Will Supervisor Melgar Export West Portal’s Stabbings, Decreased Foot Traffic, and Polka Dots to Irving Street Corridor?

Her protected bike lanes have become overrun with unsafe e-motored two-wheelers

Mission Local, Junyao Yang, September 23, 2025

Supervisor Melgar doing things to us, not for us

District 7 Supervisor Myrna Melgar holds powerful positions over public transportation, traffic configurations, and picking polka dot color schemes on city streets. She chairs the San Francisco County Transportation Authority, sits on the regional Metropolitan Transportation Commission, and she is promoting her belief that human error can be eliminated through Vision Zero.

In March 2024, while Muni was conducting their glacially paced work on the L Taraval streetcar line, a family was forced to wait for a train on Ulloa Street, away from the secure West Portal Station. MTA/Muni’s dysfunction unnecessarily exposed the family to car traffic where they were accidentally killed by a driver’s human error.

After a 2023 bicycle fatality in the Richmond, Melgar left her own district just to wave her performative bike advocacy flag. Similarly, after the 2024 traffic accident, Melgar immediately leveraged the perished family’s tragedy to compel her anti-car policies on the West Portal residents and merchants. Ironically, because of her district’s steep hills, biking is not that that popular. This is evidenced by the fact there’s only one dedicated bike store in Melgar’s district.

The 3 stabbings in District 7 didn’t interfere with Melgar’s artwork

Consequently, Melgar forced many changes on West Portal residents and businesses.

She:
1. Had polka dots painted on the West Portal Avenue pavement (above).

2. Eliminated the ability for buses to make a turn into the “horseshoe” --now the polka dot area. Busses previously dropped passengers off in this protected area so that riders didn’t have to cross Ulloa Street traffic. Essentially, Melgar locked in the circumstances that created the March 2024 tragedy. Brilliant!

3. In community meetings, businesses and residents asked Melgar for a stoplight on Ulloa Street instead of drastic changes to the commercial district street patterns. Melgar’s crew said a stoplight at Ulloa Street wouldn’t work because it would “disrupt the streetcars’ flow.” Then the MTA/Muni installed stoplights on the same L Taraval line at 18^th, 22^nd, and 28th Avenues. This is an example of Mayor Lurie’s description of Melgar “doing stoplights to the Westside residents, while refusing to work with the residents’ requests for stoplights.”

4. Westbound through traffic on Ulloa was eliminated, rerouting motorists onto adjacent streets and forcing them to take circuitous routes to get to a destination just a couple feet away.

5. Two-way Lennox Avenue was made one-way, further reducing access to West Portal businesses.

Melgar’s not working with us—she’s tone-deaf

As I reported in my last article, during Melgar’s term as supervisor and public transportation czar, West Portal has suffered from a 17% decline in foot traffic—only materially surpassed by Union Square and Chinatown. Instead of boosting West Portal’s businesses with direct streetcars to the ballpark or the Caltrain Station, Melgar was busy promoting the permanent closure of car traffic on the Great Highway.

Melgar’s district has recently been blowing up with an Abundance of stabbing that included two recent Muni-related stabbings, one of which was fatal. Additonally, a father was stabbed to death in front of his 8-year-old son.^[1] Melgar never addressed making Muni safer, but she did add those pretty polka dots to the pavement at West Portal Station. Performative!

Finally, instead of recognizing the voters’ message from the recall of Joel Engardio, Melgar was busy authoring the Street Safety Act--an extension of Vision Zero--and the anti-car Inner Sunset Transportation Study.

The coming Abundance of more Melgar anti-car plans

Melgar’s Street Safety Act is an extension of the unsuccessful Vision Zero. The act will:

· increase the number of speed cameras employed, including “pursing more legal authority to expand the use of speed cameras” (translation: turning violations into points against your driver’s license),

· increase the number of speed bumps and “cushions,”

· turn-calming (no right hand turns on a red light at 3 in the morning on an empty street),

· add a “Quick Build” of more bike infrastructure, that many bicyclists find confusing.

Melgar’s plans for the Inner Sunset include her #1 priority, anti-car.

Screenshot from Melgar’s Inner Sunset plans

“Vulnerable Road Users?” Wouldn’t the two Muni stabbing victims in Melgar’s district have been safer if they had been traveling inside a car?

Melgar’s plans for the Inner Sunset include:

· Vehicle restrictions on commercial corridors (the West Portal-ization of 9^th Avenue),

· Disallowing trucks from delivering to business and restaurants on Irving Street during traditional working hours,

· not fixing the one-lane bottleneck on eastbound Lincoln Way to Kezar Drive to Oak Street,

· Either eliminating the turning lane on 7^th Avenue or removing street parking for residents,

· Extending rush hour restrictions of parking on Lincoln Avenue (so my friends that drive can’t park in front of the bike friendly Little Shamrock at 6pm.)

· More bike lane infrastructures on 7^th Avenue,

· More bike parking. Bike parking? Supervisor, how many people were recently stabbed in District 7?

Melgar’s Inner Sunset Transportation Study is funded by the additional $100 million in sales tax revenue assessed on us because of Proposition L. Why wasn’t this $100 million applied to dysfunctional Muni’s $300 million deficit instead of more bike parking?

Supervisor Melgar, please work with us and stop doing the bike infrastructures on us

Supervisor Melgar, congratulations on your pandemic bandwagon purchase of an electric motorbicycle. Before your purchase, I commuted to high school, college, graduate school, and work on a traditional bike. All in San Francisco.

As people with weaker conditioning have gravitated to electric motorbicycles, their virtue superiority signaling has become pervasive. They thumb their noses at cars, fantasize about emulating European cities with microscopic GDP’s^[2], and collude to restrict drivers’ mobility with unnecessary barriers—like the brainless, anti-car designed Kirkham Street neckdown--in your district.

I have never disdained people that didn’t bike. However, the newbie electric-motorbicyclers seem to think their eco status places them on a higher rung in the saving-the-planet hierarchy. But by the same reasoning, doesn’t that place us traditional bike pedal-ers above you, Supervisor Melgar?

If you’re green, we’re greener. If you’re saving the plant, we’re saving more of the planet. And therefore, shouldn’t more of us eco-friendly, non-motored bicyclists have a greater voice in bike lane decisions that protect us from the wild beginners on electric two-wheelers?

On SMART train, 3 electric motorcycles crowd out the space for 5 bicycles. For the smallest bike (on right) , it was so heavy, it took two people to carry the bike down the stairs onboard the ferry.

Evidence of your San Francisco bicycling novicehood is imbedded in your plans for 7^th Avenue, which will exacerbate the current gridlock. Seventh Avenue is an essential north/south corridor for District 7 bicyclists and vehicles. It’s the bicycle route everyone in your district (but you) takes to Civic Center.^[3]

Experienced bike riders know to switch, at Kirkham or Lawton Avenues, to 6^th or 8^th Avenues to enjoy a wide and peaceful alternative. However, your plans will slow vehicles on 7^th and 9^th Avenues beyond their current crawl speed and pour those drivers instead onto 6^th and 8^th Avenues. That will ruin bicyclists’ current tranquility. Seventh Avenue should be left as it is!!

Supervisor, because of your policies, I no longer “pedal” on Valencia Steet, the Great Highway, or Market Street. Or the deserted Phelan Avenue’s suicide bike lanes that you are so proud of. Your polices have trapped experienced “pedal-ers” in narrow protected bike lanes that are shared with erratic food deliverers, novice parents on electric cargo motorbicycles, helmetless bike sharers, and e-scooters.

Helmetless e-motor bike sharers frequently bike the wrong way. Note the traditional bicyclist with a helmet .

All reaching speeds uncorrelated to their biking experience. The e-violence you have created has made protected bike lanes too dangerous for me!

Your Inner Sunset plans and rhetoric are emblematic of Mayor Lurie’s quote about Westside people believing that the government “is doing things to us and has not made our lives better”—the Westsiders were talking about you!

And a shoutout to your continued Board of Supervisor contributions that helped propel San Francisco to WalletHub’s ranking as the #1 worst run city in the country.

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^[1] Stabbings #1, #2, and #3.

^[2] Gross Domestic Product

^[3] Your quote about biking “behind the hill behind City College” does not even come up as a biking route on MapQuest. Google maps show your route, but it’s a half-mile longer, and includes biking on Ocean Avenue, which is more car dense than 7^th Avenue, which has with fewer intersections.