Causes of traffic congestion

Masonic Avenue

Letter to the editor in today's SF Chronicle:

Causes for congestion

“Traffic schooling” (Editorial, Oct. 22) does not mention two related, very significant, causes of increased traffic congestion in our city: construction and bike lanes. Bike lanes are taking away lanes previously available to cars, often making one lane in place of two.

The decisions creating this cause of traffic congestion are typically made by relatively young and healthy idealists who expect all of us will suddenly get on a bicycle. This option is not available to the handicapped, seniors, people with jobs out of town, or parents of small children.

The construction boom should be good for us, except it causes street and lane closures and the projects seem to pop up with no planning and seem to be endless. Neither of these factors is mentioned as part of the referenced. That makes me wonder how much the study was truly interested in the objective truth and is instead meant as a weapon to use against Uber and Lyft, two companies introducing highly successful and creative business models.

Paul Wildes

San Francisco