More on San Francisco's "bike utopia"
Letters to the editor in today's SF Chronicle:
Regarding “Road to bike utopia” (Feb. 10): I am disturbed that the issue of reduced car access and parking on city streets is framed by pitting needs of cyclists against business owners.
Other citizens are impacted, too, including the disabled and the elderly. I drive my parents, who are in their 90s, to appointments and errands, and also enjoy taking them to beautiful parts of our city.
The Embarcadero is one such spot, where we use our handicapped placard to park on the bay side, and then take a stroll. Loss of accessible parking here would mean we just don’t go.
I can push my dad’s wheelchair, but my mom can’t walk from blocks away. If there is to be no parking, where will the accessible drop-off points be, and will there be affordable parking near enough that they won’t be waiting for me for a long time? Does bike utopia exclude us?
Anne Seeman
San Francisco
Bike utopia? Who’s the genius behind our city street planning? I have lived between Fifth and Sixth streets on the Shipley Street alley for 18 years. The traffic has never been so unmanageable.
The “new” Fifth Street now features no parking between Folsom Street and Harrison Street, the new bike lanes choke traffic down to one lane heading south on Fifth (one of the main arteries leading to both the Bay Bridge and the Brannan Street on-ramp onto Interstate 280 south).
Northbound traffic on Fifth Street because of metered right- and left-turn lanes also reduces to one lane, backing up onto the freeway. The Sixth Street and Folsom Street corridors are particularly challenging because of the bike and metered turn lanes. Rush hour seems to be an all-day event.
I’m all for biking to work (I own a bicycle and a unicycle), but rarely have I seen more than a handful of scooters, skateboards and bikes on Fifth Street.
A figure of 4% to 5% of the population that bike to work has recently released; seems like things are way out of proportion for the remaining 95% of us who are stuck driving and parking on our new “improved” streets.
Michael Brennan
San Francisco
Rob's comment:
The city's estimate on bike commuting is 3%, though its Travel Decisions Survey 2017 (page 5) puts overall bike trips in the city at only 2%. Same for the Transportation Fact Sheet which also tells us that commuting by bike in 2000 was 2%.
What happened to the city's bike revolution? Answer: It never happened, though the city's zombie anti-car, pro-bike policies keep shuffling along, pretending that it will happen any time now, while only making it harder to drive and park those wicked motor vehicles in the city.
The SF Chronicle, by the way, has long supported the bike movement and anti-carism in general: See More bike puffery in the SF Chronicle.
Labels: Anti-Car, Bicycle Coalition, Bicycle Count Report, Bicycle Plan, City Government, I-280, Neighborhoods, Parking, SF Chronicle, Traffic in SF
posted by Rob Anderson @ 2:11 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Rob, will you please join me in taking the lead in ceasing to call these abominations "bike" lanes? I am an unhappy cyclist who is stuck in these dangerous, trash-strewn, bumpy, delimited death alleys and I can tell you from experience that during the past 18 months human-powered bicycles are often the minority of users. Let's please call them what they now are: Electric Motor Lanes.
Why are allowing electric scooters in bike lanes? They are a danger to anyone on a bike, they go as gast as cars.
They've got to go somewhere. Better the formerly-bike lanes than the sidewalks, right? And you are totally correct. The danger level in these lanes has skyrocketed since all the 20+ mph conveyances have joined the circus.
Cycling has always been more or less dangerous, and it's getting even riskier with the motor bikes and scooters. Give it up, Greg! Take up sky-diving or cliff-jumping or some other safer hobby.
Post a Comment
<< Home