First City-Installed Bike Rack in NOPA in More than 3 Years

A tight fit for two bikes to maneuver around and park next to rack.

It's good once you find it.

Just fits.

Choices

The Municipal Transportation Agency (MTA) installed a standard, "inverted U" bike rack Monday on Baker Street near Grove, making it the first city-owned bike parking improvement in NOPA for more than three years. The rack is situated on the Baker Street side of the "old building" of the Pacific Primary School. Thank you, MTA!

The MTA announced that it had 750 applications for bike racks throughout the city; the agency has reviewed and processed 60 of these. With much fanfare Monday, the MTA installed a new bike lane on Scott Street between Fell and Oak, added sharrows (bike and arrow graphics indicating shared use of the roadway), and prepped the bike box on Scott at Oak for an official re-painting with Mayor Gavin Newsom presiding (or painting it, perhaps?).*

Like all neighborhoods in the city, the North Panhandle needs bike parking for its hundreds of residents who use bicycles for basic transportation. To its credit Pacific Primary parents and administration erected their own custom-designed bike racks along both the old building and the new building across the street last summer, as reported in BIKE NOPA here.

Every new bike rack helps, so we're hesitant to suggest the location of NOPA's newest one is a bit curious. Both Grove and Baker have especially wide sidewalks and ample space between most street trees. Yet MTA chose the most hard-to-find and confined space for the new rack. Grove Street offers so many better-suited spaces that would also be more in the open and thus more secure. Ease of arrival, parking and secure parking becomes even more important as more teachers, parents, and students bike to school. For now, we're happy to get one more rack.

The Divisadero corridor also received a new rack, this one at 268 close to Little Chihuahua restaraunt; a second is due at 248 but, as of Tuesday afternoon, had not been installed.

* The Mayor's Press Conference is scheduled for 1pm, Thursday, Dec. 3 at the corner of Oak and Scott Streets. During or immediately after the conference, the "bike box" at that intersection will be painted to green to encourage bicyclists to assemble there before crossing Oak -- and to inform motorists that it's a sanctioned bike stop.