Road Rage in NOPA: Driver Badly Injures Pedestrian, Totals Muni Bus Stop

#21 Hayes bus stop so badly damaged it had to be removed completely

Waiting for bus: road rage made it dangerous

"People sometimes get behind the wheel and lose any sense of responsibility," Captain Teresa Barrett of SFPD Park Station said during a review of the road rage that left a visitor to NOPA with severe injuries and a Muni bus station demolished Wednesday evening. "It's a miracle that no one was killed."

At about 6:40 Wednesday evening a fender-bender between two motorists at Baker and Hayes Streets led one to fly into an angry tirade and then attempt a quick exit, according to Barrett. Before doing so the driver slammed his pickup truck into a young woman waiting for the bus at the Muni shelter at the southwest corner. He barely missed two other pedestrians also waiting for the bus and severely damaged the structure before leaving the scene. Barrett told BIKE NOPA that the woman sustained a broken leg with compound fractures, a very serious condition but not life-threatening. According to the captain, the young woman was a tourist visiting the city.

The hit-and-run driver was arrested near 7th Avenue in the Richmond district after several quick-thinking, diligent San Franciscans helped police officers from the Park and Richmond stations. "We had very good involvement at each phase," Barrett said. "People monitored the driver when he drove away and again when he abandoned his truck to flee on foot." Officers worked with the man's description provided by observers and traced the license plate. Then plainclothes police located the man and arrested him. He remains in custody and faces hit-and-run felony charges. He was found to have no license and was tested for drug use.

"My officers said when they got there (at the bus stop), it was the most horrendous scene," Barrett added. Thursday morning the shelter had been completely removed -- with a temporary street signal installed on the sidewalk, but glass remained strewn around the corner and on the sidewalk for 25 feet.

Murals of NOPA: Art Tucked Away

A view from NOPA

Thanks Bob ..... and Jayne

Third in a series.

Artists helped shape and enrich the North Panhandle into the complex, challenging, surprising and striving neighborhood it is today. Sometimes you have to walk our blocks to see all they have to offer. On foot you get a sense of the rich livability around us with tucked-away treasures like this mural on Hayes Street just west of Divisadero on the north side.

Other posts in the Murals of NOPA series.

Are NOPA Holiday Lights Green Enough?

Let's not even go there. LED fixtures or not, enjoy the lights of NOPA, including a special engagement by Betty Boop.

Extravaganza on Hayes Street between Masonic and Central.

Ms. Betty Boop comes to NOPA (close-up of house above)

Happy Holidays.

More Sharrows Coming to NOPA

NOPA will get more Shared Lane Markings on its streets in the next several weeks as part of the Municipal Transportation Agency's effort to make bicycling safer in the city. Twelve of the markings, also known as "sharrows," will appear on Hayes Street from Baker to Scott while another eight will be painted on Baker Street from Fell to Page. (Nearby Parker Street west of Masonic between Golden Gate and Turk Streets will also get a pair of the markings). Sharrows aren't completely new to NOPA. In fact, Hayes Street between Baker and Divisadero already sports sets of the markings.

The sharrows are part of the city's bike plan that the Superior Court recently allowed with a partial lifting of the injunction that has stymied bike improvements for more than three years. The city currently has 23 miles of sharrows but expects to increase that number by 326% in the next six months, according to a December 3rd report in Streetsblog, usually four to a block, two on either side of two-way streets.

The markings have a big job to do, if they provide the safety benefits that traffic engineers intend:

• direct cyclists away from the dangerous "door zone"
• discourage wrong way bicycling on a busy street
• discourage bicycling on sidewalks which cyclists sometimes do when the street is especially unfriendly and risky
• discourage motorists from squeezing cyclists against curbs or parked cars

The MTA notes in a recent presentation that these shared markings have been found to improve bicycling safety in all the ways listed above, but they are not meant to be substitutes for dedicated bike lanes.

A word about that name, "sharrows": until you know, it doesn't make much sense. The easiest explanation is to think of "shared use" and "arrows." The chevron marking, double arrows, and the accompanying bicycle icon indicate that bicyclists should generally stay within the sharrows area to avoid getting doored or getting squeezed by passing vehicles. And motorists should really share the roadway. SFMTA's Program Manager Oliver Gajda gets the credit for coining the term "sharrows."

Bicyclists debate the usefulness of the sharrows. Some question whether the markings give a false sense of security when drivers often ignore the markings or see them as a reason to speed up and try to pass a cyclist with little regard for the hazards they create. Others cite their own experiences or studies that suggest the markings do help. Most recognize that beginning bicyclists appreciate the sharrows to guide their route and to alert drivers to their presence.

Sharrows come at a good price: about $150-200 per marking. They also last a reasonably long time: from two to five years, depending on vehicle use of the marked street.

Sharrows are a San Francisco creation! In 1998 San Francisco refined an early version of a bike icon within an "arrow house" (see the drawing for this to make sense) developed in Denver.

Photo by Michael Snyder on Flickr

San Francisco officials created the current design (below), studied its impact, and then obtained approval from the state to include sharrows in the official Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices or MUTCD. (We extend our sympathy to traffic engineers who have to use, or pronounce, acronyms like this). Now cities all over the country -- even Portland -- have adopted sharrows in their bicycle programs. So NOPA: share the lane, enjoy the sharrows.

For the full report "Shared Lane Markings: Where and When to Use Them," by Mike Sallaberry, see this pdf doc on the SFMTA site.

Too Uppity for NOPA

Remember the billboard at Hayes and Divisadero that we posted earlier? The anti-war, anti-gas guzzling Uppity Bike Commuters appropriated an apparently abandoned Clear Channel billboard to plaster their poster. No more. The UBC posters are down; the billboard has been removed.

While blogger Dale of Dale's Scene took comfort in the clear brick wall with no advertising of any sort, he exposed other problems nearby with the Harding Theatre. He notes the back-and-forth discourse over the development of the performance and potential housing space, but he finds fault with the landlord's disregard for his property. See the post "Blight on Hayes from the Harding Theatre?" With Divisadero set for its mini-makeover soon, it's time to get the street properties in better shape.