What does an Ed Lee mayorship mean for bicycles? Well, for one thing, you may see more bike moustaches around town.
But what will Mayor Lee do to make biking safer, comfier, and more popular? The Bike Coalition didn't waste any time asking him just that. No sooner was he sworn in than they sent him a two-page letter, asking him to support the Bay-to-Beach phase of their Connecting the City plan.
The Coalition is asking for three things this year from Mayor Lee: better lanes on Market, which carries more cyclists than any other street west of the Mississippi; better lanes on Fell and Oak, connecting the western neighborhoods to downtown; and a bikeway on JFK drive to carry visitors to cultural institutions and the ocean.
community that lives around The Wiggle the leader in the movement toward
sustainability," says Fitzgibbons, 27, an Ohio transplant and Internet entrepreneur. "We can't change the world from where we're sitting. But we can
change our neighborhood."
He's the deputy director for technology services at the San Francisco County Transportation Authority (a city agency that's sort of like Muni's cousin, twice removed), and he oversees Cycletracks.
Remember Cycletracks? It's an iPhone/Android app that made big headlines a year ago. You open it when you start your ride, and close it when you reach your destination. Then it sends your route to the city, so it can crunch the data and figure out how cyclists behave and where bike improvements should go.
With Cycletracks now in its second year, we wondered how it's been working out.
Not to generalize or anything, but gee whiz, there seems to be a lot of overlap between people who like the Internet and people who like bicycles. Is there any other city in the country with so many residents who know how to Tweet and also know how to lube a bike chain? (Okay, yes, Brooklyn, and maybe Portland, but we're still in the top five.)
So it's no surprise that last Friday's inaugural bike party received exhaustive documentation from the social medias. Bike Party got the royal treatment, with pictures, videos, status updates, and lots and lots of tweets.
Last week, we spoke to the SF Bike Coalition's Renée Rivera about her plans and predictions for 2011. We asked her what New Year's resolutions she hopes the city has.
"Commit to completing all of the bike plan projects in 2011," she said. So we put it to SFMTA spokesman Paul Rose. Can it be done?
"No, is basically the answer," he said.
Oh.
Amandeep Jawa
, part of a self-described co-op of cyclists behind tonight's ride, which starts at 7:30 p.m. from AT&T Park. "We can handle the cold. Once we're on our bikes and there's music, not much is going to bother us."Happy New Year! And quite a year it's been for bicycles. Between all the new stripes and racks and parklets, we've suddenly catapulted into the future of cycling. Well, maybe not the future, since Europe is several decades ahead of us. Maybe just less of the past.
But there's still plenty of work to be done. What are your year-end cycling resolutions? I asked Renee Rivera of the SF Bike Coalition to reflect on the 2010 that was, and the 2011 to come.
Oh my stars, what a crazy week for bicycles. Crazy good and crazy bad. Let's start with the bad first, because we predict that complaining will be HOT HOT HOT in 2011!
A comedy magazine called The San Francisco Chronicle wrote a diary entry this week about bikes that is just absolutely bonkers. It paints a portrait of a city gripped by bedlam, with bicyclists and motorists at each others' throats like it's Thunderdome. It's hard to make fun of the article because it's already so exaggerated: a "free-for-all," with no respect for the law, no protection for anyone, a "no-rules environment."
Also, the Chronicle says, the city's network of bike lanes is "little-known." If only there was a major metropolitan daily to report on such issues!
Ever get a weird pain in your back after riding your bike? Or feel really really hungry? Or feel your heart pounding as you mount McAllister towards Diviz?
There's a lot of stuff going on underneath your skin -- a whole hodgepodge of muscles, tracts, and veins. You couldn't ride a bike without them, and you can't ride a bike well without knowing a little about how they work.
