SFMTA board approves new Valencia bikeway—but few are happy

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s board unanimously approved the new curbside Valencia Street bike lane on Tuesday, and admitted that the transit agency should have been more cautious with experiments in merchant corridors.

That experiment — a bike lane running up the center of the street — had pitted transit advocates against shopkeepers. Now cyclists and the Valencia Corridor Merchants Association were finally on the same page: Neither were fans of the new design.

“The [merchants association] cannot officially support the side-running bike lane,” said Manny Yekutiel, president of the Valencia Corridor Merchants Association, which has fought the old design. Yekutiel was one of dozens who spoke up in the three-hour-long meeting held at City Hall.

Yekutiel, echoing long-held concerns from merchants against streetscape changes, said the new design will get rid of a lot of the parking spots on Valencia Street. “We’re worried it will affect business.”

The design will remove about 79 parking or loading spots, or 40 percent of the 225 spaces on Valencia from 15th to 23rd, according to SFMTA

Although it was lambasted for months, some cyclists today lamented the end of the center lane. Erin Fieberling, a bicyclist who lives in District 9, said the current center lane makes them feel safe. It’s “a straight, clear, predictable path with no interruption,” they said, adding that it actually made them more likely to use local shops. “I use the Valencia Street bike lane most often to travel to local businesses on Valencia Street.”

For its part, the board acknowledged that the Valencia Street bikeway pilot, started August 2023, has been a failure. “We have to be very careful about experimenting in commercial corridors,” said board vice chair Stephanie Cajina. “That requires a certain level of care that perhaps we did not perceive when we initially approved this particular item. It’s a big learning.”

The controversy surrounding the center bike lane pilot program often involved neighborhood merchants who said the project harmed their business. 

But both a Mission Local analysis and the city controller’s office found that to be untrue: The bike lane had no impact on sales on the corridor. Instead, the sales decline might have reflected a general slowing of the economy. 

Still, the pilot project was met with scorn and the SFMTA decided in February to reverse course after just six months and install more conventional, side-running lanes. 

The new design will include parking-protected lanes on Valencia between 15th and 23rd streets. The design will also bring changes to the parklets along the street. Most will remain alongside the curb, but three will be rebuilt into “floating parklets” separated from the sidewalk by the bike lane.

The floating parklet design is new to San Francisco, but has worked in Oakland and New York City, according to the SFMTA. 

SFMTA will add more motorcycle and scooter parking spaces, and advertise  two SFMTA-owned parking garages at 16th and and 21st streets that are rarely full.