Streetsblog San Francisco

Boris's cycling superhighways aren't good enough, says Ken Livingstone. Photo: EcoBlog

Remember the Times of London’s “Cities Fit for Cycling” campaign? Earlier this year one of the most prominent dailies in the UK launched an all-out blitz to make bicycling safer in British cities, complete with a comprehensive policy platform. The campaign is for real: The Times is now getting London mayoral candidates on the record with their bike policy positions.

Here’s how this political slugfest is playing out so far. Tory Boris Johnson, the mayor who launched the largest bike-share system in the English-speaking world and built the first corridors in a network of “cycle superhighways,” hasn’t done enough to make cycling accessible and safe, according to his chief rival, Labor candidate Ken Livingstone.

Livingstone, who was ousted from the mayoralty by Johnson in 2008, made his reputation as a transportation reformer in his first stint as mayor. He instituted London’s congestion charge in 2003, completed a range of high-profile pedestrian reclamation projects, and initiated the idea of building high-volume bike routes. Now he’s attacking Johnson’s bike-share initiative for being out of reach to most Londoners, and assailing the cycle superhighways as little more than paint on the street.

A political campaign group called “Londoners on Bikes” is going to deliver a bloc of at least 3,000 votes to the candidate who commits to the strongest platform for bicycling. Here are some highlights from Livingstone and Johnson, according to the Times.

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This is the third in a series of reports about sustainable transportation policies in Mexico City. Last week, Streetsblog participated in a tour of the city led by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. Previous installments covered pedestrian improvements and the city’s new bus rapid transit system.

An Ecobici station in the Condesa neighborhood of Mexico City. This station was full of bikes, but a nearby station was nearly empty. Photo: Noah Kazis

Mexico City never had much of a reputation as a bicycle city. Traffic is terribly congested and extremely dangerous — drivers don’t even have to take an eye exam to get a license — and until recently, the air was thick with smog no one hoped to inhale too deeply.

Under the leadership of Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, however, Mexico City is taking a multi-pronged approach toward becoming bike-friendly, making changes to its streets, its laws and its culture. Most important has been the introduction of a new bike-share system, Ecobici, that’s expanding rapidly.

In 2007, when Ebrard began a concerted effort to improve cycling, half of all trips were less than eight kilometers long, yet only one percent of trips were made by bike. The city resolved to boost cycling to five percent of all trips in just five years. Mexico City has made big strides under Ebrard but will probably need more time to hit the initial five-year target. Today bicycle mode-share is between two and three percent of trips, according to ITDP.

At the center of the city’s effort is Ecobici, which launched two years ago. A public bike-sharing system funded mainly by the government, Ecobici offers 1,200 bikes at 90 stations, making it comparable in scope to Washington, DC’s Capital Bikeshare but far smaller, for the time being, than systems in London and Paris.

As of today the system can only be found in the trendy Condesa neighborhood, which is often compared to New York City’s Soho. Even limited to one neighborhood, however, demand is sky-high. To ensure quality service for the 30,000 current members, Ecobici has had to set up a waiting list for new subscribers. Otherwise there just wouldn’t be enough bikes to go around, explained Ivan De La Lanza, coordinator of Mexico City’s bicycle mobility strategy. Each bike is already being taken out an average of 10 times per day.

Though Ecobici is only available in a single neighborhood, a full 40 percent of new cyclists in the city use the system, said De La Lanza. It also may be encouraging others to get on their bikes more. According to Good magazine, the use of personal bikes rose 50 percent in the year that Ecobici opened.

A map hanging in Ecobici headquarters shows the current extent of the system along with two expansions planned for this year. Photo: Noah Kazis

This year, the system is set for not one but two major expansions. In June, the service area will spread east, into the Roma neighborhood and Mexico City’s historical downtown. Then in November, Ecobici will move west, surrounding the Bosque Chapultepec — Mexico City’s equivalent of Central Park — and expanding into the business-oriented Polanco area. Membership is expected to skyrocket to between 73,000 and 100,000 users, according to Ecobici official Oscar Montiel.

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A new articulated Metrobús sits in front of Mexico City's Monumento a la Revolucion. Photo: Noah Kazis

This is the second in a series of reports about sustainable transportation policies in Mexico City. Last week, Streetsblog participated in a tour of the city led by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. A previous installment covered pedestrian improvements in the city and a third will discuss its bicycle planning.

After a precipitous collapse, buses are on the rebound in Mexico City.

When the city’s public bus system fell apart during the political and economic turmoil of the 80s and 90s, Mexico City residents were left to rely on a fleet of private microbuses that was extensive but slow, dangerous, and heavily polluting. Now, the city is quickly building out a bus rapid transit system called Metrobús that’s making surface transit fast, safe, and healthy. “It’s the most important initiative in the city in the last 25 years,” says Mayor Marcelo Ebrard.

On the Avenida de Insurgentes, where the first Metrobús line opened in 2006, the distinctive red buses pass by in continuous streams, even when it’s not rush hour. At midday, the gap between one bus and the next was rarely longer than the time it takes to load and unload passengers at the previous station or to wait at a red light. Each bus was full. Clearly, demand is high, perhaps higher than the system can handle.

A bus pulls up to the elevated station in a dedicated lane. Another bus followed immediately behind this one. Photo: Noah Kazis

Each of the three Metrobús lines offers a full set of bus rapid transit features. Riders cross to the median of a wide avenue, where buses run in each direction on physically separated lanes. A ramp leads up to an enclosed station, where you tap a smart card against the turnstile to enter.

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Ferry riders traveling to San Francisco may see rates rise. But the better solution might be to raise revenues by increasing parking rates. Photo: The Greater Marin

Like many transportation agencies across the country, the Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District is struggling with debt.

In order to help offset the $87 million poured into a road reconstruction, today GGBHD will debate whether to raise rates for ferry riders.

But there’s a better way, says David Edmondson of the Greater Marin blog: charge for parking, not riding the ferry.

As long as the parking lot is free, this is the wrong move for the District. Charging for parking would discourage driving to the ferry terminal and encourage people to bus or carpool, freeing some of the parking lot for mid-day ferry drivers, putting more people on buses and bikes, and perhaps even boosting, rather than suppressing, ferry ridership.

My very rough calculation, based on the findings of county-wide land values in the Tiburon Housing Element, places the parking lot’s market value at between $48 million and $55 million, assuming 45-unit-per-acre housing. If the land were leased from GGBHD, it would add around $1 million to $2 million per year of direct income, and around $1.3 million in new fare revenue, assuming transit is the primary mode of transportation for the residents. In all, it would equate to around 8% of the ferry’s cost.

Parking lot development [requires] long-term conceptual thinking. Tomorrow’s vote is just about whether to raise the fares of ferry riders, and the answer should be a firm no. Raising the price of parking would have a number of positive knock-on effects to commuting and parking patterns at both Sausalito and Larkspur by improving parking turnover availability for mid-day riders, while encouraging carpooling, biking, and busing, making more efficient use of the lots and the travel systems in place.

Elsewhere on the Network today: Pedestrian Observations looks at how the different geographic constituencies represented by Richard Florida, Joel Kotkin and Rick Santorum have shaped their respective philosophies. Carfree Days says Seattle’s neighborhood greenways program is helping meet the needs of an important category of cyclists: families. And N8than comments on the phenomena in which some cash-strapped places are returning asphalt roads to gravel.

A mini-documentary out of Portland, Oregon showcases the vibrant bicycle culture the city enjoys, from “bike trains” of kids riding to school on traffic-calmed bike boulevards to a range of everyday people getting around by bike simply because it’s “accessible.”

As San Francisco strives to be the most bike-friendly city on the west coast, we can only hope it won’t be long before we see as many two-wheeling families on our streets.

H/T Ron Richings for the video, filmed by Kona Productions.

New York City's Prospect Park West parking-protected bike path. Photo copyright Dmitry Gudkov

New York City has raised the bar in recent years for rolling out bicycle improvements and reclaiming public space from automobiles. While San Franciscans have come to expect major delays for bike projects as the norm in their city, New York, the only American city more dense than SF, has zoomed ahead by adding roughly 20 miles of protected bike lanes since 2007, with more on the way. After each new NYC bikeway is built, injuries to all users decline and bicycling increases along the corridor.

How can San Francisco emulate New York’s success? In short: San Francisco’s public officials need to exert bold leadership to hasten a painstakingly slow planning process intended not so much to achieve specific goals, but to avoid rocking the boat. That was the general sentiment at a recent forum where local bike advocates popped questions at Paul Steely White, the executive director of Transportation Alternatives, New York’s leading advocacy organization for bicycling, walking, and transit.

“New York’s success, tenaciousness, vision, and drive have been guiding the way for other American cities,” San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (SFBC) Executive Director Leah Shahum told an audience at the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association last Thursday, where she and White discussed the state of the bicycling movement in the two cities.

“We all know that we talk about Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Berlin, and Barcelona as being these wonderful bicycling cities, and many getting better and better, but [with] that European model, you really lose people,” said Shahum. ”To have a great American city guiding the way in being a great bicycling space, and really reclaiming space from the automobile and creating public space for people, frankly, is making our job a lot easier in San Francisco.”

NYC DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan has earned a reputation for pursuing groundbreaking projects like the two-way bikeway on Prospect Park West, which produced major benefits and, despite high-profile resistance from a small group of politically-connected NIMBYs, has been largely embraced by the public.

“We’ve been very lucky to have such great leadership that has managed, nevertheless, to involve communities and be very democratic while at the same time acting swiftly and decisively to implement safer streets,” said White. “I think one way to cut through the red tape, and maybe some of the needless process, is to appeal to safety, and say that every day that a street goes without pedestrian or bike infrastructure is putting people in danger.”

“There’s enough data now to show that it’s simply inhumane not to add bike lanes and pedestrian infrastructure when there’s an opportunity,” he added.

One of the main barriers preventing San Francisco from experiencing the same “impressive explosion” of visible change, said Shahum, is that SF transportation officials and politicians like Mayor Ed Lee haven’t been as willing to commit to completing bike projects, and that New York planners don’t have “to go through as much process as we do in San Francisco.”

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Evidence continues to mount that New York City’s mandatory parking minimums encourage people to drive.

Using satellite photos, UPenn professor Rachel Weinberger created an estimate of how much off-street parking existed citywide, which she then used to show the relationship between parking minimums and car commuting.

New research from University of Pennsylvania planning professor Rachel Weinberger, set to be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Transport Policy, shows once again that providing guaranteed off-street parking spaces makes New Yorkers more likely to drive to work. By mandating the construction of parking with new development, the city is encouraging more cars to drive on the city’s already clogged roads.

With the Department of City Planning now considering changes to parking minimums in the “inner ring” of neighborhoods close to the Manhattan core, Weinberger’s research is especially timely. DCP has been loath to acknowledge that mandating the construction of parking induces driving. This data bolsters the argument that eliminating parking minimums will help the city reduce traffic and achieve its sustainability goals.

Weinberger’s article (hat tip to Atlantic Cities’ Eric Jaffe) builds on research she conducted with John Kaehny for Transportation Alternatives, particularly the 2008 report “Guaranteed Parking, Guaranteed Driving” [PDF]. That piece was the first to show that off-street parking spaces attached to residences, the kind that parking minimums require, encourage people to drive to work.

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Image: 7x7 Magazine

Walkability, transit access, good local schools — San Franciscans clamor to live in neighborhoods with features like these.

Potrero Hill artist Wendy MacNaughton’s ”mental map” of the city lists the strongest qualities of seven areas that stand out for her, among them SoMa’s “best transit access in town” and the “convenient, walkable, easy everything” nature of Lower Pacific Heights and the Fillmore area.

It’s no wonder, considering such characteristics correlate strongly with happiness. Unfortunately, walkable neighborhoods are a scarce resource in this country, which means living in one can come at a high price.

I spotted a copy of the poster hanging in the cafe at City Hall, where an employee pointed out that it was featured on the July 2010 cover of 7×7 Magazine, which commissioned MacNaughton to create the map.

Last week, Berkeley became the second American city to implement an anti-harassment law to protect bicycle riders and allow victims to sue offending drivers in civil court.

Photo: EBBC/Flickr

The ordinance will be followed by an educational campaign later this year, and proponents hope it will garner greater respect towards people cycling on the city’s streets.

“This ordinance is about educating motorists about how to be responsible users of the roadway,” said Dave Campbell, program director for the East Bay Bicycle Coalition (EBBC). ”We have roadways that have not been designed for safe bicycle usage by planners and engineers. That in and of itself encourages bicyclists to disobey the rules of the road, because the rules were never written for them, and when motorists start treating cyclists as second-class citizens, that even further encourages [that behavior]. This is about changing that.”

Los Angeles was the first city in the country to adopt a bicyclist anti-harassment law last July, after which L.A. City Council President Eric Garcetti proclaimed: “If L.A. can do it, every city in the country can do it.”

City Council member Kriss Worthington said he was inspired by the L.A. law to help address harassment complaints he’d received from his Berkeley constituents.

“A woman felt that she was being harassed and neither the police nor the district attorney were taking it seriously,” said Worthington. “When I heard that L.A. had adopted this ordinance, I was so excited. This was something that had been in the back of my mind for a couple of years, knowing that the police department is very busy and are focused on preventing violence and major crimes, so the likelihood of getting attention to this was not high, so this seemed like a wonderful idea of a tool to give people to protect themselves.”

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