Bike trips in San Francisco continues to climb as more people continue to use a bike to get around The City.
Bike trips in San Francisco continues to climb as more people continue to use a bike as their choice to get around The City.
The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s 2015 bicycle count report showed that weekday bike trips increased from 8.5 percent from 2014 to 2015, which is an increase of 200,000 more bike trips. The total number of bike trips counted by the transit agency in 2015 was 2.644 million trips.
Since 2006, the transit agency has released its annual bicycle count to help understand not just how many people are biking throughout The City, but also when and where people are biking.
The transit agency’s 2015 report was released and presented Friday to SFMTA board directors at their Policy and Governance Committee meeting.
SFMTA Sustainable Streets transportation planners Rachel Om and Monica Munowitch cited the methods the transit agency used to record 2015’s bicycle data came from 15 automated bicycle counters from various corridors throughout The City that record bicycle 24 hours a day, census data from the American Community Survey and manual counts from 80 locations in The City taken between Sept 14 and 20 from 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.
The transit agency actually has 25 automated bike counters, but 15 were only used in 2015 bike survey because of maintenance reasons.
The American Community Survey showed that bicyclists made up of 4.4 percent of trips made in 2014 out of all people who commuted in San Francisco.
SFMTA Sustainable Streets Director Tom Maguire said in a statement that the data backed what people are seeing on city streets, which is more bikes. He said the transit agency will continue make more investments in bike infrastructure:
“In support of our Vision Zero goal of eliminating traffic deaths in the city, this year we’re not only breaking ground on three major streetscape projects that will increase safety on Polk, Masonic and 2nd, we’re making 22 miles of bike engineering improvements across the city, from green bike lanes to fully separated bikeways.”
Janice Li, advocacy director for the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, said she was thrilled to see the increase in the number of people biking in San Francisco. Li said she would like see the report done more quarterly.
The transit agency this year plans to triple the amount of automated bicycle counters currently embedded throughout The City. The SFMTA currently has 25 counters and plans to increase that amount to 75 by the end of the year, which will help capture more data for the next report, the transit agency said.
Download and read the full 2015 report on the SFMTA website.
Jerold serves as a reporter and San Francisco Bureau Chief for SFBay covering transportation and occasionally City Hall and the Mayor's Office in San Francisco. His work on transportation has been recognized by the San Francisco Press Club. Born and raised in San Francisco, he graduated from San Francisco State University with a degree in journalism. Jerold previously wrote for the San Francisco Public Press, a nonprofit, noncommercial news organization. When not reporting, you can find Jerold taking Muni to check out new places to eat in the city.
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One other way to get data of where and when riders are is to check with Strava and other fitness type applications. Also they could push to have people who use those applications to register their commute rides. Strava does have a commute choice.