On street parking


remember when this was allowed? i dont see bike lanes so maybe its an old pic? im sure most cities >50k pop would not have this but SF is different i suppose.

How to start on a hill with a standard transmission.

Still allowed, Filbert Street in San Francisco and no bicycle lane in 2023.

1 Like

My guess is that it has a lot to do with those hilly streets and lots of people who can’t be trusted to park appropriately in that light. On the next block down, which is not on a hill, it appears to be parallel to the curb parking. Just spit-balling as I don’t really know.

1 Like

That parking configuration remains pretty common in hilly San Francisco residential neighborhoods.

Whenever I have traveled to hilly or mountainous country, I have always been happy to return to level ground where parking brakes are unnecessary.

It’s really hard to park a motorcycle there. Riding one is a challenge too, but parking is even tougher.

Remembering first time in San Fran, stopping on the uphill was afraid my car would flip if I hit the gas too hard!

Wouldn’t you just pull straight in? Some of the cars in the photo are parked in that orientation. Then the parked cycle would tip to the uphill side, kickstand should work nicely. If you had to park a m-cycle with the kickstand on the downhill side, I can see how that would be a problem.

Depends on the kickstand, it might hold the bike too vertical in that case.

1 Like

Yeah, on some m-cycles the kickstand is sort of an upside down “T” & goes all the way across, side to side, underneath the bike. That design would be a problem parking sideways on a hill in either orientation. I don’t recall what type of kickstand my teenage-years dirt-cycle used. I think it might have used the “T” version, b/c I seem to recall having to press it to the ground, then pull the bike backwards to make it engage.

Most street motorcycles have side stands and those T stands. A sidestand might not allow tbe bike to lean enough or too much on that street parked like the cars. A T stand would be pretty much useless except parallel parking.

If you live on that block I guess you could create a side stand that would work, but mine have been either too short or too long. And getting in or out, any way you do it, in one direction it’s going to require that you push the bike, and that’s really hard to do on a sidehill. It’s just clumsy and very easy to drop the bike.

2 Likes