Bikes Cause Pollution? SF Gadfly Says ‘Yes’
It takes a village to raise a child, but apparently it takes only one blogger with a lawyer friend to hobble a whole city’s efforts to encourage bicycling.
Wall Street Journal writer Phred Dvorak describes all the sordid details in an article about San Francisco resident Rob Anderson, who has almost single-handedly stopped the city’s pro-bicycle plans cold.
Anderson began his crusade against bikes in 2004, when San Francisco officials unveiled a massive plan to create more bike lanes, bike parking and cycling incentives across the city. The plan set a goal of having bicycles responsible for 10 percent of all city trips by 2010.
Anderson, a twice-unsuccessful candidate for the city’s Board of Supervisors and a blogger on local politics, thought that was a bad idea. By eliminating some car parking spaces and traffic lanes to make room for more cyclists, he argued, the biking plan would create more traffic jams. Cars sitting in traffic would be idling more, meaning more pollution pouring into San Francisco’s atmosphere, he said.
Anderson and his attorney demanded the city conduct an environmental impact study first. When city officials said no, he then took them to court. A California Superior Court judge agreed with Anderson in late 2006, ordering the city to stop all pro-bike activities until it finished the study.
And, nearly two years later, that’s where things continue to stand. City officials are still working on the study, but they don’t expect to finish until next year. Meanwhile, there are no details on how much the study is costing, or how much pollution the city could have cut had it been able to move forward with its bike plan as hoped.
You can read the whole sorry story here.
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More Bikes on the Road Mean Greater Safety, Not Less
Anderson’s beef with cyclists apparently stems from his experience as both a pedestrian and as a (former?) driver. He dislikes walking on sidewalks and feeling threatened by cyclists riding in ways that he feels are reckless and dangerous. And, of course, bikes in the streets disrupt auto traffic. (Anderson does not own a car, but his comments indicate that he feels that motor vehicle traffic is slowed and endangered by those of us on two wheels and under our own power.)
City officials are probably being overly cautious with the pending Bike Plan EIR (perhaps knowing that Anderson is going to sue SF over it, no matter what it says or how carefully written it is). In the interim, a big part of reducing SF’s greenhouse gases has ground to a halt.
I strongly support bicycling. But I must agree that under many circumstances bicycles disrupt traffic flow and so cause increased use of fuel. There are many ways this happens. Every car must brake, and then accelerate to pass every bicycle using the same road way. This causes a huge waste of gas. And if bicycles are given their own lanes, then there are all the other problems mentioned. I think the impact report is taking a long time because the problem is complex. In many parts of SF, bicycles probably already increase net pollution. Bicycle traffic simply does not mix well with car and truck traffic. Many bicyclists refuse to obey traffic laws, and even refuse to stop at red lights. In Green New Zealand bicycles are not allowed on highways with cars.
It would be better to reserve whole sections of SF for bicycle and foot and cable car traffic only. That might actually reduce air pollution, and certainly would reduce noise pollution.
I agree with Anderson and I do believe that he has a point. An environmental impact study should be done first. How can you tell in advance if adding bicycle lanes would actually help or harm the environment? Decades ago, old tires were tossed into the ocean as coral reef builders. It was a noble idea, but unfortunately they were far more disasterous to the ocean than not having done anything. No study was done prior to dumping all those old tires into the ocean. Now, we know better, after the fact.
I bicycle and I also drive. Bicyclists need to follow the rules of the road. Bicyclists need to stop at stop signs when there’s traffic behind the other signs. When too many idiot cyclists run stop signs, it makes us law abiding cyclists look bad. Unfortunately, I think having too many bicyclists will increase the idiot factor of cycling. I’m against too many other people cycling. They don’t know the rules of the road and confuse drivers and other cyclists. They block other cyclists and don’t signal their turns.
When I first got on a bicycle as a kid in the 1980’s, I had an easy time of it. Most people allowed me my space. I didn’t get run over because I followed the vehicular rules of the road. These days, drivers are fed up with all the scofflaw cyclists, as I am also. The rogue cyclist make drivers more likely to do something that endangers me while I’m riding. Many bicyclist are also doing things that endanger themselves while riding.
If you look up the sfgate database for bicycle accidents, you’ll see that about 2/3 of them are caused by bicyclist. About 1/3 are caused by a driver with a small amount caused by pedestrians. http://www.sfgate.com/webdb/bikeblame/index.shtml
There’s just too many people who don’t belong on bicycles. They mess it up for those of us who have been bicycling for decades and enjoy cycling.
[...] this post? Subscribe to our RSS feed and stay up to date.Attention, all car-loving anti-cyclists who claim two-wheelers are making streets less safe: a recent study has found that the more bicycles [...]
Here’s an interesting note: a study by an injury expert at the University of New South Wales has found that the more bicycles there are on the road, the safer cyclists are. And, most surprising of all, this holds true whether or not a community has adopted bike-friendly laws or constructed new lanes or paths just for cyclists.
Funny how so many people, including other cyclists, want to talk about scofflaw cyclists. Show me a single hour at a single intersection where no motor vehicle violates a single law, then we can talk about how cyclists who break the vehicle code disrupt the flow of traffic. As far as all the research I’ve ever seen, in auto-bike accidents, the car driver is much more likely to be at fault or to bear a greater share of the fault. Cyclists are no more dangerous, no more likely to disobey the traffic laws than car drivers are.