Getting San Francisco’s Polk Street Bike Lane Back

Below is an open letter I recently sent to Jeffrey Tumlin, Director of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, and Janelle Wong, Executive Director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. I call out SFMTA’s and SFBC’s failure to lead responsibly early in the pandemic when the unpublicized decision was made to eliminate a significant section of the bike lane on Polk Street. I believe there is now an opportunity to undo some of that damage.

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Safe streets engineering and bicycle infrastructure are not equally distributed across San Francisco, let alone fair and equitable. Early in the pandemic, the Great Highway, Lake Street, JFK Drive, Page Street and other roadways throughout the city got almost immediate changes to allow for social distancing so people could — and would — get outside for physical and mental health. Yet there was only one meaningful change to any of the streets I bike on every day of the week.

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency decided the city’s emergency response to the public health crisis required the removal of a bike lane, with no replacement or alternative. Sometime during the summer of 2020, SFMTA committed to “sharing” the east side of Polk Street with private businesses at the expense of bicyclists. In their generosity, SFMTA took away the already weak and limited northbound Polk Street bike lane and gave that public space to restaurants. There were no public notices, no hearings, no outreach — and, as far as I’ve been…