Responding to the growing interest in bicycle transportation, last month the City began installing its first physically separated bike lane on Market Street, the busiest corridor in San Francisco for two-wheeled transportation.
The newly separated bike lane on San Francisco’s Market Street is making the street safer and more inviting to people on bicycles. Photo by: San Francisco Bicycle Coalition
Published: May, 2010
Responding to the growing interest in bicycle transportation, last month the City began installing its first physically separated bike lane on Market Street, the busiest corridor in San Francisco for two-wheeled transportation.
White, soft-hit posts were added to the existing bike lane on Market Street between Octavia Boulevard and Eighth Street, creating an exclusive path of travel for bicycle commuters and deterring cars from illegally parking in the busy bike lane.
This first-of-its kind improvement in San Francisco comes as a welcome addition for the more than 120,000 people who bicycle regularly in San Francisco. Biking increased 53 percent on the streets of San Francisco between 2006 and 2009, according to counts from the S.F. Municipal Transportation Agency.
“Physically separated bike lanes are a proven way to encourage more people to ride bicycles for transportation, and what better street to add this safety innovation to than Market Street, the city’s most important bicycling corridor,” says Neal Patel, Community Planner for the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, an 11,000-member nonprofit group that promotes bicycling for everyday transportation. “We expect to see the numbers of people choosing to bike on Market Street grow dramatically as the City continues to invest in more welcoming conditions for riding.”
Businesses along Market Street are also seeing the positive impacts of more people bicycling. “A lot of our customers arrive by bicycle” says Josefine Gylleback, manager of Cafe Trieste on Market St. and Gough. “I think these improvements will attract more bicycling customers, which is good for business, and the addition of the posts means bicyclists don’t have to worry about cars parked in the bike lane.”
In a February survey, 90 percent of bicyclists said the one-block separated bike lane on Market St., which was piloted initially, made them feel safer, and 80 percent of respondents said they would bike on Market Street more often if the separated bike lane was extended farther.
“The separated bike lane has transformed my commute and vastly improved this stretch of Market Street, making it safer and more pleasant for me and other people riding bikes,” says Steve Hall, a marketing director for an investment firm who has been bicycle commuting from his home in the Mission to his office at the Ferry Building for more than a decade. “I would love to see this separated bike lane extended to the full length of Market Street, so I would feel more comfortable bicycling regularly with my 7-year-old son to the Embarcadero.”
The SF Municipal Transportation Agency reported that Market St. often has more bike commuters than automobiles during the peak morning commute, according to counts taken at Van Ness. “We are eager to see the City continue this fully separated bikeway on Market Street from Octavia Blvd. to the Embarcadero, which will encourage more first-time bicyclists to ride comfortably,” says Patel. “This will attract people of all ages and skills to travel our city’s main corridor in a healthy, non-polluting way—whether for work, for shopping, or just for fun.”
