The 71% lie
 |
| Supervisor Breed on Bike to Work Day |
The Bicycle Coalition's Leah Shahum of course repeats the falsehood at every opportunity, as she did in a recent Examiner op-ed. That's not surprising, since that's what lobbyists for special interest groups do. Shahum claims there's been "a huge growth in ridership citywide," citing the 71% increase claim that's now routinely repeated by local journalists.
From the Bicycle Coalition's website: "Bicycling is booming in San Francisco. In the last five years, the number of people biking in our city has increased a whopping 71%!"
The LA Times SF correspondent repeats that claim: "Two-wheel travel has grown 71% in the last five years here..."
C.W. Nevius likes to rely on City Hall: "Certain truths are self-evident. Bicycle traffic in the city has increased 71 percent over the last five years, according to the Municipal Transportation Agency." The MTA is a source of "self-evident" truth? This is journalism by press release. A little investigation shows that the MTA is slippery and unreliable when it provides numbers on cycling in the city.
A close look at the numbers shows how insignificant cycling really is in San Francisco---and how equally insignificant the growth in cycling has been, which makes it hard to justify all the anti-car, pro-bike "improvements" the city is now making to neighborhood streets.
That 71% comes from the city's latest Bicycle Count on page 3: "Since 2006 when 4,862 riders were counted, counts have increased an impressive 71% to 8,314 riders (August) and are up 7% since 2010."
In the same sidebar, the report tells us that "SFMTA survey data in 2011 indicate that 3.5% of all trips in San Francisco are made by bicycle, a 75% increase in mode share since 2000 when bicycling was 2% of daily trips."
That's simply false, since the 2% number---actually, 2.1%, according to the Transportation Fact Sheet---is from a "Means of Transportation to Work" chart (page 3), and does not represent all "daily trips" by bike. Note too that that percentage has increased to 3.3% in 2011, a not-so-whopping increase of only 1.2% in eleven years! The city is playing fast-and-loose with these numbers to exaggerate the number of cyclists on city streets to justify all the changes it wants to make on behalf of this fashionable interest group.
In its annual count, the city only counts people on bikes during commute hours one day a year. That count is only of people commuting to work on bikes, not the number of all daily trips by bike.
That percentage is not so "impressive" when you put it in the context of all the traffic in San Francisco, which is what another city report---a Mode Share Survey---does on page 5: Total trips per day by all modes is 2,149,145; bicycle trips per day, 73,071; trips by all other modes 2,076,074, which is 96.6%, making the percentage of daily bicycle trips 3.4%.
Hence, the city is redesigning our streets to benefit a very small minority against the interests of more than 90% of those who use city streets every day.
And exactly who are these cyclists? A report from the Controller's office a few years ago tells us: "Bicycle usage is highest among white residents, college graduates, those under 30 and those likely to move out of the City" (page 27, emphasis added). And most of these folks are young white men, since less than 30% of cyclists in San Francisco are women.
At any one time, there are around 100,000 college students in San Francisco, which is a partial explanation of the bike fad. In the next Bicycle Count Report by the city, we're told (page 3) that the count will be done in September instead of August, so that all the college students will be back from summer break, and all the groovies will be back from Burning Man, which will inflate the count enough to allow the city and the Bicycle Coalition to again claim "huge" gains in cycling.
Another Controller's report asks city residents "What would help you bike more frequently?" 54.9% answered, "Nothing." That is, almost 55% of city residents will never ride a bike in San Francisco---after more than ten years of anti-car, pro-bike propaganda from City Hall.
The moral of this story: City Hall insists on trying to shove bicycles down our throats---redesigning city streets in the process---in spite of the fact that it's own studies show that cyclists in San Francisco are a small, slowly growing number of mostly young white men.
What's wrong with that picture and that policy?
Labels: Anti-Car, Bicycle Coalition, Bicycle Count Report, Bicycle Plan, Leah Shahum, Muni, Nevius, Polk Street
posted by Rob Anderson @ 1:11 PM
6 comments
6 Comments:
I understand the massive influence bike lobbyists have had on the city and SFMTA but I wonder if even without the Bike Coalition, if some of the SFMTA problems would still not remain?
It almost seems that the SFMTA will discuss and plan and construct ANYTHING that has NOTHING to do with fixing MUNI. Parklets, Parkmobiles, bike freeways, removing parking, restricting new parking, metering parking, all seem to be on the top of their agenda. When did the SFMTA decide it should spend more time fighting to make sure new residential towers reduce or remove their underground resident parking instead of public transit?
Why are they so interested in "traffic calming" aka slowing down traffic to a crawl?
If they cannot or will not fix MUNI, maybe the SFMTA should be shut down?
The thing to remember about the bike bullshit and anti-carism is that it's an important part of the fashionable "smart growth," dense development along "transit corridors" planning theory that now dominates our Planning Department. It all fits for the trendies that now dominate City Hall policy on traffic and development.
Common sense, on the other hand, says that allowing 19,000 residents on Treasure Island and 5,000 more housing units at Parkmerced is simply stupid, but not for the Big Thinker ideologues in Planning and the MTA.
Not surprisingly developers love this theory, since not having to provide parking spaces for all the new housing units now being built makes those developments much more profitable. If at the same time the city was investing in Muni to deal with the inevitable traffic problems the theory will create in the near future, this approach might make sense. But, as you point out, that's not happening.
But all these Planners and MTA bureaucrats---and Mayor Lee and the supervisors---will be retired on their generous pension plans by the time all these traffic chickens come home to roost.
And then, to deal with the traffic mess they created, City Hall and the Bicycle Coalition will spring the ultimate anti-car project: congestion pricing, which will be a two-fer for anti-carism: it will punish people for driving motor vehicles and provide an endless stream of revenue for a predatory City Hall's bloated bureaucracy.
I have to add this: The annual bicycle count is surely gamed by the city's bike people to inflate the count. Hard to believe that they don't know the day of the count, since the Bicycle Coalition is treated like a public agency.
It's nice to ignore the evidence that refutes bicyclists claims about the prevalence of cycling and to distory and exaggerate statistics that support what they want to believe.
A true unbiased MTA would take ALL the evidence into account. Especially its own studies!
I can't understand why the MTA doesn't place value on making an impartial decision instead of one being propelled by bias.
Let me say, that if 30%+ of people were cycling, I'd have a much softer stance on the whole thing. Then obvously there would be some critical mass on cycling (no pun intended) and they do deserve a greater portion of the roadway. Of course, I know cyclists like to state that well without the lanes the cycling rate will not grow. And while that may be true, it's not like plopping down lanes is driving up the rates at which people are cycling. One only needs to see the bike lane on Clipper St. to know that the lights are on but nobody's home...
Until Cyclists represent a statistically significant portion of people in the city, they should not be dictating terms to 96% of the town.
Going from 2.1% of trips to 3.3% of trips is a 57% increase. (3.3-2.1)/(2.1)
Yes, but that's only a 1.2% increase over 11 years, which is such a trivial gain that it's not even my worth reaching for the calculator to get the number. Nice try, though. What happened to the 71%?
The whole bike revolution has been oversold in SF based on nothing but a political fad and an exaggerated interpretation of some pretty unimpressive numbers.
Post a Comment
<< Home