Author: swilson7

I found the information on how little drivers get prosecuted for killing cyclists a bit scary, considering it even happens here in San Francisco, a very bike friendly city. Whether it be a lack of initiative or mere coincidence police seem to only cite drivers at the most, and frequently haven’t been charging those responsible. That makes the need for protected bike lanes even greater, and more cyclist and driver training to be aware of the dangers necessary. Personally I’ve never been hit but I know people who have, and those drivers have all been charged for their actions. But until drivers can get used to cyclists and vice versa I think the problem will continue to happen. Crashes frequently occur near where I live and further into the country on small back roads with high speed limits, and seeing the same problem in the city is a problem for cyclists everywhere.

David Byrne uses his bicycle not only as a means of transportation, but as a way to tour San Francisco while not appearing to be a visitor at all. He briefly mentions Taqueria Cancun, a very interesting restaurant in an even more interesting neighborhood; the mission.

Taqueria Cancun represents a San Francisco of the past, an establishment since the 60’s in a once predominantly Latin neighborhood, now associated with gentrification and homelessness. There’s so much more to the place than what Byrne brings up, he fails to mention that the restaurant has been in deep conflict with about 5 identical taco shops within a 2 block radius for more than 50 years. The now incredibly diverse neighborhood has not failed to support Cancun, with constant lines out the door for their famed food. Every person has their own favorite of the mission burrito joints, and Cancun has some of the most dedicated fans around. The restaurant itself is fast paced, you order as fast as you can and hurry up and wait to hear your number called for your food. Inside looks fairly similar to any other restaurant but outside you would think the place hasn’t been cleaned for years, and the streets as well. The encompassing block looks like one of San Franciscos dirtiest streets, a quality the restaurant has taken on with pride. The idea that the place could look so painfully average and have such good original food surprises many people, especially tourists. Thats one place where Byrne lacks in his description, he simply mentions that he visited the place, leaving out the look of it all and most importantly the food. The neighborhood today is mostly younger entrepreneurs working in tech and driving the cost of rent up for the rest of us. Even though the neighborhood vastly differed from what it was 60 years ago, the restaurant has continued to be popular amongst the new residents. A very diverse restaurant in an even more diverse and lively neighborhood was simply mentioned in passing by Byrne, but there’s so much more to the place than its name.

Hello; I’m Samuel Wilson and today I’d like to tell you a little about the problem with San Francisco’s bike lanes.

Cars in the bike lane is a problem for everyone, car vs bike accidents increase 72% when cars decide they don’t want to wait in traffic and decide to jump into the bike lane. San Francisco is known as the mecca for cyclists and not surprisingly the number of bike crashes is high. The few number of parking spaces, heavy congestion and abundance of ubers all come together to make the city a real hard place to ride.

I traveled down to the embarcadero to see if I could understand the problem at its core. In just 20 minutes of standing on the sidewalk in front of the Ferry Building, 42 bikes rode by in the maybe 2 feet wide bike lane, and 13 cars attempted to weave through traffic in the very same lane.

The city has tried to stop incidents by conducting studies and adding designated drop off points for drivers, but many people said they hadn’t noticed a difference. Now it’s very well known that driving in the bike lane is illegal, a few bikers shouted some obscenities at cars as they blindly merged into them, and if you do get caught by SFPD you’ll receive a $238 dollar fine and a point on your license. What many people don’t know is that the state of california treats bikes as vehicles, and says that a bike lane is a separate lane of travel. Legally you are only able to drive in a bike lane if there’s an emergency vehicle trying to get by you.

Despite the bright green paint and outlines of bikes on the road, an uncountable amount of drivers like to stop in the bike lane to run into a store or drop off passengers. SFMTA has had to create a special online form for reporting bike lane violations, or you can call or tweet 311 with the vehicle information and location to have parking enforcement sent to the area. But this type of enforcement is reactive, not the best way to stop a behavior.

The Bicycle Coalition has been actively working to train commercial and uber drivers at little to no cost about where to find drop off spots and how to avoid driving in the bike lane. It’s a lot easier to drive slightly off a main road to let a passenger out than get a nearly $250 ticket.

And thats exactly what SFPD has been working to do, the central station which manages the embarcadero issues nearly 550 tickets each month to drivers breaking bike lane laws. Motorcycle cops park their bikes on the sidewalk, and watch and wait. The officers I talked to said almost every driver they pull over says they knew they were stopping in a bike lane, but simply didnt know what else to do. So clearly something has to be done to keep the bikes and cars apart.

The bike coalition is currently fighting the city to separate the embarcadero bike lane from the street. If any of you have been to golden gate park youve seen the separated bike lane safely behind the parked cars. But you probably dont know that it took nearly 10 years of activism and fighting with the city to get the bike lane put where it is today. Millions of combined hours of activism were required to get the city to even think about transforming the bike lane, and that process is at work in the embarcadero.

The bike coalition is trying to decrease the width of the sidewalk and put parking spaces in where the current bike lane is, this would move the bike lane behind the parked cars and a raised pathway for drivers exiting their cars. This would provide parking for a street that currently has none and protect bikes from the traffic, the only problem is it will take an estimated $20 million to change the current layout of the road. Philadelphia just approved a project to put bike lanes behind its parked cars after 13 years of advocacy and 5 cyclist deaths in the last 2 years.

Much like the laws enforcement, changing the layout is reactive rather than proactive. For now the city is content with having tickets issued and dealing with any accidents as they come. In fact in recent years the city has decided to increase the enforcement of cyclists breaking simple traffic laws like running stop signs and red lights, even while in the bike lane.

The city wants to use its money in other areas and the police have better things to do, all cyclists can hope for is the drivers will eventually get a ticket in the mail when they correctly report them to 311.

Biking in San Francisco is a blessing and a curse, the culture is well and alive but the city itself is very slow to respond to the ever changing forms of transportation. As cyclists we can only hope that people within city council listen to the voices of the people and do more to make the city safe, rather than try to cite the problem away. Everyone can agree it sucks to get a ticket, by moving cyclists away from cars the number of tickets issued will drastically drop and the chance of a collision will be nearly zero. We can all work together to make San Francisco a more friendly place for all and keep the culture it’s best known for alive.

Thank You

This talk explored how the simple bike ride can expand to getting to know other sides of people, and change peoples ideas on life for the better. Shimon learned how to better deal with people and help these men through their problems and to realize that they are cared about. When he started his program he had no idea how to run the group or deal with any of their anger, and he gradually progressed to become their mentor and friend and used their rides as a metaphor for life. His example of the boy “Alex” and figuring out how to interact with him and build his trust demonstrates his patience and determination to be successful. You have to go out and find yourself in order to learn to love yourself and others.

On the fusion website I found a study on crash safety in urban areas and the effect of bike lanes on  reducing bike crashes in urban areas. The Civil Engineering department at the University of Central Florida did an in-depth study in Miami Dade county on the number of bike lanes in relation to bike related accidents. Their data provided a good amount of information from a different part of the country, as I’m trying to study a very similar topic here in San Francisco. Having someone already do a study makes it much easier to understand and correlate my results.

In the speech Shimon sums up what the kids learn on his ride, takes a long pause and then returns to information previously stated in the talk. His transition is almost unnoticed if not for the long pause to indicate the end of a topic and the start of another. He concludes by bringing up how he rides with the kids once a week and uses visuals to reinforce the information that he talks about. He restates that 15 years before the talk he started the program as previously stated and talks yet again how happy he is to have started the program. He closes by stating how fortunate he is to get back to his roots by discovering Israel while helping the kids from all over the world. Each of his transitions are very subtle and require the audience to be paying attention, by using visuals he’s able to help his audience know when he is summing up his talk.

I want to talk about the misuse of the bike lanes in San Francisco, particularly how drivers use the bike as an extra lane when there’s congestion or to turn right. I want to cover any data that the police might have on enforcement of the infraction and maybe talk to the bike coalition to see if they’re doing anything to combat this. I’d like to talk about the number of citations issued for this, and do a study of my own and count how many people abuse the bike lane in a popular area like the Embarcadero. I’d like to compare what I saw to any information the police may have and then see what the city/ locals are doing if anything to inform drivers.

Carlsson argues that here in San Francisco, the only place to find peace is out on the road on a bike. Getting away from work and stress is a very big issue to many people today, but here in San Francisco the hustle and bustle is constant and widespread. At the same time Zimmer argues that this tech and work boom will bring people together in the sharing of resources, most importantly cars. Both writers generally agree that the clutter that has become part of cities today needs to decline for people to be successful. I noticed hints of this in my spacial observation, going to Sunday streets in Golden Gate Park. At the carless festival the bicycle seems to be a prominent feature on the streets, serving to be the fastest and most fun form of transportation when the road is completely free. People really take advantage of the space when they don’t have to worry about traffic or angry people coming screaming by in huge metal boxes. It’s also surprisingly quiet, hundreds if not thousands of people on one street at the same time all just enjoying the fresh air and the peace it brings. I think being car free really is calming, as the two authors argue. It gives you the opportunity to get out and enjoy whats around you without having to rush. 

So far of all the places I’ve traveled to, Twin Peaks at night is by far the best. Theres an amazing view from the Golden Gate Bridge to Berkeley and everything in between. When I first went up there I took a trip with some friends from my floor in the middle of the day, and don’t get me wrong it’s pretty then, but the city lights and life you can see at night makes it so much better. The first time I went up at night no one else wanted to go, so I went alone and wasn’t disappointed. Soon enough I was leading a group of SII students up to the top in the middle of the night to show them just how great it was. 

I start by giving a general overview of the topic that I’m going to talk about, I like to compile basic general facts into the opening and hit the outside of each points very quickly. Then I spend time with each subtopic diving into its issues and how it relates to the overall bigger picture. Ie traffic problems in San Francisco I might briefly mention that traffic lights are on set schedules rather than activated when cars are stopped, and then move on to more general problems with traffic. Then once I’ve finished my general overview I will dive into the implications and issues associated with the traffic light system and how it contributes back to the bigger picture. I don’t necessarily discuss things of more importance first or last, but things that have more effect on the overall topic will get more of my speaking time. I would like to work on being able to plan out which topic I’m going to cover when so I don’t repeat myself or get confused.

We all chose a narrative structure and each expanded off of it into different areas. We thought that using the narrative as a background for expanding other topics worked really well and held our speeches together by having a general overall purpose.

In the bicycle community, there’s only one event that can bring every sub culture together; critical mass.

Founded in 1992 by San Francisco native Joel Pomerantz, who’s become famous for writing numerous articles on the SF bicycle scene and water shortages in the state of california. As a writer he’s been seen as a rule breaker and truth teller, but as a cyclist it seems he’s only seen as lawless. But enough about the man behind it, let’s move on to the mass.

The ride itself, much to the idea of Joel takes on a “We are traffic” mentality. When the mass is coming down the road, they are the law. And in many cities this is true, here in San Francisco cyclists have no set destination and don’t use the police to help shut traffic down as they ride. Depending on the attitude of riders and the particular cops that show up, you may end up arrested depending on how far you push the rules. But in cities like London, Atlanta and Cleveland the ride actually has a set route so the police can help block traffic, and of course that means a lot less arrests. Drivers in cities where the ride is sanctioned seem to have a much larger appreciation of the cause, and it becomes a fun activity for everyone on the streets. In cities like Washington D.C. and London police frequently arrest riders who stray into restricted areas, an issue that could be potentially resolved if the ride were more organized.

The ride itself has good intentions, but the lack of clear structure tends to get riders into trouble. In fact, San Francisco has the most documented conflicts of any participating city. Last August a cyclist who was unhappy with an impatient driver broke the mirrors off her car among other things… credible? It’s hard to say. Looking at incidents around the world it seems like a lot of the incidents start as minor accidents when cars hit bikes and turn into a mob mentality attack on the drivers… Not a great image for something that’s supposed to be so positive. In fact, Joel the co founder has stated that he no longer participates in the ride as it’s not what he imagined it would become; so the credibility of the ride is up to you. As someone who participates in the event I’ve never seen any illegal activity or accidents, and for the most part that doesnt happen. But when it does things end up bad with many people hurt or arrested ruining the reputation of the system. To me the ride has enough good history to be proved legitimate, but I’ll leave it up to you.