A.W. Dunbar was riding his bicycle on Market Street when his wheel got trapped in a tram track, causing him to topple over. Unable to stop in time, the motorist driving behind ran over his ankle.
Dunbar’s tale sounds eerily familiar to cyclists navigating the hazards of the downtown thoroughfare — but Dunbar’s crash happened in 1894.
Dunbar wasn’t seriously injured on that April day in the late 19th century, but others haven’t been so lucky. On Aug. 7, Yebin Kim died after the wheel of her electric scooter was caught in a streetcar track at Market and Powell, perhaps a mile from where Dunbar went down. Before the 32-year-old could get out of the way, a commercial truck ran her over.
Cyclists, and now scooters, have been getting caught and injured by cable car and streetcar tracks for more than a century, and the city still hasn’t fully protected them. Advocates say a compromised version of the pre-pandemic plan to transform Market Street is partly to blame — and no easy fix has emerged.
‘The Slot’
The tracks that trap bicycle wheels are nothing new; Market Street in particular has been snagging them since the city’s early days. Around 1900, Market Street was known as “The Slot,” referring to cable car slots, gaps through which an underground cable pulled the cars along the street.
Then, as now, San Francisco was crisscrossed by street-level rail tracks. Market Street remains infamous for trapping bikes, thanks to high ridership alongside miles of rail tracks.
In 2015, Mark Heryer, 47, caught his bike wheel in the track on Market Street. He was run over by a bus (opens in new tab)and died.
Data on the number of cyclists who wipe out is hard to obtain — only the most tragic get public attention. Many cyclists don’t call 911 or seek treatment. Many, including this reporter, simply get up and ride away after a minor tumble.
There were 53 crashes involving cyclists and scooter riders on Market Street reported to the San Francisco Police Department in 2025. In 2019, there were 60. Cycling advocates believe the number is an undercount.
Bike injury lawyers say they get roughly two calls a month about crashes tied to streetcar tracks.
“Market Street is sort of the hot spot where these cyclists tend to go down,” said personal injury attorney Mike Stevenson.
Last year, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency recorded (opens in new tab) 966,000 bikes and scooters along Market Street, down from 1.3 million in 2019.
Personal injury attorney Miles Cooper said injuries on Market Street often occur because cyclists veer into the lane with tracks to avoid buses parked along the curb and blocking the bike lane. This is what appears to have happened with Kim this month.
“That’s when you see people go down,” Cooper said. “It’s a constant problem.”
Unlike lawsuits filed by people who allege they fell and were injured on sidewalks or other city-owned property, wounded cyclists and scooter riders can’t sue about the tracks in the street, lawyers said.
The SFMTA has “design immunity (opens in new tab),” meaning it can’t be sued as long as the piece of infrastructure that caused an injury went through a proper approval process.
“Design immunity is, in essence, ‘We designed the tracks. These meet the design specifications. Because they meet the design specifications, we are immune from liability,’” Cooper said.
Rolling on rubber
Shocker: cycling and transit advocates have pinned their hopes on a fix from — drum roll — Europe.
Flangeway fillers, compressible rubber blocks that fill the flangeway (the gap in a rail), are being tested in Brandenburg and Cologne, Germany, and Basel and Geneva, Switzerland. They are rigid enough to support the weight of a cyclist but compress under the weight of a train.
They sound great in theory. In practice, the idea falls flat. The fillers are fragile and, when they wear down, dangerous to cyclists. They’re also expensive.
Basel’s transit agency, Basler Verkehrs-Betriebe, has been testing the device since 2021 on an 80-meter stretch of track at a tram stop. The stretch overlaps with a bike route that has no convenient alternative for cyclists. The agency says it has to replace the entire 80-meter strip every four months, because as the rubber wears down, it forms a divot that can catch bike wheels.
The rubber insert used in Basel is one continuous 80-meter strip, so the whole piece must be replaced even if only part of it is damaged. The part of the track right before the station tends to get the most wear due to the tram’s acceleration and braking. The installation of the filler in 2021 cost $384,000, and annual operational costs ranged from $110,000 to $137,000 between 2022 and 2024, although the manufacturer has so far covered the replacement cost, according to the agency.
To top it off, when asked how effective the strip has been at preventing injuries, a rep for Basel’s transit agency said they don’t know.
“We do not keep statistics on cyclist falls at specific locations. Indeed, doing so would not be possible, as the vast majority of such falls go unreported,” spokesperson Nicole Ryf wrote in an email.
These drawbacks appear to have been enough to deter San Francisco from adopting the fillers, or even testing them. An SFMTA spokesperson said flangeway fillers don’t work for a metro streetcar system, since high-volume train traffic wears out the rubber too quickly. The rubber strips are usually used for freight rail crossings, which see less use.
“There isn’t a material strong enough yet,” the spokesperson said.
The manufacturer of the strip used in Basel, the German company SEALABLE, estimated the cost to be roughly $390 per foot. Due to the cost, it recommends installing the inserts in short segments of roughly 18 to 30 feet in places where cyclists have to frequently cross train tracks.
Despite the issues, Basel isn’t giving up on its flangeway filler installation. It plans to install the rubber in shorter segments to make repairs cheaper.
In the U.S., Seattle has used flangeway fillers on at least one block (opens in new tab). Transit officials from the city declined to share more information.
In Portland, Oregon, transit officials tried moving bike lanes away from streetcar tracks and installing signage depicting cyclists falling into the tracks.
Philadelphia (opens in new tab) has gone the furthest, adding sidewalk-level bike lanes to fully isolate cyclists from other road users. This has the added benefit of eliminating the possibility of cars blocking the bike lane, something San Francisco advocates have been pushing for.
‘The Bummer Market Street plan’
Bike and safe-streets advocates have called on the city to install protected bike lanes along Market Street’s full length — lanes that keep cars and buses out, unlike the current design, which allows double-parking on parts of the street and forces cyclists to swerve around vehicles, risking getting their wheels caught in the tracks.
In 2019, the city planned elevated, sidewalk-level bike lanes to separate cyclists and scooters from bus lanes, vintage streetcars, and pedestrians under the $600 million Better Market Street (opens in new tab) plan. But the elevated lanes were scrapped during the pandemic, enraging advocates.
“We ended up with what people refer to as ‘the Bummer Market Street plan,’” said Brett Thurber, who owns e-bike store The New Wheel on Valencia Street.
Thurber said one of the first things he tells customers when selling a bike is to watch out for streetcar tracks — even experienced cyclists get caught.
The SFMTA said it has made Market Street safer for cyclists — pointing to protected and repaved bike lanes in some areas — but didn’t address the stretches where bikes must fight for space alongside cars. The agency said it concentrates parking enforcement near bike facilities and in areas where double-parking is frequent, and pointed to bike rail-crossing warning signs posted in two locations — at Church and 17th streets, and Market and 11th streets. Unlike Portland’s warnings, San Francisco’s signs don’t depict the risk of a fall.
In the meantime, the main thing cyclists can do is remain vigilant, said Christopher White, director of the Bicycle Coalition. His organization teaches classes on how to ride safely, and navigating tracks is a key part of the program. White said cyclists should cross a track as close to 90 degrees as possible to reduce the risk of injury. He also said the city should remove unused tracks, like those on Illinois Street in Dogpatch.
“It’s difficult to talk to a group of people who bike in San Francisco and not have a bunch of people raise their hands when you ask who’s fallen on the tracks in San Francisco,” White said.