SF’s New Valencia Street Bike Lane Will Have to Go Around, And Between, Parklets

It’s often said that progress isn’t a straight line.

Judging by a briefing Monday by the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, neither is the proposed redesigned bike lane on Valencia Street.

As part of SFMTA’s decision in June to end a controversial center-running bikeway pilot and instead move forward with a protected, side-running bike lane, the agency gave Valencia Street merchants the option to keep their parklets curbside, move them slightly away from the sidewalk or remove them completely.

At Monday’s briefing, officials confirmed the final tally: Of the 26 merchants with parklets on Valencia between 15th and 23rd streets, 21 have chosen to keep their parklets curbside, three have chosen “floating” parklets, and two have chosen to get rid of theirs altogether.

This means the future side-running bike lane on Valencia, which SFMTA hopes to break ground on in January, will be anything but straight.

The proposed lane will mostly run adjacent to the sidewalk, but when it encounters one of the 21 curbside parklets, it will curve around that parklet, something SFMTA staff call “slaloming.”

When the bike lane passes a floating parklet, it will thread a path between that parklet and the sidewalk.

The curbside parklet design is safer for people entering and exiting the parklet because it connects with the sidewalk. A floating parklet design, on the other hand, allows cyclists to ride in a straight line but can increase the likelihood of pedestrian-cyclist collisions as people cross the bike lane to enter and exit the parklet.

Marcel Moran, a faculty fellow at the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University, said he doesn’t foresee problems on the Valencia corridor if there is a combination of floating and non-floating parklets.

He pointed out the bike lane already “slaloms” around a curbside parklet at Four Barrel Coffee near 15th Street.

“It’s not an unreasonable type of maneuver for a cyclist. It’s very visible, and it doesn’t create an undue burden,” Moran said.

In instances where parklets are floated, Moran said San Francisco can learn from design elements used by city planners in Oakland, New York City and Paris to reduce the chance of pedestrian-cyclist conflicts, including speed bumps and signage.

After all the upheaval over the center-running bike lane pilot, which spurred mixed feelings from cyclists and complaints over the loss of parking from businesses, SFMTA staff have prioritized letting merchants choose what happens next with their parklets.

“There’s been a lot of back and forth with parklet owners this year,” project manager Paul Stanis said.

Stanis told KQED that, unlike the center-running bikeway, the side-running bike lane would not be a pilot.

“This will be the permanent condition once it is fully installed next year,” Stanis said.

Moran called the proposed design a “reasonable compromise.”

“Valencia Street can handle a mix of floating and non-floating parklets, as long as we’re very careful about the potential conflict zones, which are still going to be an improvement over a center-running bike lane,” he said.

The SFMTA board is expected to vote on whether to move forward with the proposal in November.

SFMTA plans to share the final design with the community later this month at walking tours and open house events.