Name: After years of collisions and injuries, SF’s Panhandle gets a protected bike lane
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After years of collisions and injuries, SF’s Panhandle gets a protected bike lane

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This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigateNinety-year-old David Grinberg was enjoying a daily routine — crossing the street after reading his newspaper on a park bench in the Panhandle — when a car struck and killed him in the crosswalk at Fell and Baker streets.The crash on a fall evening in 2017 left a cloud over the neighborhood. But it also animated residents who for years had urged the city to design a safer roadway, with shorter crosswalks and barriers to divide cyclists from traffic.On Saturday, a project in the works for nearly a decade was open for business. Fresh green paint gleamed from a new bike lane that hugged the Panhandle, on a roadway where motorists, bikers, pedestrians, runners and skaters had finally learned to coexist. Workers from the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency had shifted a parking lane on Fell Street between Baker and Shrader streets to accommodate the bike path, installing posts to separate the bikes from parked cars and shrinking the crosswalks by several feet.Supervisor Dean Preston helped the effort and tweeted enthusiastically when he saw traffic cones and orange road closure signs pop up Tuesday morning. Over the next few days crews painted stripes and added the line of plastic posts, carving out one lane of traffic in what had been a four-lane road. Officials had expected to finish work in August, but by Saturday afternoon the road signs were gone, and a woman on an electric Lyft bike was pedaling down the path.Preston, who came to watch on foot, will eventually test-ride on a beater Bianchi.It’s happening. Fell Street panhandle bike lane. Stay tuned for more updates. Thank you ⁦⁩ ⁦⁩ ⁦⁩ ⁦⁩ ⁦⁩ ⁦and a gazillion others for all the advocacy and hard work to make this happen! — Dean Preston (@DeanPreston)“It’s one of those things that’s been discussed and planned for so long,” the supervisor said. As the years wore on, public sentiment changed, he noted, and people opened up to the idea of designating space for bikes. The supervisor received limited resistance for a project that altered the character of the street: with four lanes and a speed limit of 30 mph, the portion of Fell Street that bordered the Panhandle had become “a mini freeway” in a residential neighborhood, Preston said.The COVID-19 pandemic brought an additional complication, as joggers, walkers and cyclists crammed into the tree-lined park, anxious to escape from their homes. These conditions became unsafe not only with the risk of infection, but because zipping bikes could hit a person on foot. A seemed like the easiest solution, and SFMTA planners gave it a fitting name: the Panhandle Social Distancing and Safety Project. Fell Street will now have three traffic lanes heading west from Octavia Boulevard to Golden Gate Park, and Preston hopes cars may be forced to slow down.For Julie Nicholson, the redesigned road has a deep, visceral significance. Nicholson was jogging through the Panhandle park in January when a car ran through a red light at Masonic and Oak streets, struck another car that was making a left-hand turn and ricocheted into the greenway. The car slammed into Nicholson, who flew about 30 feet, breaking her neck and back.In the air, she remembered thinking, ‘Wow, I might be dying.’”Six and a half months later, Nicholson, 54, has fully recovered and can even run again. But it wasn’t until the city reconfigured Fell Street that she felt safe jogging through the Panhandle. She’s become a vocal advocate for pedestrian safety, a role she adopted in February, returning to the scene of the collision for a press conference with Preston. Staff at the SFMTA had just upgraded traffic signals at the intersection, and Preston wanted to tout the improvements to reporters. Nicholson recounted her story for the TV cameras. She was wearing a neck brace.Updated to include drought zones while tracking water shortage status of your area, plus reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Area’s largest water districts.Related Stories“We still have more work to do,” she told The Chronicle.Robin Kutner agreed. She serves on the North of Panhandle Neighborhood Association, which has long pressed for symmetrical bike lanes on Oak and Fell streets. (There is no equivalent plan for a west-to-east protected bike lane on Oak Street, but bikers can ride down the Panhandle.)Kutner says the Fell Street project will for everybody: motorists, cyclists, people on foot, kids playing in the grassy median, and seniors who live at Mercy Terrace Apartments on Baker Street. Had it happened earlier, the redesign might have saved an old man coming home with his newspaper.Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: Twitter:Updated to include drought zones while tracking water shortage status of your area, plus reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Area’s largest water districts.

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigateNinety-year-old David Grinberg was enjoying a daily routine — crossing the street after reading his newspaper on a park bench in the Panhandle — when a car struck and killed him in the crosswalk at Fell and Baker streets.The crash on a fall evening in 2017 left a cloud over the neighborhood. But it also animated residents who for years had urged the city to design a safer roadway, with shorter crosswalks and barriers to divide cyclists from traffic.On Saturday, a project in the works for nearly a decade was open for business....

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Rachel Swan covers transportation for The Chronicle. She joined the paper in 2015 and has also reported on politics in Oakland and San Francisco.  Previously, Rachel held staff positions at the SF Weekly and the East Bay Express, where she covered technology, law and the arts. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in rhetoric from the University of California, Berkeley.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/author/rachel-swan/

Rachel Swan

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After years of collisions and injuries, SF’s Panhandle gets a protected bike lane

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