Last week, for the second time in 5 months, a San Francisco Superior Court judge froze plans that would have enriched San Francisco with more bicycle lanes and bike parking as well as opened San Francisco's Municipal Railroad transit system to bicyclists.

Ruling that San Francisco's Bicycle Plan cannot be implemented without first completing a state mandated environmental impact review, Superior Court Judge Peter Busch's injunction means that bike facility improvements will not occur for at least 4 months (the minimal time to complete a study); however, environmental reviews have been known to take several years to complete.

The legal suit was filed by local groups that believed the city was falling sway to bike fanatics. Using 2000 Census figures showing that only 1% of commuters bicycle to work, the anti bike coalition argued that a small number of citizens were making the city spend millions on improvements that few people would use. Unfortunately, the anti bike group conveniently neglected other governmental studies proving the value of bicycle improvements.

While it's true that 1.1% of commuters in the San Francisco MSA over 16 years of age used bicycles as their primary means of transportation, that figure did not include kids under 16 that rode their bikes to school or anyone that used a bike to commute to a lesser degree than some other form of transportation (they only commute by bike sometimes). If these other users are taken into account, the true percentage of people that used bicycles for utilitarian purposes (like getting to work, school or for running errands) could exceed 10%. In fact, according to a study* sponsored by the US Department of Transportation???s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the federal Bureau of Transportation Statistics, over 27% of the US population over the age of 16 rode a bicycle at least once during the summer of 2002. Since bicycle usage in San Francisco is higher than in most places around the country, it's reasonable to assume the actual figure for bicycle users is in excess of 30% or 1.2 million people in the San Francisco MSA.

* 2002 National Survey of Pedestrian and Bicyclist Attitudes and Behaviors

Respectfully,
Larry Lagarde
RideTHISbike.com
Urging bicycling for recreation, commuting, health and a better future.