Results of Bike Lane Treatments on Market published by San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency

The results of ‘Raised Bikeway Demonstration Project’– a survey – were released by SFMTA (San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency) last week.

The staffers at SFMTA have recommended various features, bollards, and some type of protection - keeping in mind the results of the survey.

The treatments were conducted from Gough to 12th, on an eastbound stretch of Market Street. The installation was done in the fall of 2015 and then conducted a survey to evaluate it.

Conclusions of the survey

According to a blog published by SFMTA, “Based on the evaluation, for busy commercial streets like Market we recommend a bikeway design that’s level with the sidewalk (similar to that in option C), has a vertical curb (as used in option D) and includes buffer areas between both the traffic lane and the sidewalk.”

It further concludes, “Mountable curbs, which are angled so vehicles can roll up them if necessary, tend not to be effective deterrents to illegal parking in commercial areas.”

The authority also conducted an experiment to confirm that an elevation in the maintainable curb would not affect the cars from parking on bike lanes.

SFMTrA further quoted, “Even though best practice abroad calls for raised bike lanes to be level with the sidewalk, all of SFMTA’s test sections were designed to be mounted by vehicles. SFMTA claims this is so that para-transit vehicles can park in the bike lane to unload passengers on the sidewalk. But with a sidewalk level with the bike lane, paratransit vehicles could unload directly onto the bike lane.”

SFMTrA complained that, “MTA spent an entire year to replace the Market St. Raised Bikeway with something functionally equivalent to what was originally there. Mountable raised bike lanes are not protected bike lanes.”

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