A Personal Inventory of SF's Worst Bike Intersections

I’ve spent a lot of time biking in SF and there’s been a few intersections where clearly the traffic engineer responsible went to town with a crazy design. This is my personal top 5, a “worst of” list of sorts.

#5: SF Bike Coalition at Market & Valencia

Tons of bike commuters bike everyday by the SF Bike Coalition offices. Most of them keep straight but a few of them have to turn left to get to the mission.

And this is where the problem is: the city decided to add an intersection with a little concrete block where turning cyclists are supposed to wait for a light before turning. The problem is there’s just not enough space in the lane for that which makes it very risky

Rating: 4/10.

#3 McAllister & Van Ness

This one I’m still puzzled by. The traffic designer decided that it’d be a good idea to have bikes take a little detour by a bus stop; I guess they wanted to put bikes in contact with vulnerable pedestrians?

#1 (ex-aequo): San Jose & Rousseau

This one is out there with the infamous Palo Alto bike merge¹. If you look at it at first it sounds reasonable until you realize drivers are driving at highway speed and the intersection expects them to not cut you off when they have to turn right. Madness!