Would you look at that: just a year after lifting the bike plan injunction, city officials announced Tuesday that San Francisco's network of bike lanes and bike-related infrastructure is 50% completed. Over the past year the SFMTA has rolled out 14 miles of bike lanes, installed 500 new bike racks and made a range of signage and street marking changes.
Not a moment too soon either, trips by bicycle increased 58% from 2006 to 2010, even though the injunction barred the SFMTA from doing so much as painting new bike lane "sharrows" or any other bike-related projects during that period. The injunction, old school bikers will remember, was the result of a lawsuit that forced the city to perform a complete environmental review before implementing any changes under the bike plan, even though the city argued it was more of a set of guidelines than a specific set of projects.
