Cities large and small have been putting together bicycle master plans over the past few years to encourage bicycle use. Here in my neck of the woods, Seattle approved a plan last year and Bellevue is working toward a citywide pedestrian-bike plan.
The main idea is to make it easier and safer for people to use their bikes for errands and commuting. The result will be reduced traffic congestion and pollution.
It seems like the type of idea that San Francisco would jump on. But an article in the Wall Street Journal attributes San Francisco's years-long delay in implementing a plan to one man: Rob Anderson.
Blogger
Anderson is a 65-year-old from San Francisco who is making another run for the city's Board of Supervisors. He soapbox is his District 5 Diary blog.
But his real impact has been to derail for the time being the San Francisco bike plan. It proposed more and better bike lanes and more bike parking in an effort to increase bike trips in the city to 10% of the total to 2010.
Anderson suggested that San Francisco should do an environmental impact review first because it was taking away parking spaces and bike lanes for cars. Why is that bad for the environment?
Bike lanes: bad
Anderson reasons that cars will always outnumber bicycles in cities. Giving up traffic lanes and parking space to bicycles will make the streets more congested, resulting in more idling by car engines and more pollution.
When the planning commission and Board of Supervisors rejected Anderson's demands, he sued, and won. A superior court judge ruled in November 2006 that the city halt work on the bike plan until it completed an environmental review. As the city's Municipal Transportation Agency says at its website:
“The City cannot implement any bicycle-related facility improvements which could result in a physical streetscape change (striping bike lanes and shared-lane “sharrows”, installing bicycle racks and signs) until a full environmental review of the Bicycle Plan has been completed.”
Annoyances
According to the Wall Street Journal article, Anderson thinks bicycles are impractical in an urban environment, and he thinks the behavior of bicyclists on city streets is “annoying” and they have a “holier-than-thou” attitude. To read the many comments of support on Anderson's blog to the Journal story, many others agree with him.
Whenever I ride my bicycle in an urban area, I find some motorists annoying, especially those who want to express a mightier-than-thou attitude by putting my life in danger.
Positive spin
I suppose there's a way to put this delay in San Francisco in a positive light. When the city's environmental review of the bike plan is complete, there will be an official document showing how bicycle use can make cities more liveable and how increasing the use of bicycles will reduce pollution, not cause it.
Then urban planners will have another tool to fight off challenges by those who are annoyed by people riding on two wheels, instead of four.
Above, sharrow being installed on Seattle street. A rather lame attempt at making streets safer for cyclists…
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