click to enlarge Chris Roberts

A winning scene.

As anyone living west of Divisadero will tell you, navigating Page Street in the morning can be hairy. Traffic often backs up for blocks as you head down a long hill on the approach to Octavia Boulevard, where cars line up to take a right turn towards the US-101 onramp.Bicycle riders adjust by passing the stopped cars on the left, but the street is narrow — so passing bikes, flying down the hill, often have to use the oncoming travel lane. That's a sensible move, as passing on the right would require navigating an even narrower passage between the cars caught in traffic and the parked cars, but that's a no-no, and has in the past earned cyclists tickets from SFPD standing sentinel at the bottom of the hill. But no longer. The once-illegal behavior is now enshrined in law, thanks to a freshly-painted bike lane installed this week. Chalk — or paint — this one up to the cyclists. Remember that state law, for the most part, sees cars and bicycles as identical . The California Vehicle Code says that cyclists have full use of the travel lane, which also means that — for the most part, at least in theory — they can't behave like a two-wheeled conveyance as opposed to a four-wheeled one. Hence, the Idaho Stop and other moves that seem sensible to a bike rider anger motorists, who cry "special treatment!"We ran — or biked past — former Bicycle Coalition executive Andy Thornley, who is now with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, at the now-laned area of Page Street this morning. It does appear that this bike lane is a prime example of the SFMTA taking into account typical behavior — and rather than changing a law, they changed the roadway to make the common practice legal practice.