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

Updates to our Valet Bike Parking Program

Posted on by Cecilia Vega-Mayer

We’ve made the difficult decision to pause most of our Valet Bike Parking program, which has been a popular way for San Franciscans to arrive at large-scale venues and events via bicycle and feel confident that their bike is secure and monitored while they’re having fun. 

While this was a difficult decision, we recognize that as an organization, our focus has been too broad — in this crucial year for our advocacy and programmatic work, as the City is rolling out a generationally important Biking and Rolling Plan, we’re taking a step back to re-evaluate how we can better serve those goals. And to really affect transformative change here in San Francisco, we must continue to focus our organizational efforts and resources on activities that have a greater impact towards our mission.

We know our most popular valet presence for years has been at Giants home games — so many of our members appreciate being able to ride to Oracle Park for those events, and the good news is that the Giants will continue to offer that service in the 2025 season by running the program in-house. We’re grateful for their years of good partnership and their commitment to making it easier to bike and roll to their iconic San Francisco home, and we’re always rooting for the home team to win. 

While it’s bittersweet to pause a program that’s brought so much joy and security during its tenure, we’re confident that valet bike parking has proven its value over and over again across the city and we’re proud of that! Many venues now have their own program to routinely park bikes for attendees, which makes it easier to choose to bike to events. We also continue to remind our partners and event promoters that the SF Administrative Code requires monitored bicycle parking for events requiring a street closure and with an anticipated number of participants greater than 2,000, as part of the City’s commitment to their Transit First policy. 

You’ll still see us and our cheerful orange tent from time to time! We’ll continue offering valet bike parking at our own SFBike events and some of the city’s annual events where it’s been most popular — we’re just scaling back for now in order to reevaluate the program’s impact and financial viability. No final decisions have been made, and we hope that valet bike parking will come back in the future, even better than ever.

Construction begins on Valencia, and we have concerns

Posted on by Claire Amable

Construction begins on Valencia today, for the next phase of the design of its protected bikeway. Although we strongly support the curbside parking-protected bike lanes that have been approved and are finally being implemented, we have grave concerns about the construction period.

The most important thing SFMTA and Public Works can do now — to keep vulnerable road users safe, to minimally impact Valencia businesses, and to launch the new design in the best possible light — is quickly and competently implement the changes. Doing so requires learning the lessons of the disastrously slow and confusing rollout of the center-running lane in 2023.

To that end, we’re incredibly disappointed in the agency’s decision to not provide an alternative bike route on Valencia Street during construction — stakeholders who saw the calamity in 2023 clearly voiced that this needed to be a top priority for construction this time around. 

We also have major safety concerns about the decision to close the entirety of the center-running bike lane on February 18, and forcing people on bikes to share the lane with drivers, which is a repeat of a major mistake made in 2023. In the absence of active construction in the center-running bike lane, and with only signage marking it as closed, people on bikes will continue riding in it, as they did in the last round of construction. 

If people biking and rolling feel unsafe sharing the lane with drivers during construction, we are recommending people take Shotwell Slow Street as an alternative to Valencia Street. And sign up below to stay updated as we continue to push SFMFTA to extend the protected curbside bike lanes from 23rd Street to Cesar Chavez.

SIGN UP

Our statement on the delayed Biking and Rolling Plan approval

Posted on by San Francisco Bicycle Coalition

We heard today that the Biking and Rolling Plan, originally slated to be presented for final approval to the SFMTA Board of Directors at their Tuesday Feb 18 hearing, is being postponed to the March 4 hearing. We’re extremely disappointed with this last-minute decision. 

We know that SFMTA staff is ready to present the BRP for final approval on Tuesday, Feb 18 because funding agreements required that they do so by this deadline – and we had every expectation that the SFMTA Board of Directors was ready to approve it. Approving the Plan is only the beginning, and moving quickly towards implementation is crucial. This unnecessary delay will have consequences for the life-saving improvements we have waited too long for already.

The apparent reason is to give the Board complete focus on the crisis facing Muni — a topic that certainly demands attention. We’re acutely aware that the SFMTA is facing a fiscal cliff and that additional Muni cuts are coming and will be painful and destabilizing. We also know that ignoring the all-but-finalized and already delayed Biking and Rolling Plan won’t improve material conditions for people trying to get around SF, and failing to prioritize active and sustainable transportation choices will only push more people to become car-dependent.

This means the agency must work towards avoiding the fiscal cliff while also passing, and then continuing to strengthen, the Biking and Rolling Plan. It is the duty of the SFMTA Board of Directors and city leadership to do both, and to do them simultaneously. As the saying goes, we have to walk and chew gum.

The delay is a missed opportunity for city leaders to educate the public that investing in robust transit and in a vision for safe streets are not mutually exclusive, and are indeed sourced from entirely separate funding streams. In explaining this, City leaders could counter the disinformation that investing in biking and rolling somehow saps Muni’s resources.

Delaying the approval of the BRP gives more time for the opponents of sustainable transportation to muster their forces and continue their strategy of disingenuously pitting safe biking, rolling, and even walking against Muni, in hopes of tanking all of it –  we cannot let them. When the BRP does finally come forward for a vote in early March, we must show up in numbers that leave no doubt to city leaders that we are the voices they should be concerned about and listening to; that we remain united in our commitment to demanding the strongest possible Biking and Rolling Plan, to make San Francisco streets safer for everyone.

RSVP FOR MARCH 4 HEARING

Open letter to SFMTA Board: Approve the Biking and Rolling Plan – AND strengthen it

Posted on by San Francisco Bicycle Coalition

Dear Board of Directors, 

We are the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition and we are asking you to approve the Biking and Rolling Plan this month, while also directing SFMTA staff to come back in 6 months with a progress report on implementing Slow School Zones, and to come back in a year with an amendment that commits to rigorous All Ages and Abilities standards on all crosstown routes within the Plan’s first five years.

This plan, which is the product of nearly 3 years of work and enormous outreach and engagement efforts, will shape the future of biking and rolling and how people will get around our city for years to come. That future must include people of all ages and abilities riding safely on our streets, free from traffic violence. 

Recognizing the already-present impacts of climate change, the new SF residents that will accompany 82,000 new housing units, and the need for improved livability, equity and quality of life in a city, passing the Biking and Rolling Plan is more than a common sense decision. 

As we all work to avert the Muni fiscal cliff, our city must also commit to solid biking and rolling infrastructure and programs to complement transit choices. And if changes come to Muni service, we cannot have thousands of people getting into single occupancy vehicles – road congestion would worsen, pollution would skyrocket and traffic violence would increase. A first-rate city is one that has both strong public transportation and active transportation options. We are counting on you to get us there.

This Plan must represent the floor, not the ceiling. Passing it is the first step — the most important and challenging part will be implementing it. And to do that, we need your leadership. We call on each of you to approve this plan, and to direct staff to quickly begin implementation with updates on the Slow School Zones in six months and crosstown routes in one year.

Lastly, thank you to the SFMTA’s Biking and Rolling Plan team for all your work on this plan in the last three years. 

Sincerely, Your San Francisco Bicycle Coalition


Send your email to the SFMTA Board


THE RESULTS ARE IN: OUR 2025 BOARD ELECTION WINNERS

Posted on by San Francisco Bicycle Coalition

The staff administrators of the recent SF Bicycle Coalition board elections congratulate the winners:

Joanna Bate, Ernesto Cuellar, Kristy Frilling Skelly, Clarissa Garvey, Roan Kattouw, Pooja Muddasani, and Alex Thornton.

Members in good standing cast a total of 259 tallied online ballots.

Details on the entire 2025 Board of Directors election process are available here. And details on this election’s round-by-round results are here. For more information about multi-winner ranked-choice voting, click here. This election was conducted using Meek’s Single Transferable Vote method.

The first board meeting with the newly elected members will be held on February 24, 2025. We look forward to working with the winners, who will serve terms of two years on our board of directors alongside the seven existing board members whose terms have not expired. And we thank you, our wonderful members, for participating in this election.

Not yet a member or need to renew? Join or renew today to support our work for better biking all year long.

Mid-Valencia project overcomes CEQA hurdle and begins construction

Posted on by Claire Amable

Update: SFMTA announced on Friday that due to anticipated rain this week, they’d be delaying the start of construction to start on Tuesday, Feb 18.

Last Tuesday, after hearing from over 20 safe biking advocates rallied by the SF Bicycle Coalition and allies, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously voted 10-0 to reject a California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) appeal of the Mid-Valencia curbside bike lane project, which was filed by VAMANOS (Valencia Association of Merchants, Artists, and Organizations). (Supervisor Rafael Mandelman recused himself from the vote, because he owns property within 1000 feet of the project area.) The group is advocating to revert back to unprotected bike lanes along Valencia Street, restore left turns, and to put the bike lane on a different street. 

The rejection of the appeal affirms the Planning Department’s finding that the project is statutorily exempt from CEQA, and that there are no legal grounds for the appeal.

Under SB922 and SB288, active transportation projects have statutory exemption from environmental review because they improve pedestrian and bicycle safety by constructing safe street infrastructure––which advances our City’s transit-first policy, Vision Zero, and sustainable transportation goals. Exempting active transportation projects from CEQA means we can implement life-saving and environmentally friendly interventions faster and more cost effectively.

We applaud Supervisor Fielder’s thoughtful leadership, meeting with all parties involved — merchants, SF Planning, SFMTA, and us — while clearly stating in her remarks at the hearing that, although she understands some stakeholders’ concerns, there is no legal reason to uphold a CEQA appeal. We’d also like to thank Supervisor Dorsey for his strong remarks acknowledging the history of perversely using CEQA to block or delay safe bike infrastructure, and upholding the position that CEQA appeals “will not be used to delay important bike and pedestrian infrastructure from being built.”

Now that the CEQA appeal has been rejected by the Board of Supervisors, construction on the Mid-Valencia project is starting this Monday, February 10. Construction will require three phases: removing the center-running bike lane, repaving part of the street and then installing the new parking-protected curbside bike lanes. Each of those phases will start at 23rd Street, working northward to 15th Street where the existing curbside protected lane begins. 

After 2023’s botched roll out of the center-running bike lane, we are disappointed to see no alternative bike lane proposed during construction. Not providing a temporary bike lane on Valencia during construction and forcing people on active transportation to share the lane with drivers is going to be confusing and unsafe. 

For people on bikes who feel unsafe sharing the road with drivers, we recommend these alternative routes: 

  1. Traveling southbound on Valencia Street: Make a left turn on 14th Street to then go right on Shotwell Slow Street; then turn right on 25th Street to get back onto Valencia Street to the Tiffany Wiggle. 
  2. Traveling northbound on Valencia Street: Make a right turn at 25th Street and then a left on Shotwell Slow Street. Continue going north on Shotwell and then make a left on 15th Street to reconnect to Valencia Street. 

As this segment of Valencia moves towards a final design, we will be advocating for the SFMTA to complete the corridor by extending the protected curbside bike lanes from 23rd Street to Cesar Chavez. Get involved in the next phase of this saga by signing up for updates below.

SIGN UP

We’re so close to having a new Biking and Rolling Plan

Posted on by Krissa Cavouras

Last Tuesday, the SFMTA Board of Directors heard an informational item from the Biking and Rolling Plan team, who were presenting updates to the Plan ahead of the Feb. 18 hearing at which the Board will consider and vote on final approval. Staff and community partners presented on the Community Action Plans and on updates to the draft Plan including proposed projects and decision-making processes for selecting projects.

Your SF Bicycle Coalition showed up in force to demand that the Board direct staff to strengthen the plan in the following key ways:

  • Prioritize Slow School Zones around City elementary schools in the first five years of the plan
  • Build a base grid of convenient cross-town routes that meet NACTO’s All Ages and Abilities guidelines within five years
  • More clearly articulate in the Plan how “community readiness” is defined

More than a dozen members and fellow advocates gave public comment, speaking to their experiences as people who bike and roll and who deserve the most robust, ambitious possible Plan – not just for our safety, but for the city’s own climate and transportation goals to be met in the next 15 years. 

We were heartened to hear some of the Directors questioning why the current draft Plan does not go far enough to meet the needs of the next two decades. Director Dominica Henderson stated that community readiness cannot create 5 to 15 year delays or too-slow processes while the lives of vulnerable road users are jeopardized. Director Mike Chen directed SFMTA to commit to a two-year prioritization for Slow School Zones — one of our key priorities. 

While we appreciated direction from the Board and we know that SFMTA staff sorely need their support and leadership in this time of fiscal crisis for the agency, we remain concerned by the version of the Biking and Rolling Plan that we expect will come back for final approval in February – the lack of timelines and goals strips the plan of accountability, and saps it of urgency that can focus the will of the agency and city leaders. 

We also know what we’re up against. Opponents of safe and accessible biking and rolling were organized and showed up with supporters. They used a familiar playbook, trying to discredit biking as a valid form of transportation, claiming that only young, fit newcomers bike, and even stating that no families with children would ever bike together. They also suggested, dangerously and untruthfully, that even our current modest progress towards safe biking and rolling has spurred the agency’s financial crisis. We must continue to show up in meetings and other public forums to counter such misinformation. 

We will continue to press the agency and organize our fellow advocates, understanding that passage of the Plan as merely the first step in our fight towards the strongest, safest and most ambitious possible biking and rolling network for San Francisco. As we’ve demanded, and SFMTA staff has begun to echo, this Plan represents the floor, not the ceiling, of what city and agency leadership must deliver. 

If you haven’t yet, please sign the SF CYCLES petition. In these last crucial few weeks, we will share the petition with agency leadership and elected officials, demanding momentum for rapid implementation of the Biking and Rolling Plan. 

Sign the Petition

Further delays to Oak Street Quick-Build

Posted on by Rachel Clyde

Your San Francisco Bicycle Coalition started working on the Oak Street Quick-Build over a year ago and we are so close to the end. The project was delayed at the end of 2024 and, unfortunately, we are seeing some more delays. If it moves forward as planned, we are expecting it to go to the SFMTA Board of Directors for final approval in the next month.

Some of the stakeholders in the Haight-Ashbury area are worried about the parking loss associated with the project. SFMTA staff are working to smooth over these concerns by reassuring them that there are no alternative design options that would provide fewer lost parking spots. 

Much of the parking loss included in this project isn’t necessitated by the bike lane, including implementation of daylighting required by state law and creating signal separation for pedestrians crossing Masonic at Oak. 

During the outreach process, a major concern from residents is that people don’t feel safe crossing Masonic at the Panhandle walking path, because cars are turning left at the same time. It’s confusing and unsafe for everyone – so the city plans to create a separate signal phase for pedestrians. This requires creating more capacity for left turns at that intersection, which means getting rid of some parking spaces. 

Ultimately, there are only 9 parking spots lost in this project that are a direct result of the protected bike lane. 

We are still confident that the Oak Street Quick-Build will go to the SFMTA Board of Directors soon. We are planning for approval in February and implementation in the Spring. Stay tuned because we’ll share with you as soon as it’s scheduled for the Board and how you can show your support. Sign up for the campaign list so you can be the first to know.

Sign up for campaign updates