If you've ever ridden a bike down Market Street, you already know the punchline: those Muni track grooves are essentially booby traps for anyone on two wheels.
Another cyclist went down this week — wheel caught in the rail tracks while swerving around a stopped bus near the 7:15 evening rush. The rider, on a Lyft bike, described the incident in a now-viral missed connection post, admitting the adrenaline masked what turned out to be a legitimately painful knee injury. The silver lining? Apparently someone cute stopped to check on them, and now the whole internet is rooting for a first date.
Sweet story. But let's talk about the part that isn't romantic: Market Street is still a gauntlet.
San Francisco has spent years — and hundreds of millions of dollars — reimagining Market as a car-free, bike-friendly corridor. The Better Market Street project has been in various stages of planning and construction since 2011. And yet here we are, still watching cyclists get launched over their handlebars because century-old rail infrastructure and modern bike-share programs coexist about as well as you'd expect.
The train tracks are a known hazard. The city knows it. Muni knows it. Every cyclist who's ever white-knuckled their way across those grooves at a bad angle knows it. Rubber track fillers and better crossing angles have been discussed ad nauseam at planning meetings, but execution remains painfully slow. Meanwhile, the city keeps promoting cycling as a primary transit option and subsidizing bike-share programs without adequately addressing the infrastructure that makes riding genuinely dangerous.
You can't spend a fortune marketing San Francisco as a cycling city while leaving literal traps in the road. That's not urban planning — that's a liability lawsuit waiting to happen.
We sincerely hope our injured cyclist finds their missed connection. But we'd settle for a Market Street where "eating shit" isn't just an accepted part of the commute.