Sunday, January 07, 2007

Traffic in San Francisco: The numbers

To really understand what's involved with the Bicycle Plan and the streets of San Francisco, people need to look at the numbers on traffic in the city. For openers check out the city's Convention & Visitors Bureau website, where you will find some crucial numbers: The city had 15.74 million visitors in 2005 (which, by the way, generated $418 million in tax revenue for SF and supported 66,315 jobs with a total payroll of $1.80 billion). 4.5 million people stayed in SF hotels in 2005, and 25.8% of those folks rented a car in San Francisco, which means that there were more than one million rented cars on city streets in 2005.

Next we take a look at the San Francisco Transportation Fact Sheet put out by MTA in March, 2006. Non-SF residents commuting to SF in 2000: 261,181; residents commuting out of SF: 96,544. Total daytime increase in vehicles in the city: 35,400. Average weekday boardings of Muni in SF: 685,000. Average Saturday Muni boardings: 461,491. Average Sunday Muni boardings: 375,291. Total number of Muni vehicles in service: 1045 (not included in the DMV number below).

According to the DMV, there were 452,813 registered motor vehicles in SF as of January, 2006.

Accordng to the 2000 Census, 1.9% of the city's population commutes by bike. That number is only 1% according to the San Francisco Transportation Authority (Countywide Transportation Plan, July 2004).

The pro-bicycle folks in SF need to explain to the rest of us why it is good public policy to implement the 460-page Bicycle Plan---which means, among other things, taking away traffic lanes and street parking in SF to make bike lanes---with absolutely no environmental review.

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