Our stance on the Biking and Rolling Plan

After two years of public outreach and engagement, the SF Municipal Transportation Agency’s (SFMTA) Board of Directors received a presentation from staff last Tuesday on the first draft of the Biking and Rolling Plan–the city’s first official update to the bike plan in over 15 years. 

Biking and rolling are at a crossroads in San Francisco – and the Biking and Rolling Plan represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity. Right now, only 8% of the city’s bike and roll network is high-quality protected or separated infrastructure. Eight percent, despite the fact that over a quarter of San Francisco residents bike regularly. The SFMTA’s own surveying tells us that 80% of SF residents — well over a half-million people — want to bike or roll more on our streets, but only 23% of those people feel safe enough to do so.

Your SF Bicycle Coalition showed up in numbers to urge the SFMTA to revise this first draft into a more ambitious Biking and Rolling Plan that truly creates a citywide, interconnected network of car-free and people-prioritized streets for people of all ages and abilities. We want to see a plan that highlights with two goals in the first five-year phase of the plan: creating a base grid of fully protected or separated cross-town corridors, at least three each in the north-south and east-west directions; and prioritizing truly calmed, people-prioritized streets by implementing slow school zones around SF elementary schools. 

Ahead of last Tuesday’s SFMTA hearing, we read through the 200-plus page plan and these are our thoughts: 

• The draft plan is not ambitious enough. The plan relies so heavily on calmed, shared streets, similar to Slow Streets. In the nearly two years since the passage of a permanent Slow Streets program, SFMTA has not demonstrated a commitment or ability to ensure these streets meet the target metrics for safety and comfort. “Neighborways” are even less effective. 
• It needs a phased approach. In the first five-year phase of the Plan, we are calling on the SFMTA to build a base grid of fully protected, cross-town corridors: at least three in the east-west direction and at least three in the north-south direction. At the same time, demonstrate the agency’s ability to deliver safe, calmed streets by creating slowed School Zones around all public elementary schools within that same time frame, to ensure that children and their families can safely get to school by active transportation.
• Community readiness must be clearly defined and measurable. The plan advises against safe bike and roll infrastructure where “community readiness” is low, without fully articulating what the term means or how it would be measured. While community opposition is an issue in neighborhoods across San Francisco’s socioeconomic spectrum, neighborhoods classified as Equity Priority Communities (EPC) have some of the most unsafe streets in the city and some of the lowest density of safe bike and roll infrastructure — both of 2024’s bicycle-related fatalities were in the Bayview, which is an EPC. 
• There must be a roadmap on how the agency will foster readiness. Allowing streets in neighborhoods identified as “not ready” to remain more unsafe than in the rest of the city is not equitable. Much can and must be done by the city to actively foster community readiness in all neighborhoods, through program offerings, culturally responsive education, events, and subsidized access to biking and rolling in low-income neighborhoods.
• The draft plan over-anticipates and preemptively addresses opposition. But we know from decades of advocacy that proposing a less ambitious plan will not prevent opposition. It will only guarantee that we will not have the safe streets we need. While the agency faces challenging financial forecasts, an ambitious plan allows the agency to seek out and apply for funding for the plan.

While last Tuesday’s item was an informational one, which meant the Board of Directors did not take any actions on it, members of the Board raised many questions about “community readiness” and wanting to see a more ambitious plan. After the item, we received commitments from the SFMTA Biking and Rolling Plan (BRP) team that they will better define “community readiness” and look into the crosstown routes they heard requested during public comment. The BRP team will come back to the SFMTA Board of Directors two more times before the plan is adopted and your SF Bicycle Coalition plans to be there every step of the way. 

We urge you to be there with us, as we push for more connected, livable, equitable, and safe streets in San Francisco.

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