Nearly half a year after the SFMTA Board of Directors unanimously approved the Fell Street and Oak Street Pedestrian and Bike Safety Project, Ed Reiskin, SFMTA Director, will provide an update on the status of the project as part of his Director’s Report at the biweekly Board Meeting at City Hall this coming Tuesday, April 2.

The Fell Street and Oak Street Safety Project is an integral component of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition’s Connecting the City vision. A central element to the project is the physical separation between fast-moving vehicular traffic and the people using the new bikeways. Supervisor London Breed recently recognized physical separation as a matter of public safety by emphasizing that everyday that passes without it exposes people walking and on bikes to undue danger.

And yet in spite of these factors being well understood by the community and other stakeholders, complete and adequate implementation of the project is still an elusive objective for the City. Incessant setbacks and “unforeseen circumstances” plague this project, despite the fact that people biking on Fell Street still contend with a half-completed bikeway daily and those brave enough to bike on Oak Street do so without one at all.

For more than ten years, San Francisco Bicycle Coalition staff and members have worked hard to build the necessary support for a project that will make it safer for the tens of thousands of people who bike, walk, live and work on this corridor. No matter what Director Reiskin tells the Board next Tuesday afternoon, it needs to be made clear to the City as a whole, and to the SFMTA in particular, that public safety must remain their priority.

People biking and walking on these streets deserve to do so in safety and it is because of this that the Fell Street and Oak Street Safety Project warrants immediate attention and completion by the City.

For more information and background on this project, see sfbike.org/fell.