Freshly approved by the SF Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) Board tonight, Howard Street protected bike lanes will be in the ground by the end of this year.
Dozens of SF Bicycle Coalition members and local residents showed up in numbers to make our message clear: We need safe streets in SoMa now. However, due to a lengthy SFMTA Board meeting, approvals for Howard Street did not come up until around 8:30pm but we still had members present after several hours to give heartfelt public comment in support of this project.
Jane Natoli, an SF Bicycle Coalition member who works in SoMa and bikes regularly here, said, “We need to be implementing these projects before we lose lives, not after we lose them.”
Just a year ago, we won protected bike lanes on Folsom Street with a big member push. Implemented in the months immediately after approvals, these bike lanes have brought a new level of comfort and safety to people biking downtown in SoMa. When it came to Howard Street though, delays held up progress but our members and bike activists never let up. Whether it was attending open houses or organizing People Protected Bike Lane actions, it took a community effort to get here.
Many of our wins in SoMa in the past eight years have been made possible due to the leadership of Supervisor Jane Kim, who has consistently championed street safety in her time on the Board of Supervisors.
Now, our attention turns to the next protected bike lane in SoMa up for approval. Townsend Street is a key bike corridor for people biking to Caltrain and beyond, and we’ve worked hard to keep this project alive when it faced indefinite delays. We win projects when we turn out, so join us on Nov. 6 as we continue to demand more for our streets.
SFMTA Board of Directors Meeting
Tuesday, Nov. 6 at 1:00pm
City Hall, Room 400