As anyone who has biked over the Golden Gate Bridge over the past month can tell you, The Bridge is an unbearable mess right now.  At the beginning of June, the western side of the bridge, which is dedicated to peak hour bike usage, was closed for four months for construction.  The result of this closure is now San Francisco cyclists must try to ride around the disoriented mob of tourists and photographers—a task this blogger can assure you is enough to make you leap off your bicycle and find the quickest exit from the madness.

Thankfully, the SF Bike Coalition has been taking the Golden Gate Bridge District to task over the situation, as announced in yesterday's newsletter:

The SF Bicycle Coalition asked for added measures to help bridge users understand what's going on and safely manage the capacity reduction (such as posting uniformed staff at key points to help sort things out), as well as asking the District to provide roadway space for bicycle traffic during the sidewalk closure, or at least bike shuttles across the bridge (already done for other bridge sidewalk closures). But the District claims that it can't be done.

Really? Impossible to mitigate the loss of half the bridge's non-motorized capacity? If the District had closed half of the bridge's roadway lanes for four months would they just shrug and look the other way? We're letting the District know that cramming all their summertime foot and bike traffic onto just one sidewalk is impossible — it's time to bring real solutions to this serious (and long-planned) capacity reduction. Give bike traffic a temporary lane, or give it a shuttle. You can let them know as well — tell the District what you think at ggb@sfbike.org. Take extra care if you do get out on the bridge, and please show some extra kindness to other folks dealing with this disruption — now more than ever it's about giving and getting respect.

I'd also recommend taking a Xanax.

[Photo by SF Examiner]