Notes from a rainy commute

Slogging my way to Caltrain this AM, thinking I probably could have gone riding because it wasn't *that* cold and it wasn't *that* wet, I noticed a couple of interesting things.

On 14th Street, there is a bike lane. That wasn't the interesting thing, it's been there since before Rob Anderson laid down his fatwa. There was a van double parked in the bike lane, also not terribly interesting because that seems to be de rigeur. What *was* interesting was that just as I spotted the van parked in the bike lane, I also spotted a DPT PCO ("Meter Maid" in pre-PC parlance) to my left. The PCOs drive around in little golf cart like vehicles with open windows, so I looked left, pointed forward, and said - "Puuuleeeese tell me you are going to ticket that guy".

She nodded, and promptly drove right past the van, presumably to go after street cleaning duty in some backwater across town.

Disheartened, I continued on my way, but on Division Street my day brightened, as I saw this...



A brand new bike lane on Division Street - complete with a line of soft hit posts - had arisen where formerly there was only car parking.

I also saw these guys on the other side of the street.



DPW was curating a similar lane on the other side of Division.

This is a pretty obvious place for a bike lane, it is a highly used bike corridor that runs to SoMa and Caltrain. I stopped to take a photo and tried to catch the cyclist that had been behind me, but they got out of the frame too fast, so I waited for another. All around good guy Janne Karjalainen from SF2G happened by within 20 seconds or so.

While I'm sure Rob Anderson would be very upset at the sight of parking being removed for bike lanes, even if it was happening at Burning Man, these removals would cause a conundrum for him, and no conundrum at all for the local "permanent" residents/businesses. That stretch of Division was pretty much populated by RV's and beater sedans that people were living in. Rob hates the down and out almost as much as he hates the cyclists (I think he pretty much considers the two groups the same, with the addition of rich white hipsters to the cyclist population). I won't say that I'll miss the "Mobile Homes" very much.