S.F. Activist has jammed a stick in bike plan's spokes

Good grief who want's to bike in San Francisco too many freaking hills! :nono: LOL!

Wildkow

 

Mostly people who can't afford cars.

 

Good god, man. Is your intent to infect EVERY thread with your rare sense of nonsense? Those of us who choose to ride a bike for transportation do so because we're poor?

You don't actually vote do you?

 

And I suppose you think the people who walk to work are too poor to afford bus fare, right?

 

I work from home because I can't afford a bike or shoes.

Tom

 

Pardon my ignorance but I rode a bike to and from work in San Diego for 4 yrs and as I remember I rode with the traffic and I was required by law to use the same rules of the road as cars. I do not see how bike lanes cause traffic jams and idling. Too many cars on the road at the same time going the same direction caused the traffic jams not the bike lanes.
San Francisco is like a ADD child, always looking for attention. Best to ignore them.

 

It's simply not the case in NYC. Bikes do increase idling traffic, in my view. I still support bike lanes (and a hefty fee for vehicular traffic in midtown).

 

I could not find any objective data on whether or not the addition of bike lanes would increase traffic congestion. I did see a few studies (US and non-US) that assumed increased bicycle use would reduce congestion, and some that included encouraging increased bicycle use as one of many proposals to reduce traffic congestion.

Here's an actual environment impact study for one California town, and as far as I can tell, they just kind of winged it.

http://ci.santa-rosa.ca.us/doclib/Documents/Initial-Study-10-19-07.pdf

Interestingly, SF already does in-depth studies of its bike lanes. Including careful post-installation evaluation. Apparently the municipal bus authority flatly opposes bike lanes of any type. So it's not like they were winging those aspects of it, it's just that those studies weren't environmental impact studies.

Bicycle-Related Reports, Studies, and Planning Efforts

For what that's worth, the typical assumption of urban planners seems to be that increased bicycle use reduces congestion, and from what I read of the SF reports, that's their conclusion as well. But I don't see a lot of hard analysis of the environmental angle there.

So it's not like they've done this willy-nilly, it's more that they haven't done a proper environmental impact analysis. Given what I read of the analyses of their existing bike lanes, I think it's unlikely that they are going to be able to show a significant negative environmental impact from properly planned and executed bike lanes.

 

Notice how the whole discussion is unconsciously framed about bike lanes being evaluated for the vehicle impact and nothing about bike lanes being evaluated for the biker impact.