators of unsafe conditions. Collisions and fatalities cannot be our only data point for assessing safety.
  • Immediate implementation of left-turn calming treatments at each intersection where lefts are permitted.
  • Immediate implementation of 20’ of daylighting with protective posts at all intersections, to ensure that vulnerable road users are as visible as possible to people behind the wheel.
  • A commitment to repeal permitted left turns if preliminary data shows more than 10% of left turns are taken at 15 mph or faster, if left turns are making traffic circulation worse, or if anyone is injured — or worse — by a person making a left turn. 

Again, maintaining left turn restrictions, as was included in the original design that was considered and unanimously approved by the SFMTA Board, is the much safer and preferred outcome. Please ensure the safest possible Valencia Street and do not reintroduce left turns onto Valencia.

Respectfully,

Christopher White
Executive Director
San Francisco Bicycle Coalition

Sara Johnson
Executive Director
San Francisco Transit Riders

Jodie Medeiros
Executive Director
Walk San Francisco 

Robin Pam
Co-Founder
KidSafe SF

Tom Radulovich
Senior Policy Manager
Livable Cities

Trish Gump
Slow Streets Stewards Organizer
Slow Streets Stewards

Charles Whitfield
Chair, San Francisco Group
Sierra Club

Zach Lipton
Friends of Valencia

Alyssa Cheung
District 11 Safe Street Advocates

Peter Belden
Safer 17th