It’s the space.
Nearly half of San Francisco’s population lives in a quarter
of the land, the northeast quadrant of the city. Between now and the end of
2015, San Francisco is likely to gain another 30,000 people, most of them to
this sector. This area is already one of the densest in North America, parts of
it second only to Manhattan. And it already holds 42% of all San Francisco’s
cars (150,000!) If these new people own cars similar to the rates of current residents,
they will bring 12,000 additional cars into this quadrant. Even if all these
cars have off street parking, how will congested NE streets have room for 24,000
– 36,000 extra car trips each day? Congestion isn’t linear. 8% more cars
doesn’t make already congested traffic 8% worse. It makes it impossible. More
people in the same square footage means we need fewer cars and less driving. It
means we need to encourage people to go car-lite or car-free.
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| 12 shoppers or one? |
Cars take up a lot of room. Parked curbside, a private car
requires 200 square feet; in a garage 300 feet. The average car is parked 95%
of the time. When actually in motion, the space that just two cars take up can
fit twenty people on bikes or 30 people on a bus. When not in use, twelve bikes
can park in the space of one car. Parked or moving, cars are a highly
inefficient use of public real estate. In the middle of Nebraska this is perhaps not an issue. In
San Francisco it is.
A modest 8% reduction in parking in the Polk Street area will
affect few people. Already 85% of people come to Polk Street by modes other than car. Maybe this is because two-thirds of households in the neighborhoods
adjoining Polk don’t own cars. (ACS data 2009.) Maybe this is because all of Polk Street is on
or within a block of a bus line. Maybe this is because half of Polk is within a
15 minute walk of BART. Maybe this is because Polk Street is the geographic
center of the NE quadrant, which means potentially half the population of the
city can bike to Polk Street within 20 minutes.
It’s the topography.
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| Hilly SF (source: SFMTA) |
San Francisco has hills. Main arterials and shopping neighborhoods
are found in the flat parts between them for a reason. Currently there are no
bike lanes that extend from Market to the north part of town between the Embarcadero
and Arguello. This means there is no safe way for bicyclists to reach a huge
chunk of the city. Gnarly hills mean Polk Street is the only north/south route for
bicyclists to take for a mile in either direction. (Van Ness is flatter but it’s not an
option because it’s part of US 101.) This is why Polk is already the street with the highest rate of biking north of Market between the Embarcadero and the Wiggle. This is why Polk matters so much.
It’s the economics.
Cars are expensive. Median incomes for the bottom 93% of
Americans are declining. Young people, especially new college graduates, have
high student debt loads. Streets designed to make driving easy and any
other mode of transport miserable mean that anyone who cannot afford a car in
San Francisco is miserable, an active form of discrimination against the young
and the poor. Biking for transportation is a fifth the cost of taking Muni, 3%
the cost of owning and operating a junker car, and 1% the cost of owning any
car under seven years old.
Cars don’t help city economics. Of the $9122 a year it takes
to own and operate a newish car, 84% leaves the local economy. When people
don’t own cars, it frees up their disposable income. People who don’t own cars
are more likely to patronize businesses and restaurants close to home than
people who drive.
Fears on the part of Polk Street merchants that business
will drop if bike lanes are added are unfounded. A study by the SFMTA shows people on foot and
on bike visit Polk Street more often and spend more per week at local merchants than those who arrive by car. Both
in New York and San Francisco, added bike lanes have resulted in
increased business for local merchants. In addition, when bike lanes are added
to a street, property values are shown to increase. Bike lanes help, not hurt, local business and
property owners.
Bicycling is also far cheaper to the taxpayer’s pocketbook.
Every Muni ride is subsidized by the taxpayer $.61 per passenger mile. Right
now San Francisco can’t even come up with funds to keep our buses in adequate repair, and many Muni lines are at capacity. Where will the money come from to
pay for extra buses and drivers to service the new people moving in?
On the other hand, encouraging people to drive also costs us.
Car drivers cover less than 15% of the direct cost of their city driving via gasoline
and vehicle taxes. 85% is paid for out of the general fund. Compared to buses,
trucks and cars (that have 100 to 500 times the mass), bikes inflict a micro
amount of damage on the road, necessitating little or no repair or maintenance.
When cars cause accidents, emergency personnel response and the subsequent
clean up are funded by taxpayers. Health and environmental damage inflicted by cars
and not paid for by the driver (for example from uninsured motorists, toxic
residue, and particulate matter from car emissions) are paid for by the
individual injured, the city of San Francisco, or society at large.
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| What could be |
Factoring in the direct costs of driving and the indirect cost of parking, land, crashes, congestion, and health damage due to air
pollution (but not climate change or other environment-related costs), San
Francisco subsidizes car driving $.53 every mile. Biking only costs $.01 for
every mile.
Let’s repeat this. Cost to you, the taxpayer, per mile of
passenger transport:
Muni: $.61
Private vehicle: $.53
Bicycle: $.01
Walk: $.00 (or very close. Mostly land costs for sidewalks.)
It’s the convenience.
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| Easy-peasy electric-assist kid shuttling |
If we want people to go car-lite or car-free, it’s far
easier for them to do this using a bike for transportation than relying on
Muni. For trips under two miles, bikes are as fast as cars, twice as fast as
Muni, and four times faster than walking. For trips under four miles, biking is
just 5 to 10 minutes slower than driving and equal to Muni or faster. (It
depends on how many transfers the particular Muni trip requires.) Though
bicycles do get the occasional flat tire, they are far more reliable than Muni
in getting you where you want to go. And if you live on a hill or have physical
limitations, an ebike makes biking a breeze. (Hill + shuttling children?
Electrified cargo bike!) In the Netherlands, bicycling is so safe and convenient
most children bicycle to school and seniors bicycle well into their 70’s and
even 80’s.
It’s the safety.
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| Cycling can be quite safe. (aviewfromthecyclepath.com) |
Polk Street has one of the highest rates of cars injuring
bicyclists of any street in the city. Bicyclists are injured on Polk Street at
four times the rate of other streets with comparable numbers of bike riders
(Harrison and Arguello.) In 2006, a young woman bicyclist was killed by a hit
and run driver on Polk Street. Many, many others since then have had bones
(arms, hips, legs, elbows) shattered, on average 20 or so injuries a year. Keeping
Polk Street as it is ensures that more deaths and injuries will occur, often to
young people under 30 who are sons and daughters of someone and are just trying
to lead decent lives on not a whole lot of income. Streets with
protected bike lanes are proven to have lower bicyclist injury rates. Surprisingly,
streets with protected bike lanes have also shown to have lower pedestrian injury rates.
Better-designed streets save lives and reduce our collective health care costs
by not necessitating hospital stays, MRIs, blood transfusions, etc.
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| Data from the Twin Cities |
Though most people enjoy bike riding, currently the vast
majority of San Franciscans won’t ride bikes because they are unwilling to duke
it out with cars in our stressful traffic. Safety is an issue, but it’s proven
that stress is the bigger one. Studies show that creating a network of low-stress, connected bikeways (protected, separated bike lanes that cars and
delivery trucks can’t continually double-park in) is the greatest single
determinant in whether the average person will use a bicycle for
transportation. Studies show that the more people bicycle, the more the rate of bicycle injury drops, partly because motorists grow to expect and watch for
bicyclists and partly because on streets calmed by bike lanes and lots of bicyclists it's harder for motorists to speed. (Speed kills. The lower speeds are why the more people bicycle, the fewer pedestrian and car driver and car passenger injuries there are as well.) Encouraging
bicyclists with their own low-stress space in and of itself produces safety for all road users.
Encouraging bicyclists to ride through a neighborhood also adds
safety by deterring crime through more eyes on the street. Motorists speed
through neighborhoods noticing little. Bicyclists have no obstructions or blind
spots. They see everything.
It’s the health.
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| Nasty |
Car exhaust is a proven cause of asthma, heart disease, and
cancer. Bike lanes provide a little extra room to allow the toxins of car
exhaust to disperse before a cyclist must breathe them in. It makes a
significant difference. (This is also one of the reasons why at red lights
bicyclists wait at the front of your car, not near your tailpipe.)
The more people bike, the healthier they are. Studies show
that people who bike to work have fewer sick days and are more productive when
they are at work. They also are happier, live longer, have more years of healthy life, and
require less dollars of medical treatment each year than people who drive to
work. If companies have access to a healthy workforce, their health care costs
are lower. This gives these companies a competitive advantage. (Health care
costs account for nearly 10% of average employee compensation expense.) In
addition, unless they are hit by cars, healthy people have much less reason to
visit the SF General emergency room. When people can’t pay for their visit to
the SF General ER, we all pay.
Though for half a century Americans have tried to arrange their
lives to avoid all forms of physical exertion, it turns out that the human body
becomes sickly if it doesn’t get 30 minutes of moderate exercise a day. (Studies
also show that the more hours spent driving, the more unhealthy you are.) Incorporating
this moderate exercise into one’s transportation is the most reliable and least
costly way of obtaining it. Creating a physical environment where driving is
encouraged while walking and bicycling are kept dangerous and miserable is a tragedy for human health. The city of Copenhagen goes out of its way to encourage its
citizens to bicycle for transportation because they estimate they save 42 cents
in health care costs for every mile biked.
It’s the energy.
This is so big, it’s hard to know where to begin. If you’re
reading this on-line, check here, here and here. Suffice it to say that per
capita oil consumption in the US has been dropping and will continue to drop
whether we like it or not. This mostly won’t be through greater fuel
efficiency, but rather from people going car-lite and car-free altogether. (It’s
already happening.) In addition, total energy consumed per person is dropping
in the US and will continue to drop whether we like it or not. San Francisco
already consumes less total energy per person than almost anywhere in the US.
The more San Francisco facilitates its citizens to use less energy, the more
economically competitive our city will be and also the more resilient. Cars are
huge energy-slurping machines, even electric ones. Making it possible for the
average person to live well without a car will protect San Francisco from many
of the negative impacts of world net energy decline. Car-intensive, high
energy-consuming regions, in contrast, will find themselves mired in economic
contraction. Be glad you live in San Francisco where there is some form of
transit and people willing to walk and bicycle. (If you live within walking
distance of a BART or Caltrain station, you are doubly blessed.) Our transit,
biking, walking, and energy efficiency may very well be what allows San Francisco
to prosper in the years shortly ahead.
It’s the planet.
This is real. Climate change due to humans burning fossil fuels is happening. Cars and coal are
on their way to making much of the planet uninhabitable. The only ones denying it are those making a profit from the status quo or those who get their information from Fox News. If
in ten years you don’t expect to be alive, nor any one you love, then, sure, you’ll
skip most of the worst impacts. Why be inconvenienced? But if you have compassion
for the folks who won’t escape the famine, the refugees, the heat waves, the disease, the
extinction of most large mammal species, not to mention the potential utter collapse of civilization, you might feel a bit overwhelmed.
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Here’s a deal. For 2013, you don’t need to buy carbon
offsets or get rid of your car (unless you’d like to rid yourself of $9000/year
of costs.) What you can do to lower your city’s carbon footprint is simply support
others who are already trying to live carbon-free. Avoid driving high bicycle
corridors like the Wiggle, drive gently around bicyclists when you pass them on
side streets, and stop griping that they don’t stop at stop signs. (Yes,
bicyclists should absolutely yield to pedestrians and other traffic that have
the right of way! But the second you are on a bike you’ll see why it’s sensible
and safe to slow down in order to yield rather than completely stop.) And, first and foremost, encourage bicyclists
by having your city give them just a little space so that biking does not end up
killing them and making their mothers bitter to the end of time. That’s all.
Even if you can’t stop driving right now, that’s what you can do this year to
contribute. It’s nuts that San Francisco has voted to divest its retirement
funds from fossil fuel industries but won’t take the simplest of steps to support
those trying to live fossil fuel-free lives.
It’s the future.
Car traffic does not help Polk Street, it hurts it. Bike
lanes will bring bicyclists from all over the city to Polk who would not
come otherwise. Bike lanes will bring tourists traversing between the Civic Center and Ghirardelli Square/Fort Mason. People like to shop and linger on streets that are pleasant, hospitable and safe, not ones filled with noise, pollution,
filth, crime and danger. Because Polk Street is the geographic center of the NE
quadrant of the city and a natural place for people to congregate, reduced car
parking, car pollution and car noise could cause Polk to absolutely
blossom both as a neighborhood and as a destination.
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| City living doesn't have to be polluted, ugly and dangerous. |
Pay attention to the hurricanes, the droughts, the fires,
the floods, the food shortages this summer. Note the riots, the uprisings, and the
revolutions. Realize what you do this year and next counts. Your children and
grandchildren will remember it. Which side will you stand with, the one
speaking for them, or the one that will, without a qualm, sacrifice the future
for the sake of not walking two extra blocks? We need to design a Polk Street that will work for the reality close at hand in 2015, not fearfully preserve at all costs (and in the face of all reason) the Polk of 1995.
Protected bike lanes (in both directions) on Polk Street matter. Contact any or all of the following: the San Francisco Metro Transit Authority , the SFMTA Board of Directors, Mayor Ed Lee, Board of Supervisors President David Chiu, and/or your own city supervisor. Tell them you heartily support protected bike lanes on Polk Street and the city's fossil-free future.
