Bicycle Safety

The percentage of U.S. students between ages five and 14 who walk or bike to school has remained stable over the past 15 years but remains three-quarters below where it stood 40 years ago, according to a new analysis of government data by two groups working on the Safe Routes to School (SRtS) program.

As any bicycle rider in San Francisco knows, the potholes on the streets can be vicious. Most of us probably get to know a few quite well and just ride around them. The pothole that I learned to hate was in the bike lane on Valencia at the intersection of McCoppin. Every time I rode by, I swerved and badmouthed the city and thought about that street repair bond that never got past the Board of Supervisors.

Over on Change Your Life, Ride a Bike, Adrienne Johnson writes about a terrifying encounter she had while riding a bicycle when a motorist behaved aggressively and then escalated with threats of violence. The motorist, according to Johnson, was an SFPD officer in an unmarked vehicle.

Although there is no record book for the cities with the most traffic-calmed streets, San Francisco planners believe their city has the most road diets, or roads that have had auto lanes narrowed or removed to calm traffic speeds and provide room for other modes of travel.

The gradually evolving traffic rearrangement on Market Street got a boost yesterday as the MTA re-striped the bicycle and motor vehicle crossing zone at Market and 11th, clarifying how the vehicles are supposed to negotiate the street with bold new markings. In addition to clearer turn and merge arrows for motorists, there are numerous sharrows starting as far back as Van Ness and Market and extending through the intersection of Market and 10th streets.

It always makes my skin crawl when I see a car commercial shot in a city with a sporty sedan hurtling down the street, promising ersatz liberation through reckless driving. But the conversation Joe Eskenazi at SF Weekly had with an Acura PR representative today is hilarious. Or terrifying, you decide:

Could rounds of Muni service cuts and fare hikes push more people to start cycling in San Francisco?

The wait for bicycle directions on Google Maps has finally ended as the company announced a beta version of its new bicycle directions feature at the League of American Bicyclists National Bike Summit in Washington, D.C. this morning. The new mapping software includes an elegant overlay of bicycle routes based on priority bicycle streets and paths in the 150 cities where Google is debuting the service.

Not to be outdone by the movie industry's much-ballyhooed awards season, The Alliance for Biking and Walking, a North American coalition of 140 bicycle and pedestrian organizations, recently announced its 2010 Advocacy Awards and two of the winners are from the Bay Area.