Streetsblog San Francisco

Nevius finally gets a handlebar perspective. Photo: Myleen Hollero/Orange Photography

It’s safe to assume that one year ago few bicycle riders who read the Chronicle would have ever imagined that Chuck Nevius would one day declare: “Bikes are the future. We need to do a better job of dealing with it.”

But that’s exactly what happened yesterday. Nevius’ sudden embrace of “the inevitable conclusion” is a milestone as bicycling becomes more and more mainstream in San Francisco.

“After all,” concedes Nevius, “more people than ever are pedaling the streets of San Francisco … riding a bike to work makes sense for even those who aren’t fanatic bike messenger types.”

You read that right. Not only did Nevius have an epiphany riding the Wiggle and write a column about it, but said he now uses a bicycle three times a week.

Nevius reintroduced himself into the urban wild just over a year ago after 20 years in captivity in Walnut Creek. If Chuck is an indicator species of cultural attitudes towards cycling as transportation, the experience has been nothing less than a metamorphosis from his windshield-perspective cocoon.

Read more…

Since I’ve been producing Streetfilms (at last count, 196 of them), rarely do I come across work in our field that I find monumentally enlightening, savvy, or high-caliber. But the latest blog post from David Hembrow’s “A View from the Cycle Path…” contains an embedded video produced by Mark Wagenbuur that left me in awe. The video examines the media and public response to a road incident in the Netherlands between a reckless driver and the three cyclists he struck while they were stopped waiting for a traffic light. Please watch it through, it should be seen by everyone.

After you finish rubbing your eyes and wondering if you really just saw that, think for a minute: It’s fair to say that, wherever you live in the United States, you’ve never seen reporting like what you see in this clip — not even if the victims had died. Not even if they were high profile actors or members of society. Not even if dramatic video existed of the crash itself.

We’ve got a tough hill to climb if we want to see quality reporting on street safety using this kind of terminology. For instance, here in New York City we are dealing with a press that salivates any time they hear any mention of the word “bike.” Pavlov would be proud. The television and print media portray cyclists as if they were a menace to society, like bedbugs in need of extermination. The constant barrage of late has been unrelenting, depressing and biased.

In particular, CBS2 in NYC has devoted so much time to negative bicycling stories — constantly getting the facts wrong — you have to wonder how much of it is sloppy reporting and how much is a vendetta. After all, this is the same network that has chosen to use “Bike Bedlam” as their choice buzz phrase to file many of these stories under. Yet when pedestrians or cyclists are hurt or killed by reckless drivers, we don’t see them grouping these tragedies under banners like “Drivers Amok” or “Cars Out of Control.”

The big problem is that all television news crews have a bias that they cannot ignore: They drive nearly everywhere to file their stories. They see the expanding bike infrastructure and pedestrian plazas as eating up road space. To them this is a growing threat which makes it harder to drive their news vans and do their jobs. Thus, they have a vested interest in being critical of bike lanes, which affects who they decide to interview, what footage they use, the edits they make, the “facts” they accept.

I remember in August 2008, after being interviewed about the city’s upcoming Summer Streets, CBS anchor Don Dahler (shown here driving distracted in a report on distracted driving) turned to me and remarked that closing streets for these kinds of events makes it hard to get around the city.

Our press should be doing a much better job educating viewers and being aware of how their own bias is affecting their reporting. The Netherlands video is aptly titled “When Cyclists Matter.” So far here in the Big Apple, most of the media hasn’t gotten that message.

(Chart:
University of Vermont Transportation Research Center)

The
success of state-level plans to increase gas taxes is tied to the
media’s portrayal of the proposals in question, with narratives tied to
"crumbling infrastructure" and "economic progress" showing more success
than those emphasizing long-term transportation budget gaps, according
to a new report released by the University of Vermont’s Transportation
Research Center (TRC).

The TRC report examined six states where lawmakers debated raising
gas taxes to close infrastructure budget gaps between 2006 and 2009.
Three of the states ultimately approved gas tax increases (Oregon,
Minnesota, and Vermont) — two of them over the opposition of the
governor, as seen in the third column of the above chart — and three of
the state (Massachusetts, Idaho, and New Hampshire) nixed the proposed
tax increases.

While acknowledging that "there are many possible explanations for
the success and failure of gasoline tax increases at the state level,"
TRC researcher Richard Watts attempted to categorize the "frames" used
to depict the proposals in local media as well as the Associated Press
wire service.

Read more…

The Transportation Enhancements program, which requires states to set
aside 10 percent of their federal transport money for new bicycle and
pedestrian facilities, among other projects, turns 19 years old this
year. But you’d almost never know it after reading Saturday’s Fort Worth
Star-Telegram, in which the paper
tallies — with no shortage of alarm — the federal money not being
spent on new roads.

An artist’s rendering of the Woodall Rogers Deck project
in Dallas. (Photo: U. of MN)

The Star-Telegram story, which soon got snapped up
by the Associated Press, begins by challenging Dallas’ Woodall Rogers
Deck Park, a groundbreaking
effort to cap the city’s Woodall Rogers Freeway and create a
5.2-acre green space for the public. The park, aimed at creating a
walkable link between Dallas’ local districts, received
$16.7 million in stimulus funding from the Obama administration.

From the Star-Telegram:

The Woodall Rodgers project is a glaring example of how,
at a
time when many Texans distrust their transportation leaders, huge
chunks of federal and state money are being spent on projects that have
little or nothing to do with directly improving traffic.

"Texans
should be outraged by it, especially when they’re being asked to
support tax increases for transportation," said Justin Keener, vice
president for policy and communications at the Texas Public Policy
Foundation, a nonpartisan research institute in Austin.

The Star-Telegram reviewed 515 state projects awarded
funds
under the federal transportation enhancement program during the past 18
years and found projects large and small that had little to do with
mobility.

As it happens, the "nonpartisan" Texas Public Policy Foundation
makes no bones about its political alignment on its website, which outlines a
mission of "limited government" and offers a litany of pro-industry
critiques of the Democratic health care bills.

The group’s leadership is stocked with veteran advisers to
Republican Gov. Rick Perry (TX), and chairman of the board Wendy
Lee Gramm is a former Enron lobbyist who
aided her husband Phil Gramm, a former Texas GOP senator, in his
late-1990s push to de-regulate Wall Street.

Yet aside from Gramm’s group, the Star-Telegram story includes no
sources criticizing Texas transportation enhancements, which have
received $997 million since the program began in 1991.

Read more…

33 Stanyan making the turn at Market and Clayton

Though Chronicle Watch can at times be interesting, today's post is misleading, even oxymoronic. The headline "Muni Buses Delay Traffic at Intersection" implies cars are more important, though San Francisco's Transit First policy mandates the MTA and other agencies prioritize the movement of buses, light rail vehicles, bicycles and pedestrians before motorists.

Jonathan Curiel quotes the driver who originally complained to the Chronicle, calling the bus delay a "traffic hazard," though he offers nothing to substantiate the claim. The bias in his reporting is frustrating enough, but Curiel goes on to say "Though the backup (and delay) were considerably shorter when Chronicle Watch visited the scene, the signal caused enough of an imposition to forward Fasman's concern to the [MTA]."

If minor delays due to turning buses is an imposition on drivers, then that is the cost of maintaining a policy that privileges the needs of the many over the comfort of a few.  Solo drivers should not have priority over buses or trains. 

Though this is not as irresponsible as the sham "investigation" into bicycle crashes the Chronicle published last March, it does nothing to improve the image of the transit operators responsible for making transit function better.  And it's particularly damaging when the paper disparages (even indirectly through the frustrated driver) one of the minority of intersections in the city where transit has priority.

Read more...