A bulky apartment complex that rose from a parking lot in San Francisco’s Mission District represented a new kind of urban lifestyle – one in which low-income families could rent stylish homes without the need for a car.

Instead, residents would have a protected bike lane running more than three-quarters of a mile, linking Folsom Street to the Valencia merchants corridor. City officials proposed putting the path on 13th Street, where cyclists have long navigated a spaghetti-tangle of freeway on-ramps and omnidirectional intersections. Once built, the bike lane would make 13th safer and more accessible, filling a crucial gap for people who bike from Mission Bay to downtown, or from the west side to the SoMa Caltrain station.

In 2018, San Francisco and its nonprofit developer partners secured a $14 million state grant to build the affordable housing project, along with the bike infrastructure to serve it. Within four years, Casa Adelante opened at 2060 Folsom Street, with 127 apartments and a childcare center packed into a cement-paneled midrise.

But the bike lane has yet to materialize. And its delay is significant: San Francisco now risks being assessed negative points on future applications for state housing grants, after blowing its commitments on this one.

Staff at the various city agencies involved in 13th Street seem confident about the construction work completed thus far. Crews broke ground in April on what may be a years-long scramble to, in the words of San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency spokesperson Michael Roccaforte,  “improve safety for everyone travelling through one of the state’s densest urban fabrics.” They expect to wrap up in 2027.

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Anne Stanley of the Mayor’s Office for Housing and Community Development struck a more optimistic tone, saying the 13th Street overhaul, “of which the bikeway is a component, is well underway” and the state grant funds were spent on time.

“While it is too early to determine whether penalties will be assessed by the state, we will continue working with our city and state partners to responsibly close out the grant,” Stanley said.

Still, as is so often the case with major infrastructure, an initial failure to launch was the first in a string of challenges. Plans for 13th Street grew more complicated as workers hit abandoned sewer lines and other unforeseen conditions.The price tag, meanwhile, ballooned to $14.8 million. (The state grant covered $2.3 million for the bike lane and other elements.) As drafted, the 13th Street Safety Project will require new crosswalks and traffic signals, concrete buffers and designated areas for parked cars to separate bicycles from traffic, all squeezed into a three-block strip between Folsom and Valencia beneath the 101 Central Freeway. The city departments helming the project, SFMTA and Public Works, both have to negotiate with Caltrans, which controls the right-of-way.

While the logistics are daunting, the politics are formidable. Dramatic street makeovers are often polarizing in San Francisco because they become a statement about who the roads should serve. For politicians, the fallout can be severe: Former Supervisor Joel Engardio was felled partially over his support for closing Great Highway. The transformation of 13th Street has already stoked conflict at a moment when city leaders are pressing other high-stakes priorities, such as Mayor Danile Lurie’s multi-family zoning plan and two tax measures to bail out transit in the November 2026 election.

Marie Hurabiell, executive director of the political group ConnectedSF, is mobilizing the opposition.

“If safety is your top concern, you’ll put the bikes on a different street that’s not a car thoroughfare,” Hurabiell said. Her organization is a frequent foe of the SFMTA with some influence in City Hall – Lurie is set to speak at the ConnectedSF gala in November.

Cyclists and pedestrians have urged SFMTA and Public Works not to get distracted by controversy.

“This isn’t just a project about bike safety, this is about reducing crashes for everyone,” said Robin Pam, executive director of the organization Streets for All San Francisco. She cited a traffic study of the project area, which found 95 injury collisions between April 2020 and March 2025. Pam has faith the city will “bring order to a very chaotic section of roadway.”

Peter Belden, political chair for the San Francisco chapter of the Sierra Club, wonders whether city staff have thought through the consequences of failing to deliver this project on schedule.

“It’s important that the city not lose sight of the critical issue here: The state has told us that affordable housing funding is in jeopardy until they finish the bike lane,” Belden said. Sierra Club members endorsed the 13th Street bike lane and want to see it done quickly.

At least some bike lane advocates view the delay as part of a larger paradigm shift, as San Francisco retreats from the safety agenda of former transportation czar Jeffrey Tumlin, a cycling enthusiast.

“What has changed? We have a new mayor, and Jeff Tumlin has left,” Belden said.

A spokesperson for Lurie deferred requests for comment to the SFMTA.

Belden and others are baffled that a three-block bike lane would take so long to build. After all, the city has already received accommodations from the California Strategic Growth Council, which awarded and oversaw the $14 million grant. The Council extended San Francisco’s deadline for bike lane installation from 2023 to July 30. That new completion date passed more than two months ago.

When the Strategic Growth Council’s executive director approved San Francisco’s request for the new deadline, she warned that even with the extension, the city faces “adverse” scoring the next time it applies for state funding. The “close-out” deadline to spend all the project funds is Dec. 31, the council’s former executive director Lynn von‐Koch Liebert wrote last year in a letter to then-Mayor London Breed’s director of housing development, Sara Amaral.

Roccaforte indicated that SFMTA is fully aware of the city’s grant obligations, echoing Stanley’s assertion that the funds were spent, “and we will work with our city and state partners on closing out the grant responsibly.”

The signs of progress on 13th Street are limited, thus far, to excavators digging earth within sections of K-rail. Anyone who bikes from Folsom to Valencia today might glimpse a worker saw-cutting a road or popping out of a manhole. Much of the work to date has happened underground, the street surface largely unchanged as cyclists continue jostling among cars and freeway traffic hisses overhead.

On a recent afternoon Mike Benziger gingerly walked his bicycle, and his dog, toward the crosswalk at 13th and Folsom. Gripping the handle bars with one hand, and his dog’s leash with the other, Benziger scanned four converging roads for cars.

“Cars here definitely freak me out,” Benziger said, adding that he hopes a new bikeway will improve the situation.

Around the corner, Rico Duenas was pedaling up Folsom Street, in a lane marked with green paint and girded by a few posts. Duenas thought the paint was perfectly adequate, and didn’t understand why the city would spend so much effort to create a protective barrier on 13th Street.

“I don’t see why we need all this protection,” Duenas said. “If people would just use common sense, the world would be safe.”

As proponents of the 13th Street Safety Project encourage city departments to get moving, their adversaries are exhorting the SFMTA to hit pause and consider alternative routes. Critics have blasted the 13th Street project for necessitating removal of parking spots and traffic lanes. They fear SFMTA will open space for tent encampments by widening sidewalks, and increase congestion by adding a stoplight and crosswalk near the 101 on-ramp.

Many San Francisco motorists use 13th Street as a route to and from the 101, and they recoil at having to share the space with bikes. ConnectedSF has already begun lobbying City Hall to significantly revise the project and further slow-roll it by conducting more traffic analyses.

Belden hopes the city won’t bow to pressure.

This article originally published at San Francisco got $2.3 million in state funding to build a bike lane. So where is it?.