San Francisco’s first bike park

I’ve been working with SF Urban Riders for quite some time on building and maintaining multi-use trails in SF, as well as laying the groundwork for a bike park in San Francisco’s McLaren Park. Last month, The SF Rec and Park Department  held one of three planning sessions to identify new projects for McLaren and to involve the community in the decision as to which ones will move forward. We figured this would be the ideal time to demonstrate community support for the bike park through a social media campaign driving to an online petition. The ultimate goal of the petition: to quantify the need,  as well as gather letters of support for the project.

We created a Facebook fan page to keep people updated on meetings and events, as well as grow the support base by creating awareness of the poor condition of the future location of the bike park. Currently, the site is covered in broken and decayed asphalt, continues to be used for illegal dumping and is littered with trash and broken glass.

Last July, a severed leg was found not far from the site, which calls attention to the low level of traffic through certain areas of the park resulting in homeless encampments, drug deals and other types of undesirable activity. A bike park would create foot/bike traffic and mitigate this problem.

In addition to online social media, we’re reaching out to community leaders and neighborhood residents asking for their personal support in the form of letters and meeting attendance. At the next planning meeting on March 23, we’ll hear the results of a survey that SFRPD created to gather thoughts and ideas on the top priorities for improvements to McLaren Park. And we’ll be there en masse.

Logo Design: Dustin Smith.   MBP website/blog, Facebook page and Petition: Dustin Smith / Dayton Crites.