San Francisco Bike Blog

I attended the ‘Better Valencia Street’ event that SFBC had listed on its website. It was basically an outreach event by the San Francisco Department of Public Works (SFDPW, at sfdpw.com) to let us all know how our money is being spent. It was a good event, and from what I saw, it seems like a very positive project, in general, for residents, merchants, and everyone in the city who frequents the hip Valencia Street area. The SFDPW website calls the project by a few names - one of which seems to be Valencia Streetscape Improvements.

What we’re getting: wider sidewalks, bulb-outs at a couple of corners, more trees, slightly fewer parking spaces, slightly less automobile traffic, and one small physical traffic calming measure on each side of the street - a small bump out. The bike lanes will stay exactly the same width, 5 feet, but we’ll be getting an extra foot of buffer space for car parking - that is, one more foot between us and the possibility of us getting doored - that’s a huge plus. The streets will be repaved, too - as some of the streets below 15th already have been, and it’s a huge improvement. The 15th to 19th repaving won’t happen for a few more months.

To get a better view of what exactly is going down, click here (or on the image at top) for a large picture of the 16th to 17th street section - an artist’s rendering of what things will look like when the project is finished. The biggest thing drivers will notice is that there will no longer be a middle parking/turning/hanging-out lane - that’s where the extra space is coming from for the sidewalks.

Check out this modified image (larger) of the 16th Street side of the image above - something important is going on at this side with respect to the left turning lane - there is none. It creates a safety concern, but it may not necessarily be a problem - we’ll see. Since there is no left turn lane, if a car slows down or stops to make a left turn, all the cars behind the turning car may wish to speed past the stopped car on the right side of the stopped car - thus, the passing cars will encroach on the bicycle lane. This was a compromise between all interested parties. We bicyclists wanted to keep the corner sidewalk bulbouts because they act as a natural traffic calming measure, and we believe in the transportation hierarchy - pedestrians are first priority - even if it introduces a hopefully-small risk for bicyclists. This is definitely something you’ll want to be aware of as a cyclist, and one we’ll all need to watch as a community.

Reporter Masha Rumer was at the meeting, and has written up a piece on what she took away from the event, and I was definitely surprised to read the opening paragraph:

Fanning the gentrification flame of the Mission District, the Department of Public Works is about to make Valencia Street, a major transit and pedestrian hub, friendlier for pedestrians, bicyclists and local businesses between 15th and 19th Streets.

Some highlights of this $6.1 million project, according to DPW’s Great Streets Program: the center median will be removed; the sidewalks will be widened from their current 10 feet to 13-15 feet, allowing for more foot traffic, for outside seating in cafes and hopefully for room to push through swarms of bluegrass-crazed people congregating outside busy Mission establishments. The parking lane will grow by 0.25 feet to 9 feet.

Gentrification was something I did not think of at all with this project - all I ever thought was, “Calmer Valencia? Fewer cars? Yes!!” But it’s very interesting to me and something I’ll be more atuned to as this project proceeds, and future projects come online. I feel that bicycling and transportation equity is really about social justice and democracy, so I want to know if folks are feeling left out. Granted, there’s never enough money to go to all the things we want them to go to, but I’m all about win-win situations. As bicycle advocates, it’s in our best interests to get the support from as many community groups as possible, including - and I would argue, especially - the groups who are lowest on the socioeconomic ladder.

Yours truly managed to get quoted:

Peter Smith, founder of sf.bikeblogs.org and supporter of Google Bike There Map petition, also touted the renovation as a “great idea.”

Despite the gentrification issue - about which I’m not well-versed (yet) - I still think this project is great. Anything that can help get people unglued from their TVs and out in the streets to talk to their neighbors is a great thing. I think this project will make Valencia Street the best corridor in the city. 
…forgot to mention that Andy Thornley of the SFBC came up with a great idea during the event. Tonia Macneil of the San Francisco Arts Commission made a brief announcement that the Commission was charged with bringing art to the new Valencia streetscape, and that their budget was about two percent of the total cost of the project - for this project, that amounts to about $50,000. At that, Andy suggested that perhaps the Commission might be interested in looking at artful bicycle racks, like the ones that David Byrne helped bring to New York City recently. When I heard that, I thought, “Awesome!” Right in the heart of The Mission (wiki), we could have some kind of tribute rack to someone like Carlos Santana, who graduated from Mission High. That would be a tribute to music, to the local Hispanic/Latin population, and coolness. I’m not sure Tonia was all that hip to the idea, but she did seem open to considering it. I like this idea. A lot. So I plan on following up. Andy was going to send Tonia a link to that New York Times article. I could understand that Tonia might not be all that crazy about using their very limited resources to install bike racks, even if they are ‘arty’, so we need to figure out how we can make this happen. I think the new racks could be really creative, they could get bicyclists and all visitors even more excited about visiting Valencia Street, it could help raise the profile of the Arts Commission bigtime — I can definitely see this being a win-win for everyone involved.

Below are pics of the NYC bike racks:

More on the bike racks can be found on David Byrne’s personal website.

The idea that public art could also be useful in the practical sense reminded me of this post from a tech firm in Chicago, that made a very strong point about the difference between Chicago public art (practical; you can touch it; easy to engage with) vs. Seattle public art (not easy to engage with):

Chicago understands public art in a public space. The public will only be interested if they can engage with it. Walk on it, play it in, look into it, touch it, brush up against it. If you go to Millennium Park you’ll actually see and hear kids playing over the place. I don’t think you’d see a single kid at the Seattle Olympic Sculpture Park having a good time. I didn’t see any adults who were particularly interested either.

Steven Lopez of Art Zone 461, a local gallery, was at the meeting and offered to help with art-related projects.

Kris Opbroek of DPW and Dan Provence of MTA were the folks who presented the information, and then sat down with us at a couple of different tables to look over the drafts and answer a lot of the questions we had. They were both great.

[Thanks to NYCDOT and The New York Times for the photo.]

Leave comment (0)

[p.s. The Forums are open for participation.]