Chronicle is infected with the bike virus

Photo: Yolanda M. James

As I've pointed out over the years, the SF Chronicle has always supported the anti-car bike movement. (Chronicle editorial: Flab-gab and misinformation)

The major San Francisco daily newspaper didn't want to get left behind by the trendy anti-car bike movement to remodel city streets on behalf of that obnoxious special interest group.

Turns out that aligning the paper with that fashionable minority only makes the Chronicle look increasingly dumb and dishonest.

The latest evidence is Rachel Swan's story in Monday's Chronicle about the Fell Street bike lane project. (After years of collisions and injuries, SF’s Panhandle gets a protected bike lane.) 

Swan cites two pedestrian injury accidents on the Panhandle---I mean of course "collisions," as per the PC terminology adopted by the Chronicle---in a story supporting the new bike lane:

Ninety-year-old David Grinberg was enjoying a daily routine — crossing the street after reading his newspaper on a park bench in the Panhandle — when a car struck and killed him in the crosswalk at Fell and Baker streets. The crash on a fall evening in 2017 left a cloud over the neighborhood. But it also animated residents who for years had urged the city to design a safer roadway, with shorter crosswalks and barriers to divide cyclists from traffic.

Maybe Chronicle reporters and editors don't recognize a flagrant non sequitur when they see one, but I bet their readers do.

How does citing an injury accident---I insist on using the correct term---to a pedestrian hit by a car support creating a bike lane on the Panhandle?

But that wasn't dumb enough for Swan. She doubles down by citing another pedestrian accident to justify the bike lane project:

For Julie Nicholson, the redesigned road has a deep, visceral significance. Nicholson was jogging through the Panhandle park in January when a car ran through a red light at Masonic and Oak streets, struck another car that was making a left-hand turn and ricocheted into the greenway. The car slammed into Nicholson, who flew about 30 feet, breaking her neck and back.

Apparently Swan couldn't find---or even get one from the city---a single cycling accident to cite, which says a lot about the phony safety justification for the Fell Street bike lane project (What, by the way, is a "greenway"?)

Swan features sound bites from Dean Preston, our District 5 Supervisor. Like his recent predecessors, Supervisor Preston is a political lemming, not a leader. Recall that he was too spineless to even mention the Masonic Avenue bike project in his campaigns for supervisor, since doing so was bound to offend a bloc of voters in District 5, particularly the many people who opposed the dumb project.

Swan neatly sums up this nonsense in a last paragraph packed with falsehoods that could have been written by the dizziest member of the Bicycle Coalition:

Kutner says the Fell Street project will make things safer for everybody: motorists, cyclists, people on foot, kids playing in the grassy median, and seniors who live at Mercy Terrace Apartments on Baker Street. Had it happened earlier, the redesign might have saved an old man coming home with his newspaper.

See also Peter Hartlaub, the Chronicle, and the elitist car-free fantasy.

Punks on bikes: A Panhandle menace for pedestrians

SF Citizen

I often cross the Panhandle on foot on my way to Kezar Stadium or Cole Valley. Punks on bikes routinely speed on the Northern Panhandle path they share with pedestrians, which makes it hazardous for the unwary or the inattentive. 

City Hall is aggressively redesigning city streets for cyclists while ignoring the punks-on-bikes situation that injured the pedestrian above as reported by San Francisco Citizen.

SF Citizen apparently didn't get the Vision Zero memo telling us that there's no such thing as an accident, that those mishaps must instead be labeled "collisions." (Traffic death, semantics, and Vision Zero)

Dr. Anthony Fauci to @GStephanopoulos: “I don't tweet. I don't even read them so I don't really want to go there. I just will continue to do my job no matter what comes out because I think it's very important.” https://t.co/JgCvhTifYS pic.twitter.com/BJGIqwSjuT

— Good Morning America (@GMA) July 28, 2020