Talk to anyone who regularly bikes in this city and you'll get an earful. Mission Street from Cesar Chavez to 30th is described by riders as "a blender" — cars routinely ignore bus-only lanes, and cyclists are technically not supposed to be in them either, creating a lawless no-man's-land where everyone's breaking the rules and nobody's safe. The Bayshore corridor near the 101 interchange — affectionately known as "the hairball" — is a mess of trucks making sudden turns across minimal bike infrastructure. And the 13th Street underpasses at Harrison and Folsom? Pure chaos.

As one local cyclist put it, "everyone's always stuck in traffic and therefore angry and DGAF about people on bikes." Another summed up the Valencia Street saga perfectly — calling it "a shitshow with the designated bike lane and still a shitshow" without one. That's a damning indictment of a corridor the city spent significant resources redesigning.

Here's the thing: nobody's asking for perfection. Cyclists know cities are messy. But San Francisco has poured tens of millions into bike network improvements over the past decade and somehow managed to create lanes that double-parkers treat as loading zones, "protected" routes that dead-end into six-lane intersections, and redesigns that even supporters acknowledge failed. One SF resident flagged 16th Street heading to Market as a prime example — a red-painted lane rendered useless by double-parkers, while the actual bike lane sits one block away on 17th where fewer people need it.

This isn't an anti-bike-lane argument. It's an anti-incompetence argument. If the city is going to spend public money on cycling infrastructure, the bare minimum standard should be that cyclists feel safer afterward, not equally terrified on a fresher coat of paint. Every botched lane redesign isn't just wasted money — it's an argument against the next good project that actually deserves funding.

Vision Zero set a target of zero traffic deaths by 2024. That deadline came and went. Maybe it's time to spend less on vision and more on execution.