Cycling on the up and up in hilly San Francisco
Despite its hilly topography and a legal injunction that prevented it from developing its bicycle network for four years, cycle use in San Francisco has grown to set the standard for US cities, thanks to a local culture of environmentalism, social justice and 'street theater'.
Joe Peach
Amsterdam and San Francisco have got a few things in common, despite being thousands of miles apart. The development of both cities has been heavily influenced by the dominance of water — Amsterdam with its northern harbour and canals, and San Francisco with the funneling effect of being a peninsula.
However San Francisco's urban topography shares little else with the relentlessly flat Amsterdam, seeing extreme height variations that one could easily assume make the city better suited for streetcars than cycling, along with a predominantly grid-based street plan typical of North American cities.
The success of the bicycle in Amsterdam is often attributed to its flat terrain. By this logic, cycling should be unpopular in San Francisco. Yet the truth is the opposite of this. In the USA, bicycle use is measured nationally by the percentage of trips to work by bike, reaching 0.6 per cent in 2009. However in San Francisco this figure was 3.2 per cent, with local studies for all trips (yes, even those rare occasions when you aren't going to work!) raising it to around 6 per cent. A small figure compared to Amsterdam, but still notably higher than the US average and London's dismal 2 per cent.
Much of the city's success with cycling has happened in the past five years, with a 58 per cent increase in cycling between 2006 and 2010. What is most impressive is that between these dates the city was legally incapable of developing its bicycle network.
Much of the city's success with cycling has happened in the past five years, with a 58 per cent increase in cycling between 2006 and 2010. What is most impressive is that between these dates the city was legally incapable of developing its bicycle network.
Setting the standard for bicycle use
By North American standards, San Francisco has a long history of supporting multi-modalism. Enacted in 1973, the city's Transit First policy was introduced to encourage 'the use of transit and other alternatives to the single-occupant vehicle'. While early versions neglected to explicitly mention bicycle use, the Transit First policy set the tone for the city's approach to transport modes. Later updates specifically endorsed the bicycle, and the city published its first bicycle plan in 1997.
This resulted in the development of San Francisco's early bicycle network, but by 2005 the city was ready for something more comprehensive. Plans were drawn up and released as part of the Bicycle Plan Policy Framework (BPPF), aiming to create more dedicated bike lanes and places to securely stow bikes. Presenting near-term and long-term plans to improve the city's bicycle network, its goals were, by Dutch standards at least, relatively modest.
Despite this, the proposed implementation received some criticism. Although part of a large policy framework, sections of the BPPF were treated as 'individual projects', thus bypassing mandatory environmental reviews. This was not well-received by all, eventually ending up in court where it was compared to 'trying to avoid a review of a timber harvest plan by removing trees one at a time'. San Francisco found itself in the unusual position of having to prove that its bicycle plans were environmentally beneficial. Keen to avoid further lawsuits, the city undertook an extensive environmental review, during which time it was legally unable to develop its bicycle network.
Yet as the city's bicycle network remained static, cycling levels did the opposite. Program Director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, Andy Thornley, attributes this to the attitude of its citizens:
Well for sure there's no place else like SF, with the combination of mild climate and urban density and smart, self-defining culture, the traditions of environmentalism, social justice, participatory politics, street theater and un-self-consciousness; we're not people who get hung up on what we're supposed to be doing or thinking, or how we look when we're doing our thing, so the 'childishness' and 'down-class' stigmas of riding a bike don't discourage us so much.
Cycling activism also has a history in San Francisco. Critical Mass — where cyclists follow a designated route in such numbers that they 'don't block traffic, they are the traffic' — started in San Francisco in 1992 before spreading all over the globe.
Could it be that the people of San Francisco just want to cycle regardless of the bicycle network they have at their disposal? Despite their topographical differences, both Amsterdam's and San Francisco's cycling resurgences could not have happened without citizen demand.
We're not people who get hung up on what we're supposed to be doing or thinking, or how we look when we're doing our thing, so the 'childishness' and 'down-class' stigmas of riding a bike don't discourage us so much.
Measuring the benefits
The enthusiasm for cycling might also stretch as far as San Francisco's retailers. Surveying stores on Valencia Street, a comparatively flat stretch with bicycle lanes along both sides of the road since 1999, Emily Drennen found that 44 per cent of retailers felt the area had been economically revitalised since the introduction of the lanes, 37 per cent felt they had experienced an increase in sales, and 56 per cent felt an increase in area residents shopping locally. In all cases, not a single retailer reported negative effects. Of course, one street in a large city does not make a conclusive study, but it does provide an interesting snapshot into local views on the economic effect of San Francisco's bicycle network.
What is conclusive, at least in a legal sense, is the environmental impact. On the 6th of August 2010 the city was finally given the all-clear to recommence infrastructure developments after passing the environmental review process. This puts San Francisco in the strange position of having legal support for the environmental sensibility of its urban bicycle network.
Less legally conclusive but no less valuable is Donald Appleyard's study on the environmental social impacts of traffic in San Francisco. Studying noise pollution and air quality — two factors directly related to the development of a bicycle network — Appleyard explored how differing levels of automobile traffic affected the development of sustainable communities. Looking at three different streets in the city, identical 'in every dimension except the amount of traffic', Appleyard monitored the movements of those living on each street, observing their interactions with neighbours. By tracking movements, Appleyard found that people on the street with light traffic knew more people and had more friends on the same street.
Despite obvious successes, it's not all good news from San Francisco. The city's network of bicycle lanes is not comprehensive, and plans for future expansion don't do enough to address this. A proposed cycle hire scheme set to launch in 2012 will serve only the city's core. Yet criticising these imperfections is both pedantic and missing the point (and the city probably has one of the best excuses going for a lack of action in recent years). San Francisco's physical bicycle network may not inspire envy, but the attitudes of its politicians and its people does, accomplishing far more than most cities, even without any kind of infrastructural assistance.
