Pretty much. The basic idea was to take out a few parking spaces. Getting that done in touchy, touchy San Francisco took about a half-decade
So, it used to be all like this:
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And now it’s all like this, on a busy day:
For whatever reason, probably something to do with gasoline prices, this station doesn’t seem to get long lines on Fell as much as before.
Anyway, case closed for now…
You, people love to complain about the low-cost ARCO right next door, but this Shell station at the corner of Divisadero and Oak in the EaPA doesn’t get criticized one bit.
Don’t know why.
Anyway, here they are, all those solar panels, facing more west than south, IMO:
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Get all the deets right here, about the Kyocera photovoltaic panels and Sunny Boy inverters and whatnot.
Hurray?
The evening drive is still going on every day at 7:00 PM on Fell Street and the famous gas station is still open for business every day, so why do we allow drivers to park their cars in the new gas queue lane starting at 7:00 PM every day?
Couldn’t the no-parking hours be more closely matched to the ARCO station’s operating hours instead of just being 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM? Sure it could.
Just after 7:oo PM, when all the City’s recent hard work is for naught:
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Are a handful of rich NIMBYs more powerful than the City and County?
Oh well.
Well BIKE NOPA and Streetsblog SF were out there on Fell Street yesterday to see DPW painting the Fell Street bike lane, or the bulk of it, green.
And here’s the result, cars queueing up in a special lane created earlier this year. See? They seem to finally be figuring things out:
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Find some history mastubatory fantasies of one Joshua Hart here. (Apparently, he’s a Golden God, or something: “Fix Fell Wins Green Bike Lane on Fell Street“) Anyway, the real history is out there if you want to look for it.
Is this MISSION ACCOMPLISHED for the Fell Street ARCO? I don’t know. The whole idea was to take out parking spaces so that drivers waiting for gasoline wouldn’t queue up in the bike lane and that appeared to be how it was working yesterday. The big issue was getting the residents in the area to give up a few parking spaces – that was one of the hold ups.
It’s not immediately obvious what more the City can do at this point. The open question is how drivers will behave over the coming days, weeks and months.
On it goes…
Michael Helquist of BIKE NOPA is all over the recent changes at the BP ARCO gas station on the corner of Fell and Divisidero.
Here’s what changed a few days ago at the station itself. Looks like we have new macadam and new stencils telling drivers not to go in through the out door. This looked like quite the construction site a few days back:
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I’m not sure what to make of all the changes. As per usual, the “neighbors,” the selfish, property-owning NIMBYs, had far, far too much say on this matter. A normal city would have just taken out a bunch of parking spaces years ago. Oh well.
On It Goes.
Well the “possible arrests” didn’t occur last Friday evening down at the famous Fell Street ARCO station near Divisidero, but lots of media vans showed for the “misdirected” protest, so that’s something. Read all about it here, here and here.
This Toyota driver got hectored so much other drivers were able to jump the queue. Pwned:
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This driver waiting for gas also got hectored for talking a on a cell phone the wrong way:
“ARCO – part of BP” - this slogan could use a rethink:
Most cyclists in the evening drive managed to get by and on into the Panhandle:
Everything got back to normal by today, anyway.
They say a fix is coming (and what about the route from the Panhandle to Scott Street and the start of the Wiggle Bike Path? Who will protest that?)…
Things were worse back in aught-seven, back when drivers waiting to fill up at the always-cheap ARCO station on Fell Street in the EaPA would queue up big in the bike lane. But it’s no picnic these days neither, as you can see in this shot from a few days ago:
Well, comes now award-winning Michael Helquist of BIKE NOPA to learn us about planned changes:
“‘We have a design hashed out to take out parking on the south side of Fell Street,’ James Shahamiri, MTA Assistant Traffic Engineer, told BIKE NOPA. The new design would designate the former parking spaces as a curbside queue for motorists awaiting entry to the gas station.”
(IMO, that’s a painfully obvious solution that any other town in ‘Merica would have implemented years ago when the issue first cropped up. But oh well.)
So, you see them cars parked on the left side? You know, the Porsche 944 (or 968?), the Saturn S-Series, and the Honda CR-V cute-ute SUV? They’re parked in spaces that could soon be the ARCO queue.
What’s that, NIMBY? Over your dead body you say? O.K., well, I think this cake is already baked, but maybe you’ll be able to hear more about all the deets at this meeting:
Remember back in the day, when the “rage-inducing” ARCO gas station at 1175 Fell was making the news for blocking traffic, particularly bikes on Fell Street? Take a gander all the way back to 2007:
The 76 you can see on the right became a Spirit gas station and that basically solved the bulk of the traffic problem because Spirit, unlike pricey 76, had copycat pricing and would generally match the ARCO within a penny or so. The salutary effect was no more lines of idling cars on the dedicated bike lane.
But the Spirit stopped selling gas a few days ago so we’re back to “normal.” See?
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Such are the travails of the purveyors of the cheapest gas in San Francisco – too many customers. This will all get solved if and when the Spirit starts selling gas again.
This was the scene last night at the Atlantic Richfield on Fell and Divisadero last night. “No Gas.” Why’s that? Who knows. Maybe it’s a temporary shutdown at this particular station for an innocuous reason. Maybe.
Or, maybe it’s a signal to go out and buy all that you can lay your hands on. That was such a good strategy a few months back when we had that “rice shortage“. Wasn’t it?
These days, it’s not just Peak Oil or Peak Rice, it’s Peak Everything. Oh noes! Panic, panic panic!
Oh well. The upside to all this is that the Fell Street bike lane, formerly crowded with cars sitting in line for ARCO gas (check the photo from MapJack at “1160 Fell St, San Francisco, CA 94117“), is now free for bikes to use 24/7. So the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition can count another victory. Plus the owner of the Spirit station across the street must be happy.
Hurray!
The Ice Age is coming, the sun zooming in
Meltdown expected, the wheat is growing thin
Engines stop running, but I have no fear…
