Driving a hard bargain over plans for Polk Street

Bicyclists ride their bikes on Polk Street near California Street in San Francisco, Calif., on Wednesday, January 28, 2015. Polk Street improvements might make the narrow street tougher to negotiate as the improvements are designed to make this well traveled bike corridor safer. less Bicyclists ride their bikes on Polk Street near California Street in San Francisco, Calif., on Wednesday, January 28, 2015. Polk Street improvements might make the narrow street tougher to negotiate as the ... more Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 10 Caption Close Driving a hard bargain over plans for Polk Street 1 / 10 Back to Gallery

For a fairly short street, it’s been a long, long journey up Polk Street.

There have been 60 meetings over two years. There have been posters, community outreach, artists’ renderings and some pretty strong language. Finally, on Friday, there will be a presentation at City Hall where officials are deeply hopeful that their plan for the street will win widespread public approval.

Not likely.

What the city is proposing is a wide-ranging plan to target the busiest and most dangerous intersections along Polk Street and try to fix them. Among the ideas are pedestrian bulb-outs — sidewalk extensions — to make sure people are seen before crossing the street, painted bike lanes, and extensive landscaping. The board of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency is to consider the plan in the next few weeks.

“We are disappointed with the current proposal,” says San Francisco Bicycle Coalition Executive Director Leah Shahum. “What they are proposing falls far short of what is needed on Polk.”

Which makes you wonder: Is there any possible way this can be worked out to everyone’s satisfaction? It doesn’t seem like it.

The funny part of all this is that there is so much on which everyone agrees. Polk has, through a quirk of topography — it’s relatively flat compared with surrounding streets — become a primary north-south corridor for bicycle traffic. It’s also gotten much busier as a retail center.

“Traffic used to be bumper-to-bumper a few times after a big event,” says Dan Kowalski, a 30-year resident who owns FLIPP — Fashionable Living in Petite Places — a business at Green and Polk streets. “Now I see it once every two weeks.”

You can figure out the physics yourself: Cars versus bikes with a sprinkle of pedestrians thrown in equals trouble.

“What we don’t want to see lost in all the back and forth is that this is a safety problem,” said Tom Maguire, head of sustainable streets for the MTA. “In the last five years we’ve had 122 people (walking and on bikes) hit by cars.”

That’s the Bicycle Coalition’s point, too.

“Polk Street has been designated as one of the least safe streets in the city,” Shahum said. “The Department of Public Health designated it as a high-injury corridor years ago.”

Sounds dandy, doesn’t it? Yeah, but ...

“We are really happy that the city wants to spend some improvement dollars on this,” Kowalski said. “But the thing that concerns us is that they will say all these things to you, but in the end they are going to do what they want. To hell with the merchants — 'our plan is better than your concerns.’”

Parking is the issue for the small businesses that line the street. They worry that they are going to lose business and have problems getting deliveries, and that the Bicycle Coalition has a master plan to sweep the street free of automobiles and turn it into a velodrome.

Meanwhile, Shahum and her group want physically protected bike lanes. And if that means taking out parking spots, that’s just the way it goes. She produces data that show shopping revenue is higher coming from those who walk, bike or take public transit than from those who drive.

The merchants disagree.

“That’s one of the bad things about this,” Kowalski said. “It has put the bike coalition and small businesses at odds. We used to be arm in arm.”

And the city officials, well, that’s simple — whatever they do isn’t going to please everyone.

“What we came out with is a pretty comprehensive proposal that not only improves safety but enhances the attractiveness of the street,” says MTA project manager Luis Montoya. “We want the safest possible design. I think this is it.”

But the merchants think the parking spots lost — 70 percent will be retained, 250 will be removed — are too many. And the cyclists contend that the bike lanes proposed — as the street narrows to the north they become narrower and not physically separated from traffic — are nothing like what they have in mind.

So what’s the solution? I’d say everyone is going to have to settle for the fact that this was an honest, good-faith attempt and may be the best we can do. Polk is a 110-year-old street built for horses and buggies and is always going to have problems now that $5,000 bikes and $80,000 Teslas are sharing the road.

Kowalski sounds pretty Zen about the whole thing.

“I’ve heard people say that happiness is a decision you make,” he said. “I’d say we are 88 percent there.”

Not the way Shahum sees it. Two years and 60 meetings are just the start, she says.

“That’s the current proposal,” she said. “It’s been changed before. By no means is this discussion over.”

Sigh.

C.W. Nevius is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. His columns appear Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. E-mail: cwnevius@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @cwnevius