Wiggle Safety Upgrades Delayed Because Cars Can't be Everywhere

Car traffic wouldn't be allowed to go through one half of one street in all of San Francisco?  This is absolutely insane!
image found here.

The Wiggle, a patchwork of bike sharrows on pavement weaving through fast car traffic & parked cars has been around for quite some time.  The only reason why someone on a bike would take this route is because it's geographically convenient, and not because the city makes it any easier to ride through it safely. In an effort to remedy this issue, the SFMTA started the long arduous process of making some changes to the street to accomodate the thousands of people that walk and bike through the area every day.

According to Streetsblog, "A major feature of the planned Wiggle upgrades is a large sidewalk bulb-out which would physically block drivers from entering southbound Scott at Fell Street. That would reduce the car traffic on Scott, which runs one block parallel to Divisadero, that degrades the livability of the neighborhood and congests the intersection at Haight." The other part of the plan would divert traffic on Divisidero Street from taking a left turns onto Haigh Street.  After two years of planning, community input, the project was halted because a few merchants who weren't paying attention started screaming at the 11th hour.

Stop a car from doing a car thing?  Are you insane?  Leave the deterring to pedestrians and cyclists thankyouverymuch.
Image found here.

SFMTA's timeline is very similar to other projects that have gone through copeous amounts of community input, engineering and planning, then squelched by a few car loving merchants.  The Polk Street bike plan was changed at the 11th hour to accommodate the Mayor's Optometrist's desire for side car storage.  The Oak/Fell bike lanes were delayed to add more magical free parking on SF Streets.  Removing 57 parking spaces from a pedestrian and bike path in the Marina was also delayed so the Parks & Rec department could fullfill their clear duty to preserve as much car storage as possible.  This even works for coffee shop owners who want to keep two bus stops on the same block for their own personal gain. 

The SFMTA claims this was part of their timeline all along and part of the natural SF process:

Tuesday, June 11, 2013, 5:00 pm to 8:30 pm

Wiggle Neighborhood Green Corridor Community Open house

Wednesday, August 28, 2013, 6:30 pm to 8:00 pm

Scott Street Traffic Calming Meeting

Tuesday, September 24, 2013, 5:00 pm to 7:30 pm

Wiggle Neighborhood Green Corridor Community Open House #2

Wednesday, January 22, 2014, 5:00 pm to 7:30 pm

Wiggle Neighborhood Green Corridor Community Open House #3

Friday, January 17, 2014, 5:59 pm

View the proposals for the Wiggle Neighborhood Green Corridor

Friday, March 20, 2015, 6:06 pm

Show your support for the Wiggle Neighborhood Green Corridor!

Monday, March 23, 2015, 7:00 pm

Wiggle Neighborhood Green Corridor at Alamo Square Neighborhood Association Meeting

Friday, April 3, 2015, 10:00 am

Engineering Public Hearing, April 3, 2015

May - 11th Hour
Merchant Anger, Screaming & Delay 

June - TBD
Water down and negate project scope to appease merchants
  

The LoHaMNA (Lower Haight Neighbors and Merchants Association) sounded the 11th hour alarm after they heard that a vehicle wouldn't have unfettered access to all the streets of San Francisco.  A few equally important and long winded acryonym groups then followed suit. 

The PfCoESoSF (People for Cars on Every Street of San Francisco) and MWaAfSbKECT(Merchants Who are All for Safety but Keep Every Car Thing) all have voiced their concern and distain over this safety project that's been years in the making.

It's pefectly fine to limit pedestrians and bikers, but by no means can you limit a motorist's right to drive on any street, ever.

One MWaAfSbKECT member said, "Look, it's ok to demolish entire communities for city stroads like Geary Boulevard, place parking on every street in the city, but you can't ever divert traffic off any of them.  It's just assinine."  When asked about the safety benefits of having fewer cars on the roads near pedestrians and bikers, they just stared blankly for a few seconds and then proceeded to discuss much needed parking and traffic lanes.  He also went on to say, "and just think what could happen if people get this ridiculous idea that a car doesn't belong everywhere?"

Building areas like Masonic & Geary that cater exclusively to cars is fine.  Diverting traffic off one street in SF is absolutely forbidden.  Ask any merchant aka "traffic engineer".

The SFMTA expects to come back with a watered down, visionless Wiggle design sometime in June. 

Sunnyvale City Council Votes to Support 'Fuck You BRT Buses You're Stuck in Traffic With us' Plan

"Think we're going to make your bus trip any faster by dedicating lanes?  Screw that. You're going to be miserable with us."
Photo: Andrew Boone

Most people will agree that El Camino Real is a REAL traffic nightmare (see what I did there?!)  City council members listened to a plan to convert 2 of the 8 lanes dedicated to moving or parking cars to actually moving large groups of people.  They were then told that the Bus Rapid Transit plan could cut transit rider's trips nearly in half along the length of El Camino Real and encourage more drivers to get off the roads.  Council member's jaws dropped at the thought of such a wacky and outlandish plan to fix congestion by seeking alternate modes of transport. When someone suggested that self-driving robot cars would fix the congestion issues at some point in the future squeals of delighted and high-fives soon followed.

All 8 lanes are needed to move and store cars.  Sorry everyone else, traffic means that traffic has to stay!

A few council members said that they shouldn't invest in a proven transit solution because self-driving cars at some point in time are going to make it irrelevant.   Instead of dedicated bus lanes, the council voted 4-3 to have “mixed flow” lanes along a corridor that would include "improved bulbout” bus stops. "This way the buses can stop at these bulbouts enrage drivers behind them who have to stop, and then when the bus leaves the bulbout they're fucked in traffic with the rest of us." said one grinning city council member.

Give up 1 lane of traffic each way for thousands of other people?  Uhhh... yeah I don't think so.  We'll wait for robot cars kthxbye.
image found here.

Despite the fact that over 30 percent of all trips within a mile of their destination are taken by car, the council voted to pass a standing resolution, "1.3 Subsection F - U: Bike & Ped Upgrades" to keep sidewalks narrow and have bikers "duke it out between moving and parked cars like the rest of us motorists."  This would also ensure that no one get the dumb idea to actually walk or bike along the stroad and stick to trusty motorist transit until the robots arrive.

Part of the plan is to extend "mixing zones" to bikers in the form of uneven pavement between parked cars, right turn lanes, and swift moving cars.
images courtesy: Janet Lafleur - http://ladyfleur.bike

Shelby Winters understands the issue all too well as she commutes back and forth by car each day and loses more than 10 hours a week stuck in traffic. "Oh god it's always a nightmare with the crashes", she exclaimed, "the stop and go traffic is just soul crushing.  I just wish they could do something about this without changing anything that in any way impedes my ability to use every lane on El Camino Real".

After the meeting was over, the city council gleefully drove their cars into traffic, knowing that they probably solved a problem with robot cars in the not-so-but-might-be-distant future.

Robot cars will eventually fix this traffic problem.
original picture by Andrew Boone