On San Fran’s Market Street Bikes Outnumber Cars for a Day

Gavin_Newsom.jpg 

From the San Francisco Chronicle via Carfree USA:

For the first time ever, at the height of the morning rush hour there were more bicycles than cars heading downtown on Market Street in San Francisco, officials said.

Mayor Gavin Newsom, in a black track suit, survived the ruts on Valencia Street on his loaner mountain bike and made it to City Hall, where he was joined by a half dozen supervisors on bikes.

"You should see the potholes in this town,” the mayor said.

Newsom seized the day to unveil the city’s new cycling strategy, a 10-point plan now being held up pending an environmental review.

"Turnout was huge,” said Leah Shahum, executive director of the bicycle coalition. "We gave away 3,000 canvas bags and we’re down to our final bunch of bananas.”

Photo: San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and Leah Shahum of the SF Bike Coalition, by Drew Rogers via Flickr 

ALSO ON STREETSBLOG

New San Francisco Bike Lanes: Feel the Ecstasy

|
SF MTA Chief Nat Ford and Mayor Gavin Newsom work the green rollers. Photo: Matthew Roth. These are heady days for San Francisco cyclists. After three years that saw the addition of pretty much zero bike infrastructure, this week the city hailed the arrival of its first new bike lane since 2006 and its first-ever […]

Are Two-Way Streets the Way of the Future?

|
Today on the Streetsblog Network, we’re featuring a post from San Francisco’s Pedestrianist about two-way street conversions in Minneapolis and how such changing traffic patterns could benefit pedestrians and other users: The city of Minneapolis is about to return two of its downtown streets to two-way traffic after nearly 30 years of one-way flow. Those […]

Eyes on the Street: Bicoastal Streetcars

|
Brooklyn San Francisco Like Clarence Eckerson, I recently returned from a visit to San Francisco. I left with a feeling that San Francisco has the best urban surface transportation in the country: emissions-free buses drawing power from overhead wires, regular buses, cable cars moving up and down steep hills, many cyclists despite those hills, partially buried lightrail and […]

Incredible SFPD Training Video: “Bikes Belong in Traffic”

|
This training video was a collaboration between the San Francisco Police Department and the SF Bicycle Coalition. The video is intended to increase police officers’ awareness of cyclists’ rights and responsibilities, and it is really effective. Here in New York, cyclists who complain of motorist intimidation and assault are often brushed off by the police. Perhaps the […]