Bicycle Friendly Communities

San Francisco, CA | Gold Level

Encouragement: San Francisco promotes Bike Month with numerous events and activities, centering on Bike to Work Day. Several cultural history bike tours are offered. Youth rides by after-school programs and clubs have as many as 400 children participating. Several public recreational rides (centuries, triathlons, bike races, etc.) are also offered during May, attracting between 2,000 and 3,000 people. Bicycle Safety classes are offered, and about 80 people typically attend. Lunch seminars and presentations are given to larger employers who wish to promote bicycle commuting to their workplace. Finally, Bike to Work Day is the largest promotional event of the year, with as many as 35,000 people estimated to ride a bicycle in San Francisco that day.

Enforcement: The San Francisco Police Department is intimately aware of the concerns of cyclists, from safety on the streets to bicycle theft to injury collision reporting. Through the San Francisco Safe Streets Committee, SFPD, in collaboration with the MTA Bicycle Program, the Department of Public Health, and bicycle community advocates are currently planning targeted enforcement to educate cyclists at high-injury-collision locations.

Engineering: The Bicycle Program has successfully implemented many projects, including striping over 40 miles of bicycle lanes, creating 23 miles of bicycle paths, posting 82 miles of signed bicycle routes, and painting 1250 shared lane markings, or “sharrows.” There are two major bridges accessing San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay Bridge. The Golden Gate Bridge has a path that is available for cyclists 24 hours a day. The Bay Bridge, currently being replaced by a new span, will have a path from Treasure Island to Oakland, and possibly a new path on the west span from Treasure Island to San Francisco. Bicycles are allowed on BART (commuter rail) within San Francisco. Bicycles are allowed on CALTRAIN (commuter heavy rail), and at least one car of each train has been retrofitted with interior bicycle racks. Approximately 1,000 cyclists take their bicycles on Caltrain each weekday. Bikes are allowed on all ferries and on all bike-rack-equipped buses.

Evaluation: San Francisco has seen an increase in bicycle trips to work from 1.0 percent in 1990 to 2.1 percent in 2000. Also, the 2000 Census indicates that San Francisco has the highest percentage of residents who commute to work by bicycle among cities with a population of 500,000 or above in the United States.