Bicycling

Bike to Work Day (BTWD) organizers counted over 20,000 people biking to work today in East Bay cities, an increase of thirty percent over the last five years. Streetsblog SF has some coverage of events in San Francisco, and we also took in some of the fun in Berkeley and Oakland, as seen in the photos below.

The streets of San Francisco were filled with thousands of exuberant and experienced cyclists and quite a few newbies this morning on this 23rd annual "Bike to Work Day." Streetsblog caught up with the convoys at the Bicycle Coalition's rally on the steps of City Hall.

A new study adds to a growing repository of research that supports the idea that events such as Bike to Work Day and the expansion of biking generally aren't just good for our health and the environment--they're good for business, especially "local-serving" business.

It was celebrated as a victory for safety by cycling and walking advocates when the SFMTA voted last week to approve plans to add safety enhancements on Upper Market, including parking-protected bike lanes.

Few people have been so closely involved in the transformation of the city's streets over such a long period of time as Ryan Russo. So between his last day at NYC DOT and his move to the West Coast, I caught up with him to get an insider's perspective on more than a dozen years of change to NYC streets.

Some twenty advocates, planners and officials attended a ribbon cutting ceremony this morning for the opening of Oakland's first concrete, fully protected cycletrack bike lane. The lane runs along upper Broadway between Keith Ave and Brookside Drive, next to SR 24. "This is a great way to spend my third hour on my first day on the job," said Ryan Russo, Oakland's new DOT chief, during the brief ribbon-cutting ceremony. Russo, as Streetsblog readers are probably aware, came from New York's DOT to head up Oakland's new department. "This is emblematic of what Mayor Libby Schaaf and the community has decided it wants to do."

Monday starts Bike Week in San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties. And Thursday, May 11, the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition (SVBC) brags that "tens of thousands of regular and first-time Bay Area residents will bike to work for the 23rd Annual Bike to Work Day."

The City of Cupertino is best known as the corporate headquarters of a boutique hardware developer called Apple. But if the city moves forward with a plan to add seven "bicycle boulevards" to its bike network, it could also become one of the more bike friendly cities in Silicon Valley.

SFMTA is pouring the last bits of concrete separation and sticking down the last safe-hit posts for a protected bike lane on the eastbound side of 13th Street, from Folsom to Bryant.