San Francisco’s new parking-protected bikeway on JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park. Note that the cars on the left are parked. The parking is on the left of the bicycle lane.
It’s the second post from Bikas recent trip to San Francisco. See also Bikas’ earlier post about San Francisco’s new green bike lane conflict zones (and our S.F. sketches if you’re into that.)
Today, we’re going to report on San Francisco’s new protected bike lanes on JFK Drive. This bike facility is located on John F. Kennedy Drive in Golden Gate Park; it extends from Transverse Drive to Stanyan Street, which is where the panhandle begins.
These sorts of bike facilities are common in much of the world, but here in the U.S. they’re innovative. There’s not yet a uniform language as to what this facility would be called. Generally when a bikeway is parallel to a roadway, and there’s something (a curb, parked cars, bollards, etc.) between the bikeway and the car traffic, then it’s a “protected bike lane” and that’s what SF Streetsblog calls it. The SFMTA website calls this facility a “separated bikeway” or “cycletrack.” The SFBC website calls it a “parking-protected bikeway.” I’ve heard New York City folks call these a “floating parking lane” too. Whatever you call it, it’s an excellent facility.
What makes it “protected” is that there are parked cars to the left of the bike lane. Nearly all bike lanes in Los Angeles have parking on the right (the only exception is where there isn’t any parking.) Here’s SFMTA’s graphic showing how the JFK Parking-Protected Bikeway works:
Diagram – from SFMTA website – shows how parking has been moved to the left of the bicycle lane.
This sort of facility is unfamiliar for L.A. cyclists. If my description isn’t clear, maybe watch this video from Portland, Oregon:
Having bicycled protected bike lanes in New York City and Long Beach, I had come to think of protected bike lanes as fancy expensive facilities that require relatively costly new bike-signals and curb-work… but seeing San Francisco’s JFK treatment, I realized that in the appropriate settings, protected bikeways can be fairly cheap. I didn’t have time to ride the whole length, so I may have missed something, but it appears that the only cost here was lane-marking paint – no signals and curbs required – so that would lower the financial barriers for creating these facilities.
Sign gives road users details on where to find out more about the parking changes
I suspect that one of the potential hurdles for this kind of facility is just getting the word out and making drivers, cyclists and pedestrians aware of how to use the new facility.
The photo to the left shows the sign that directs drivers and cyclists to call SFMTA for information.
According to the SFBC newsletter, bike coalition volunteers were out along JFK passing out information on how the new configuration works.
Reading some online accounts, there have been some issues with occasional cars parked in the bike, but I didn’t encounter any of that.
Entering the park near the panhandle, here’s what it looks like:
Parked cars on the left, cyclists riding the parking-protected bikeway on JFK Drive in San Francisco
This street is especially well-suited for a protected facility: high levels of bicycling, with no (or few) driveways.
Here’s the way the facility works at a stop sign intersection:
Approaching a stop sign on the JFK drive protected bikeway.
Markings in the bikeway indicate “Merge Ahead.” The blue striping in the above photo indicates a handicap parking space – located near curb cuts near intersections.
Here’s a shot closer to the stop sign:
Stop sign intersection on San Francisco’s JFK Drive protected bikeway
At the bottom right of the photo is the crosswalk (across the bike lane) where handicapped folks can cross the lane to the curb cut. The bike lane ends momentarily, turning into a shared sharrowed right turn lane. The protected bike lane resumes at the far side of the intersection. It seems like this treatment would work ok at a signalized intersection, too… Though it drops the protection at the intersection (so maybe it would be less welcoming for beginner cyclists), it seemed to work fine.
Look ma! No curbwork! No bike signals!
So… dear Los Angeles readers… where should we do this sort of parking-protected cycletrack in Los Angeles?
Joe’s guess at what criteria might make it work well:
- relatively few driveways
- relatively few intersections
- relatively high volume of bicyclists
- existing parking
Where in Los Angeles?
(Note that LADOT says we can’t do this – but they’ve said that all the time about all kinds of things from sharrows to CicLAvia to road diets to you name it.)
Dennis Hindman
07/05/2012
My top pick for implementing a cycle track would be the USC area, which on page 11 of the LACBC bicycle count in 2011 has the intersection of Hoover St and 30th St as the highest bicycling totals by far of all of the street intersections that had complete counts.
https://lacbc.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/2011_labikecountreport_5_29.pdf
Wouldn’t you know it, before the end of 2014 DOT has to complete a project for So. Figueroa St,, which would include a cycle track running next to USC and it would provide a low-stress connection for students, or other residents, to go to the Staples Center. This would enable So. Figueroa to become the low-stress trunk, instead of a high-stress barrier, for residential streets that connect to it.
http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/tpp/offices/bike/documents/CBAC/June_6_2012/2012-06-04_Fig_Technical_Sections_LA_Protected_Bike_Lane.pdf
Since cycle tracks are very expensive, my other choice would involve using cycle tracks as interconnecting links to islands of low-stress residential streets and bike paths which would then form a network that the mainstream adult population could tolerate riding on.
As you can see on page 48 of this link to the report from the Mineta Transportation Institute, the researchers were able to link the low-stress residential streets and bike paths into a network using only five cycle tracks as shown on page 49:
http://transweb.sjsu.edu/PDFs/research/1005-low-stress-bicycling-network-connectivity.pdf
The population of Los Angeles is five times that of San Jose. So, lets assume that it would take at least twenty cycle tracks in Los Angeles to duplicate the results the researchers got for San Jose.
My next selection for a cycle track would be either Sepulveda Blvd or Van Nuys Blvd. The selection would depend on which street Metro decides to do a Rapidways improvement project on. I would expect Metro to finance the installation of a cycle track at either location.
A cycle track on Sepulveda Blvd would enable a low-stress connection to numerous residential streets and low-stress east/west bikeways that would get you past the 405 freeway barrier. Such as the Orange Line bike path and upcoming bicycle friendly streets such as Rayen St, and Chase St.
Van Nuys having a cycle track would be along the second heaviest transit corridor in the San Fernando Valley, which is certain to have many people willing to bicycle along once it is made low-stress. This would also connect to the east/west Orange Line bike path and numerous low-stress residential streets.
So far I’ve mentioned two locations for cycle tracks and neither of them should cost Los Angeles anything to implement.
It could be that the three Orange Line bike paths, the San Fernando Rd bike path and the Chandler Blvd bike path would be considered as part of the twenty cycle tracks. That would leave twelve more cycle tracks that would need to be selected in order to have a connected network of low-streets bikeways.
Dennis Hindman
07/05/2012
Oh, I forgot to mention that there could be a cycle track along Crenshaw Blvd that Metro would pay for and then along the Sepulveda pass to connect the San Fernando Valley with the rest of the city, all paid for by Metro. Geez, this is expensive. That would leave about ten cycle tracks to complete in order to have the low-stress network that I previously mentioned.
walkeaglerock
07/06/2012
Colorado Boulevard! There’s the space to do it! And Los Angeles Street just needs physical barriers to become partial cycle tracks. I’d echo Dennis in saying areas close to areas with high cycling rates like college campuses or approaching transit hubs.
And I know we want geographic equality in implementation but consider this, if the city does 40 miles of bikeways a year and is geographically equitable, how much will cycling rates go up?
And what if the city did 40 miles of bikeways in Northeast LA and Downtown LA combined, all in a year? The miles would create local networks as well as create a commuting corridor for easy, comfortable travel through neighborhoods that already cycle above average relative to the rest of the city. About 17 miles to create routes between the two communities, about 10 miles in Northeast LA to enhance biking conditions there and then 13 miles in downtown LA.
Joe Walker
09/15/2012
There are not many curb cuts on this section of JFK Drive. So it was a fairly easy project for San Francisco MTA. However the price tag for the protected bike lanes was around $350-400K. Lots of money for paint. Nothing physical was built.
Many bicyclists who ride in the traffic lane preferred the previous design with 15-20 ft wide curb lanes. Plenty of open space to avoid cars. Now there is a 6 ft wide bike lane, buffer zone, floating parking lane, moving traffic lane. No margin for error.
Cyclists who don’t want to be squeezed into the bike lane with beginners use the moving traffic lane, which is more narrow than before. A car parks in the floating parking lane. When the driver opens the door, it fully swings out and blocks traffic. A cyclist has a greater chance of getting doored today with this new design than before.
Besides NYC and Portland where else are there floating parking lanes? Drivers aren’t used to park in the middle of the street. MTA doesn’t have signs instructing drivers how/where to park. To reach the curb, young and old passengers from the parked car walk across the bike at any point, slowing down bicyclists.
MTA made a costly bad experiment with these protected bike lanes on JFK Drive. Hopefully Dept. of Transportation of other cities can learn from MTA’s mistakes.
Gregski
09/17/2012
Fortunately for you and your riding companions you approached the Conservatory Drive intersection (bottom 2 photos) on a day when right-turning westbound motorists’ view of you was not completely obscured by the tall tourist busses and paratransit vans that usually park in the designated parking spaces leading up to that intersection. Not only does the intersection design direct motorists to make a “right hook” turn across the bike lane (is this really what we want to train motorists to do?) but it makes it a blind turn by situating the tallest vehicles there. This bike lane is very unpopular with many of the most experienced cyclists in San Francisco.