Biking Increases Despite City's General Ambivalence
Biking Increases Despite City's General Ambivalence
"We allowed a dumpster to sit in the bike lane for over 20 days, and people still want to bike in this city. It's fascinating!"
image via Chema Hernández Gil
In a recent Examiner article, Joe "The Transit Nerd" buys into the anti-car propaganda that shows "Annual bike count shows commutes in SF up nearly 9 percent". According to the SFMTA, "There are an estimated 82,000 bike trips in the city per day, an 8.5 percent increase in bike trips from 2014 to 2015". And while I wholeheartedly disagree with data in favor of cold hard firmly held beliefs, I'm delighted to see that the city continues to show general ambivalence despite their increase in numbers.
SFMTA representative said, "Yeah we're really shocked the numbers went up, even with our disjointed 'bike network' or whatever you would call it. SF even had a 'bike injunction' from 2006-2010. The bike plan was held up in court on the presumption was that the bicycle plan could cause "significant damage to the enfiroment and therefor require an environment review under the California Environmental Quality Act. Can you imagine? Our self proclaimed 'green, environmentally friendly, progressive city' couldnt even put in bike sharrows or bike racks because it could ruin the environment?! The premise that it removing travel lanes and parking spaces CAUSE cars to CAUSE more congestion."
"This is the best we can do for your bicycling children, because Parking > Children"
Unfortunately the bike injunction was lifted, but the spirit of saving parking remains, even with our SFMTA Director of Sustainable Streets Tom Maguire. Maguire said he enjoys cycling with his kids on that small sliver of space dedicated a mile of Golden Gate Park. The stretch of space which features bike lanes separated from traffic by on-street parking. That’s a design choice the city will employ, because just like Golden Gate Park, the city sorely needs as much on-street parking as possible. Maguire said.“We don’t want to make a choice between parking and cyclists.”
The SFPD has been trying to curb biking for years, and had the following to say, "We also can't believe bicycling increased even though we rarely ticket motorists in bike lanes. We had police officers dedicating thousands of dollars to pulling people over in those tiny, nimble, relatively slow moving vehicles and the numbers still increased! We don't even crackdown on Valencia street, where you'd be hard pressed to find a second of the day when there's not some car parked in the bike lane, and we even have police station on the street! What are these bikers thinking?"
"Don't expect us to unblock bike lanes when we have Wiggle stop sign rolling bikers to deal with."
image via SFGreen
"Despite the fact that none of this paint 'infrastructure' is adequately enforced, we'll continue to install miles of paint on SF.
image via 0xEugene
Even the Mayor is taking his piece of credit for the uptick. Despite only using his bike for photo-ops, he said, “as San Francisco grows in population, housing and jobs, it is critical that we offer shoddy and disjointed bike infrastructure that never removes even a thread of parking. We'll also make sure to increase enforcement on this safe and affordable ways of getting around the City.” said Mayor Ed Lee. “And that's why I vetoed the 'bike yield law', to help make biking an even more unattractive option on the city."
"I want to treat these 'vehicles' exactly the same, for safety or course!" - Mayor Lee, probably.
“Despite our lack of efforts, bicycling is San Francisco’s fastest growing mode of transportation,” said Ed Reiskin, SFMTA Director of Transportation. “We're not entirely sure why it's happening. Have you seen Market Street before? Yikes! With hundreds of thousands new bike trips each year, we’re committed to watering down our bike plans while making parking plentiful for everyone. Expect to see more half-hearted bike 'infrastructure' that will undoubtedly be blocked by hordes of cars, and expect more SFPD bike crackdowns of course."
The city is full of poorly painted bike lanes with motorists double parked daily. If we reach our city's official goal of 20 percent of trips by bike by 2020 it won't be from our efforts.” Ed Reiskin, probably.
image via Adam Long
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