The wiggle - crash course for bikes, pedestrians? ON SAN FRANCISCO

Bruce Marshall watches cyclists run through the stop sign on the corner of Steiner and Waller in San Francisco, CA Friday Feb. 24th, 2012. Bruce has complained that cyclists run the stop sign as the turn right from Waller St. onto Steiner St. which is endangering pedestrians that are trying use the cross walk. less Bruce Marshall watches cyclists run through the stop sign on the corner of Steiner and Waller in San Francisco, CA Friday Feb. 24th, 2012. Bruce has complained that cyclists run the stop sign as the turn right ... more Photo: Michael Short, Special To The Chronicle Photo: Michael Short, Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close The wiggle - crash course for bikes, pedestrians? 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

Local residents sometimes sit at the corner of Waller and Steiner streets and place bets on the bicyclists as they approach the stop sign. They're not guessing how many will stop.

They're hoping to see one.

"I would say 95 percent of them don't stop," said Bruce Marshall, a 30-year resident of the Lower Haight. "As a pedestrian I used to be concerned with cars, but now I'm worried about bikes."

Bike ridership in the city has shot up 71 percent in the last five years, according to a survey released by the city's Municipal Transportation Agency in December. But with the survey estimating 75,000 bike trips each day, and bikers running stop lights and signs, that's a lot of potential accidents.

"I have literally taken to jay-walking because it is safer than being in the crosswalk," said Susan Beckstead, who has owned a home near the intersection since 1978.

Worse, when she yelps, "Watch out!" when riders nearly hit her, the response is often, "F- you. Mind your own business."

Clearly these two groups are on a collision course. We don't want to see another incident like the bicyclist who struck a tourist in the crosswalk at Embarcadero and Mission in July. The 68-year-old woman eventually died of her injuries.

Kit Hodge, deputy director of the city's 12,000-member Bicycle Coalition, has a long history of promoting bicycle/pedestrian safety in New York and Chicago.

"Our focus has been pedestrian safety through education," Hodge said. "Our message is that pedestrians always have the right of way."

That's a great concept, but it often doesn't translate to daily commutes. Beckstead and Marshall live on "the wiggle," the zigzag route through the Lower Haight that is used by thousands of riders every day to avoid hills on the way to and from Market Street and Golden Gate Park.

I wrote an item earlier this week about police Capt. John Feeney's safety concerns over the wiggle and got so much feedback that I visited the route.

For bike/pedestrian conflict, it is the perfect storm. The wiggle swerves through a dense residential area with lots of people walking. Street corners have stop signs, but bike riders have to turn at nearly every block. Coming downhill they steam through the stop signs, swoop around corners, and scatter pedestrians in the crosswalk.

"You literally have to play peek-a-boo," said Marshall. "You have to step out and see if they are coming. The guys on bikes are looking to the left to see if cars are coming and they aren't watching the crosswalk."

Hodge says the coalition and the city are aware of that dynamic, and met last fall to discuss ways to enhance safety. The most likely solution is to create "bulb-out" corners for pedestrians.

"Bulb-outs reduce the length of the crossing and also forces the bicyclists to slow down because they make the corner sharper," Hodge said. "And (police) enforcement is increasingly important. We want to work with the police to identify space and behavior that are dangerous."

While those sound like good ideas, there is a school of thought that says the more accommodations the city makes for bikes the more entitled the riders become.

"I'm no angry motorist. I don't even own a car," Marshall said. "But once they completed the bike lanes and made it a complete route, in the minds of cyclists it has just given them the license to just go."

Bike advocates would probably disagree, but Beckstead suggested a simple test. We sat at the corner of Waller and Steiner and counted the bikes for five minutes. At between 9:20 and 9:25 on a weekday morning, 19 bikes and one skateboarder came through the intersection. Eighteen bikers and the skateboarder rolled right through the stop sign.

One bicyclist stopped.

I should have taken a photo. You don't see that very often.