Cyclists and Businesses Reflect on 2 Months With the Valencia Street Bikeway 

Avid cyclists like Laurel Matthews, who ride often through the heart of Valencia Street in San Francisco’s Mission District, have gotten used to pedaling away on the usual bike lanes that run along parked cars.

“In the old configuration, cars would just pull in front of you,” Matthews said. “I like that cars at least do not pull into the lane yet.”

Since Aug. 1, a center-running bikeway has been in effect along Valencia Street from 15th to 23rd streets. Two-way bicycle traffic happens in the middle of the street. Both plastic bollards and a rubber curb, which border either side of the lane, provide some protection from cars.

The change is a result of the Mid-Valencia Pilot, which was approved in April by the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. SFMTA authorized the construction of the new bikeway, aiming to make the street safer and easier for businesses to work with delivery and ride-hailing apps, according to Tom Maguire, director of the Streets Division for SFMTA. (The pilot is set to last one year through August 2024.)

“We’re trying to adapt the street to the very unique conditions that the merchants and the residents on Valencia are facing right now,” he said.

In addition to the new bikeway, the Mid-Valencia Pilot changed many metered parking spots to loading zones and prohibited left turns from 15th to 23rd streets.

Safety first

Valencia Street — both a popular bike route connecting the northern and southern parts of the city and a nightlife hub — is one of the city’s target areas for improving traffic injuries and deaths.

According to a May 2023 SFMTA report (PDF), two Valencia Street intersections had a combined 22 bicycle-involved injury collisions from 2017–2022 — among the highest reported injuries of any intersections in the city.

Pedestrian safety is also a concern. On Sept. 20, 80-year-old Jian Huang of San Francisco was hit and killed by a driver making a left turn onto Valencia at 18th Street — marking the second pedestrian death on Valencia Street this year.

Following this latest tragedy, transportation advocacy groups like Walk SF want to see a ban on left turns onto Valencia, building off the pilot’s prohibition on certain left turns.

“If we look at every single fatality that’s happened on Valencia Street since 2014, it’s all been cars turning left,” said Jodie Medeiros, executive director of Walk SF. “This is a known problem and we need to do everything to end that problem.”

SFMTA plans to put out a status report on the pilot this fall. Maguire said that document will give further details, such as how vehicle, bicycle and pedestrian traffic has changed, and how businesses have been affected.

According to Maguire, if the pilot does not meet its goals, the city would rip up the project and go back to the drawing board.

Cycling up

Cyclists have mixed feelings about riding on the new center bikeway.

“I’ve heard from a lot of people who say they’ve either stopped biking on Valencia and started using an alternative bike route, or they just stopped biking period.” said Luke Bornheimer, a sustainable transportation advocate, who has strongly opposed the bikeway since the early planning stages.

He says the speed bumps and posts, which border the bikeway, are not enough to protect cyclists from drivers who might illegally turn through the bikeway — and that the two-way design is unintuitive and could cause crashes.

Some cyclists like Kate Blumberg, who has commuted by bicycle for 28 years, are happy about the new lane.

“The Valencia bike lanes make me feel like king of the world,” she said. “It makes bikes seem like the clear priority on the street.”

Before the new bikeway, floods of app-based rideshare and delivery workers would double-park in the old bike lane while they grabbed a burrito or dropped off their passengers, forcing cyclists to merge into traffic.

Business woes

Yaser Awadalla, owner of Nizario’s Pizza on Valencia Street, says while things appear safer for cyclists, he’s noticed a downturn in sales since the new bikeway was installed (contributing to the overall slump caused by the COVID pandemic).

“There’s a lot less stop-and-go than before,” Awadalla said. “We used to depend on that a lot for pizza-by-the-slice. For the sake of the business, yeah, I would like it to go back to the way it was.”

Next door, at Taqueria La Cumbre, cashier Duvan Duran says sales are down, too. He blames the  loss of metered spots.

As part of the pilot, the city took away 71 metered spots and replaced many with a new type of dual-use loading zone. From 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., those spots are for commercial loading, but from 6–10 p.m., it can be used for 5-minute loading by anyone. This zone is partly intended to accommodate app-based deliveries and ride hailing, according to SFMTA.

“The construction workers don’t come in their trucks to eat. The painters don’t come in a group and eat. People now have five minutes to park and eat. I don’t think that’s enough time,” Duran said.

He wants the city to extend the amount of time people can park and reduce the amount people need to pay.

“Look at today. I mean, the weather is nice. There’s a lot of restaurants over here, but there’s nobody here, because it’s hard to find parking,” said Miguel Ramirez, owner of Los Amigos restaurant, which was empty when he spoke with me on a recent sunny afternoon.

Ramirez said he welcomes the new center bikeway — but not at the cost of dealing with the new loading zones. This fall, he and fellow restaurant owners plan to ask the city to remove the new bikeway at a future SFMTA meeting. But he doubted that the city would go through with this approach.

“It will be hard because they already spent the money, and they already put the lane in the middle,” Ramirez said.