The Good Times are Rolling on the Embarcadero Bikeway!

The Good Times are Rolling on the Embarcadero Bikeway!
By Eillie Anzilotti

If you build it, they will ride.

That’s the main takeaway from the new two-way bikeway along the Embarcadero, which opened earlier this year. The Embarcadero is one of the most vibrant and well-visited public spaces in San Francisco: people flock to the waterfront for Bay views, excellent food, and the popular farmers’ market. With more and more people traveling along the Embarcadero by bike and scooter, the shared-use promenade was, quite simply, getting too crowded. As part of the larger Embarcadero Enhancement Program to improve transportation along the waterfront, the SFMTA’s Vision Zero Quick-Build team recently extended the two-way bikeway between Mission and Howard all the way up to Broadway to provide more space for people traveling by bike and scooter.

Six months after the new bikeway was completed, the main question is: is it working? The answer is a resounding yes. After the bikeway was installed, most bike and scooter riders opted to ride in the on-street (protected) bikeway instead of along the promenade, according to the recently published project evaluation. Those that continued to use the promenade, the report found, rode at slow speeds. After courtesy signs were added in the area in August to encourage users to use the new on-street bikeway, usage jumped even higher—to 94% of all wheeled users using the bikeway during the weekend lunch rush!

Signs for bicyclist and pedestrians show on a city street filled with cars

Signs posted throughout the project area direct people on scooters and bikes into the new bikeway to keep the promenade clear for people on foot and wheelchairs.

Promenade v. bikeway use for all wheeled users, pre and post implementation:

	AM peak (8am-9am)		PM peak (5pm-6pm)		Weekend peak (Sat 11:15am-12:15pm)
	Promenade	Bikeway	Promenade	Bikeway	Promenade	Bikeway
October 2021 (before)	47%	53%	43%	57%	23%	77%
August 2022 (after)	14%	86%	22%	78%	6%	94%

Overall, the Embarcadero promenade is now less crowded and stressful for visitors; people passing through on bikes and scooters have a calmer, more straightforward experience now that they have a safe, dedicated space to travel. There is still room for improvement when it comes to people on bikes yielding to people in crosswalks, and the project team looks forward to continuing to explore solutions with the community as part of a future phase of the project.

Speaking of community: a large part of this project’s success is due to ongoing collaboration with local stakeholders, including the farmers’ market hosted at the Ferry Building three times a week. While adding the new bikeway has required farmers’ market staff to adapt, they’ve been extremely helpful in providing feedback and working with the project team to identify solutions to vendor loading in the area. Additionally, the Ferry Building team is coordinating with project staff to identify spaces for new bike parking hubs, which will be installed in 2023 to expand parking availability in the area. For scooter riders, new regulations that took effect on November 1st limit scooter parking along portions of the Embarcadero waterfront and other popular areas, so be mindful of this guidance when planning your trip along this route.

Pedestrian shown using a crosswalk at an intersection

Clear markings along the new protected two-way bikeway indicate safe places for pedestrians to cross.

Now that the bikeway has been in the ground for six months, the project team is focused on ensuring everyone can experience a smooth trip through the area. The evaluation highlighted issues with vehicle traffic backing up near the Broadway intersection, as the project reduced the number of left-turn lanes from two to one. The community supports studying an alternative approach that would re-establish two left-turn lanes onto Broadway, and the project team aims to field test the alternative layout in early 2023 pending approval by the Port of San Francisco. The team will also use the evaluation results to help inform the Central Embarcadero Safety Project capital phase, which will extend the bikeway south for two additional blocks while making targeted upgrades to the quick-build portion of the corridor.

For now, you can find the whole evaluation report at SFMTA.com/Embarcadero--and if you’ve tried out the new bikeway in the last year, reach out to the project team [mailto:Embarcadero@sfmta.com link] to share feedback!

Published November 05, 2022 at 03:01AM
https://ift.tt/txjslY1

Comments

New top story from Time: The Security Perimeter Around the Capitol Starts to Recede — and Washington Feels a Little More Normal

https://ift.tt/3ssgaEo This article is part of the The DC Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox every weekday. Washington isn’t a city particularly known for its rationality. We do overreaction better than most, and that talent is rivaled only by underreaction. Passions fuel far too much public policy, personalities dictate what is possible and personal relationships often triumph over pragmatism. It’s something I usually bemoan and curse under my breath — or, increasingly, in this newsletter. So you’ll forgive a moment of indulgent irrationality and some merriment. For, you see, the fencing around the U.S. Capitol has come down. Well, not all of it. And the barriers that remain don’t have an expiration date and may never get one. But at least some of the garish barricades that went up in response to the deadly failed insurrection on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6 have been dismantled. The razor-wire on its top is gone, too...

New top story from Time: I Found a Rainbow At the End of My Hunt For a Vaccine Appointment

https://ift.tt/3dt1i2v A version of this article also appeared in the It’s Not Just You newsletter. Sign up here to receive a new edition every Sunday. CHASING RAINBOWS (AND VACCINES) We humans are notoriously unreliable, superstitious narrators, always scanning the horizon for signs that validate what our hearts have already told us. Take me, for example. I keep telling people I was vaccinated at Hogwarts’ Manhattan campus under the waxing moon (it was a gibbous moon to be exact). How auspicious! Ok, so my COVID-vax site was really The City College of New York . But stepping through its big old gothic gates to receive a blessing of science was wondrous, maybe a little spiritual. There was even a rainbow-y halo around that big moon, another lucky omen if you’re hungry for such things. I started digging for lore on moons and rainbows and learned that the physics of rainbows doesn’t detract from the mythical place they have in our cultural imaginations. In fact ...

New top story from Time: President Trump’s Brother, Robert Trump, Dies at 71

https://ift.tt/3g1Evdc (NEW YORK) — President Donald Trump’s younger brother, Robert Trump, a businessman known for an even keel that seemed almost incompatible with the family name, died Saturday night after being hospitalized in New York, the president said in a statement. He was 71. The president visited his brother at a New York City hospital on Friday after White House officials said he had become seriously ill. Officials did not immediately release a cause of death. “It is with heavy heart I share that my wonderful brother, Robert, peacefully passed away tonight,” Donald Trump said in a statement. “He was not just my brother, he was my best friend. He will be greatly missed, but we will meet again. His memory will live on in my heart forever. Robert, I love you. Rest in peace.” The youngest of the Trump siblings had remained close to the 74-year-old president and, as recently as June, filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Trump family that unsuccessfully sought to stop ...

Six Generations of Pint-Sized Buses Serve Muni’s Toughest Routes

Six Generations of Pint-Sized Buses Serve Muni’s Toughest Routes By Jeremy Menzies For over 80 years, special fleets of shorter than usual buses have been reserved for some of the City’s toughest routes. Winding through tight bends and climbing up steep grades, these pint-sized coaches ensure access to transit in neighborhoods where standard-length buses cannot go. As the SFMTA phases in a brand-new batch of shorter buses, here’s a look at all six generations of Muni’s “mini” fleet. “Baby White” Buses: 1938-1975 The first generation of short-length buses was intended for regular use on all Muni bus routes. Made by the White Motor Company in Cleveland, Ohio, this fleet came to SF in 1938. The buses were nicknamed “Baby Whites” after a group of longer White Co. buses arrived in 1947. In the mid 1950s, all but three of these buses were retired. The three saved continued to run on the 39 Coit Tower route until 1975—in service longer than any other bus before or after. This bus ...

New top story from Time: What to Watch For In Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s First Presidential Debate

https://ift.tt/3kSr0zp Four years ago, Donald Trump prepared to debate his general-election opponent for the first time. Down in the polls to an experienced, traditional pol, he had been reduced to spreading weird rumors and casting doubt on the legitimacy of the vote, even as questions swirled about his personal finances. Now Trump is the incumbent president, and the conditions could not be more different as he prepares for his first debate with Democratic nominee Joe Biden on Tuesday: a nation wracked by disease, disorder and disasters; an election neither candidate is treating like a foregone conclusion. And yet the similarities to 2016 are striking, from new questions about Trump’s taxes to another open Supreme Court seat . The main similarity, of course, is Trump—a singular political figure who has intensely polarized the nation. The debate, scheduled to begin at 9 p.m. Eastern at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, is especially momentous because voters ha...

New top story from Time: Biden Is Expelling Migrants On COVID-19 Grounds, But Health Experts Say That’s All Wrong

https://ift.tt/3DNqmNd Despite sharp criticism from top officials and allies within the Democratic Party , President Biden is continuing to expel hundreds of thousands of migrants arriving at the United States-Mexico border, using a specialized public health order that allows officials to circumvent the normal trappings of immigration procedure, including asylum interviews. The Biden Administration defends the use of the order , called Title 42 , arguing that summary expulsions are “necessary,” due to “the ongoing risks of transmission and spread of COVID-19.” But a growing cacophony of top public health experts are calling foul. There’s no evidence that a policy allowing for mass expulsions prevents the spread of COVID-19, they argue. And it may, in fact, have the opposite effect: by rounding up and detaining hundreds of thousands of migrants in large groups, Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), which does not offer COVID-19 testing for migrants, may actually be stoking the t...

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J कोरोना सकंट में TV सीरियल की शूटिंग शूरू, मास्क लगाकर पहुंचे स्टार्स- निया, पार्थ से लेकर रश्मि-PICS

कोरोना वायरस के चलते जारी लॉकडाउन में टीवी व फिल्मों की शूटिंग बंद थी। कोरोना के खतरे को देखते हुए तमाम सीरियल की शूटिंग रोक दी गई तो वहीं फिल्मों को रिलीज अटक गई। एंटरटेंमेंट इंडस्ट्री को कोरोना के चलते करोड़ों from टेलीविजन की खबरें | Television News in Hindi | TV Serials Update in Hindi – FilmiBeat Hindi http:/hindi.filmibeat.com/television/tv-shooting-starts-kasauti-zindagi-kay-naagin-nia-sharma-parth-samthaan-rashmi-desai-pics-090604.html?utm_source=/rss/filmibeat-hindi-television-fb.xml&utm_medium=104.71.130.47&utm_campaign=client-rss

New top story from Time: New Attempts Planned to Free Huge Ship Stuck in Suez Canal

https://ift.tt/3ddYia0 SUEZ, Egypt — A giant container ship remained stuck sideways in Egypt’s Suez Canal for a fifth day Saturday, as authorities prepared to make new attempts to free the vessel and reopen a crucial east-west waterway for global shipping. The Ever Given, a Panama-flagged ship that carries cargo between Asia and Europe, ran aground Tuesday in the narrow canal that runs between Africa and the Sinai Peninsula. The massive vessel got stuck in a single-lane stretch of the canal, about six kilometers (3.7 miles) north of the southern entrance, near the city of Suez. Peter Berdowski, CEO of Boskalis, the salvage firm hired to extract the Ever Given, said the company hoped to pull the container ship free within days using a combination of heavy tugboats, dredging and high tides. He told the Dutch current affairs show Nieuwsuur on Friday night that the front of the ship is stuck in sandy clay, but the rear “has not been completely pushed into the clay and that ...

New top story from Time: Godzilla vs. Kong Pairs Two Formidable Monster Foes—Too Bad About the People

https://ift.tt/3fqtTbb The mere concept of King Kong going up against Godzilla is, as the fancy people say, a false dichotomy. Though many of us may harbor a slight preference for one or the other, there can never be a clear winner or loser because, face it: both are awesome. In fact, the only problem with any enterprise featuring these two most enduring titans is that there is always a necessary but troublesome plot involving people. And humans in these movies—unless being held aloft from a skyscraper-top in a skimpy dress, or trampled beneath a pissed-off reptile’s clumsy, unmanicured toes—are almost always a bore. They certainly are a plot liability in Godzilla vs. Kong, though it’s not exactly the fault of the actors, who are all perfectly attractive and capable: Rebecca Hall plays brilliant person Ilene Andrews, also known as the Kong Whisperer, for obvious reasons. Alexander Skarsgård is Nathan Lind, a hottie masquerading as a slouchy academic—his specialty is a ...

New top story from Time: American Carissa Moore, New Olympic Gold Medalist, Leads A Golden Moment For Women’s Surfing

https://ift.tt/3y9oDiK Despite rougher-than-expected seas off the Japanese coast for the Olympics surfing competition as tropical storm Nepartak heads toward land, American surfing phenom Carissa Moore owned the waves. Moore, the four-time world champion and top-ranked women’s surfer in the world, defeated Bianca Buitendag of South Africa in the finals of the women’s Olympic surfing competition at the Tsurigasaki Surfing Beach, two hours east of Tokyo, on Tuesday to win the first-ever women’s Olympic surfing gold medal. (Brazil’s Italo Ferreira won the men’s event). With tropical storm Nepartak expected to bring strong winds and heavy rains that could impact an already unpredictable sport—waves have minds of their own— organizers decided to hold the final round on Tuesday before the storm hits the Japanese coast. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The final took place under threatening clouds, but conditions held up. After a while, even a rainbow appeared on the horizon...

My precise view

Search This Blog