Valencia Street Business Owners Express Concerns Over New Bike Lane Design
Not long after the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency unveiled the center bike lane on Valencia Street in August 2023, Jesse Jacobs noticed a shift at Joyride Pizza.
Entering the Mission District corridor suddenly felt like navigating a maze without left-hand turns. The loss of critical street parking made it harder for customers to pull over for a slice. Jacobs estimates that sales at his Mission District restaurant dropped by 30%.
"The number of signs, bike lights and streetlights is overwhelming, and people can't read them," said Jacobs, who co-owns the pizzeria. "It's been a morass of confusion for everyone."
Since the center bike lane debuted a year and a half ago, other merchants operating along the stretch of Valencia Street between 15th and 23rd streets have shared similar stories that point to the center bike lane as a catalyst for dwindling sales and foot traffic, among other concerns.
This month, they'll face another obstacle: On Tuesday, SFMTA plans to begin construction on a new side-running bike lane that would run adjacent to the sidewalk. Eventually, the center bike lane will disappear, but business owners remain concerned that the updated bike lanes will raise new hurdles.
SFMTA admits that the new design has its tradeoffs, including:
- Less street parking
- A narrower bikeway in some areas
- Sections that weave around restaurant parklets
According to a report by KQED, the multi-block stretch will lose about 37% of existing parking spaces.
Ahead of the new bike path design, restaurant owners who operated one of the 26 parklets along the multiblock stretch of Valencia Street were offered $5,000 to completely remove their parklets or up to $30,000 to move their parklets from the curbside to a floating location away from the curb, which has been a successful design in Oakland and New York City, SFMTA said.
Three businesses agreed to move their parklets to a floating location while two businesses removed their parklets altogether, SFMTA spokesperson Michael Roccaforte told SFGATE.
Still, many business owners decided to keep their parklets along the sidewalk due to the logistical or financial costs of rebuilding them. Jacobs rejected the floating parklet concept at Joyride and kept his at the curb after deeming the new model too dangerous.
"It's like asking me to cross a highway," Jacobs said.
Nikki DeWald, owner of Blondie's Bar, agreed with Jacobs' sentiment and said that a side-running bike lane would be "a difficult safe passage to the sidewalk," especially for older people and customers crossing with pets or children. The congestion in the corridor has also affected business at Blondie's. According to DeWald, sales dropped 20% after the start of the 2023 center bike lane construction, which immediately produced traffic congestion. Sales continued to drop and have remained at a low of 50% below normal.
DeWald isn't against bike lanes but believes Valencia Street merchants would benefit from a better-designed bike lane on a less congested neighboring street.
"We just don't have enough room to accommodate everyone," DeWald said. "It's a commercial corridor and we should be able to have easy passage to a sidewalk, which is not going to happen with this."
Andrew Goebel, general manager at motorcycle dealership Munroe Motors, attended every meeting the SFMTA held for the new design and shared that he felt his feedback was not considered. Safety is also among his greatest concerns, and he worries that limiting the available parking spots will make it harder for customers and safety responders to park on the road easily.
Roccaforte told SFGATE that drivers headed down the Valencia Street corridor can take advantage of nearby Mission-Bartlett and 16th and Hoff garages, which "are rarely at capacity."
Construction for the side-running bike lane is expected to last for two to three months, but rainy conditions could delay the project, Roccaforte said.
