Appeal challenges SFMTA ‘hairball’ bike plan

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors will hear an appeal Tuesday of a plan to add new bike lanes and improve pedestrian crossings to a complicated tangle of roads and freeways city planners have dubbed “The Hairball.”

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency approved a project in September adding bike and pedestrian improvements to the heavily traveled interchange area connecting Cesar Chavez Street and Potrero Avenue with several freeway ramps.

However, an appeal set to go before the board on Tuesday claims the project was incorrectly exempted from environmental review.

Among other claims, the appeal filed by attorney Mary Miles on behalf of the “Coalition for Adequate Review” says the project was illegally cut up into smaller pieces to avoid the need for such a review.

Miles and blogger Rob Anderson were also behind a lawsuit that led to a 2006 injunction that held up a citywide bike plan involving dozens of projects until The City completed some evaluation of traffic and parking impacts. That injunction was not fully lifted until 2010.

The appeal is scheduled to be heard at 3 p.m.

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