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There's a hint of blue in the sky and there's at least some hope that air quality is improving in San Francisco. Good time to grab a bike share and go for a ride--there should be one nearby, unless you live in Cow Hollow and parts of the Marina in District Two.
"We are frustrated by the lack of progress regarding bike share in District Two," wrote the SFBC's Janice Li, in an email to Streetsblog. "We’re seeing bike share stations installed from the Panhandle to the Outer Sunset and down to the Bayview as the system expands, but there are only a small handful of stations on the outer edges of Pacific Heights, the Marina, and surrounding neighborhoods."
Years ago, in January of 2017, outreach was conducted to pick locations in D2. The community workshops covering all of the Marina locations were held at Fort Mason Center on November 15, 2018.
The following locations were approved and permitted, and are indicated as such on the Bay Wheels website:
- Filbert & Fillmore near Shake Shack
- Fillmore & Jefferson along the median on Fillmore
- North Point & Divisadero next to Lilienthal Elementary School
- Laguna & Washington next to Lafayette Park
Streetsblog reached out to Bay Wheels and SFMTA, and will update this post accordingly. However, going by the website, the first three were given final approvals over the summer. And Laguna & Washington was approved way back in October of 2019.
But still, no bikes.
"I'm very concerned that a project (any project, not just this one) can go through a years-long approval process involving several rounds of public outreach and finally receive approval from the City, only to be derailed afterwards by complaints from God-knows-who, filed outside of the official process, and with no means for the public at large to respond," wrote Marina resident and advocate Bruce Halperin, in a complaint filed with District 2 Supervisor Catherine Stefani and other city officials.
"Our office has been working closely alongside the MTA throughout this process," wrote Frankie Falzon of Stefani's office, in a response to Halperin forwarded to Streetsblog. "We haven't been provided with any specific timeline for implementation of these stations." Streetsblog also reached out to Stefani directly and will update this post.
This kind of issue--where the city holds hearings for bike share stations or other infrastructure, the public approves them, and then the project is delayed or derailed behind closed doors--has come up many times before. And as Streetsblog has covered before, District 2 is a hotbed of resistance to bike share. The Examiner has reported how Stefani opposes stations in her district. Neighbors complaining about loss of parking is often the motivation for the pushback (or in this case, just not doing it). "I really hope not. They already compromised by reducing the size of the station from seven parking spots to four," said Halperin.
Either way, "As more people choose to bike during the pandemic, we desperately need to be investing in sustainable transportation infrastructure like bike share stations citywide," said Li.
Halperin just wants the damn stations installed so he can use them. "Enough is enough!" he told Streetsblog.
Do you live or work near an approved bike share station that just isn't getting installed? Post below.
