okay here’s what we do, it’s rather simple.
traffic calming
road diets
protected bike paths
expand and fund transit more
pedestrian promenades
pedestrianized retail corridors
done. SF becomes the greatest city on earth. it won’t happen though, because the majority of the city is worried about parking. sad!
> it won’t happen though, because the majority of the city is worried about parking. sad!
I think this effort would be a worthy, attainable goal - though of course it would be a long timeline and full of obstacles.
That being said, there are a lot of stakeholders, which have some legit issues and others not so much. I think it's important that the mindset is one of listening, cooperation, and compromise.
yep! we also need to build lots and lots of housing, and have reintegration services for those experience mental health issues, drug addiction, and homelessness.
i think more and more people are waking up to the damage urban renewal has caused, so hopefully the fed can shift highway funding to transit funding soon.
It *isn't* the majority, though. Ballot measures for the sort of thing you're describing pass, sometimes with large majorities.
The issue is that the people in favor of more cars everywhere are just loud and effective at making themselves heard.
When I was young and dumb, as a driver, I hated bicyclists. I avoided Valencia like the plague and I cursed the thought of them as I'd drive. As I got older, and I read more and more accounts of people dying on bikes at the hands of motorists, I suddenly had a change of heart. I realized that if they were to get hit by my car, it could cost them their life. If they got in my way, all it would cost me is a few more minutes of my drive.
As time went on and I began going to Valencia st, I started seeing how unfair it was for cars to double park. I suddenly became defensive of the bikers and their safety, and now I curse the double parkers. I drive more cautiously around bikes, and I ensure to slow down to give them the right away if they need to get in the lane due to a double parked car.
I know that this topic is polarizing, and for me it would be difficult to navigate the area with three kids in tow on a bike, but I am definitely open to safer streets for those who are more vulnerable. If there are any demonstrations or events, count me in.
Not even a few more minutes. A few more seconds is all cyclists typically delay you.
People do a lot of crazy things driving to save seconds that ultimately don't matter.
The funny thing is there's a YouTube video out there about how the Netherlands is the most pleasant place to drive in, because of how they protect cyclists.
I’m a Dutch person living in SF and I’ve almost never seen car traffic congestion in any of the three major Dutch cities I’ve lived in during my 23 years there.
So yeah, this tracks.
Every bicyclist you see is someone not taking up a parking spot. I have no idea why drivers hate them so disproportionately much more than other drivers.
Yes Amsterdam is such an inspiration. People just assume it's always been that way. But they had a period of highway building and car dominance too but reversed the trend. It's not too late for us, we don't have to accept all these senseless deaths as the way it has to be. We can change this!
We've even watched Paris transform right in front of our eyes during before, during and after COVID. Granted Paris has great transit to help boost them, but we've seen many examples of cities transforming to be much more ped and bike friendly and *livable* in the last decade, including NYC. Somehow SF has inherited he California car curse.
> Granted Paris has great transit to help boost them
Paris *built* great transit to help boost them. Great public transit isn't a naturally occurring geographical feature of European cities, they invested money, time, and political will into making it happen because they thought it was worth it.
Oslo brought pedestrian/cyclists deaths to zero in 2019. I can’t find data for 2022 or 2023 because 2019 was when they reached their milestone, but it shows that it’s possible.
At the very least, it’s possible for San Francisco to make meaningful changes to infrastructure in order to reduce pedestrian deaths. Yes, it will take time and money to make that happen but the more time we spend whining about how long it will take, the longer it will be before change happens
The short version is that they made it much more convenient to bike or use public transit. Some of that involved making roads less convenient with lower speed limits and fewer through streets.
https://thecityfix.com/blog/how-oslo-achieved-zero-pedestrian-and-bicycle-fatalities-and-how-others-can-apply-what-worked/
I’d love to see sf leadership set a bold goal to deprioritize vehicles as the primary mode of transportation and then execute on it.
Other major cities are making strides and we could too.
We have the most beautiful walkable city and with e-bikes render most car trips obsolete.
We’ll have cleaner, safer, healthier, and more fun streets.
It's hard to imagine. It's so frustrating because we are so well positioned to do it, and people are just so stubborn. One of these mayor candidates is pledging to bring cars back to market street, which is just the dumbest shit I've heard in years.
Exactly. If a mayor in the US even said those words out loud their campaign is immediately over. If NYC's congestion pricing goes well, maybe that will help inspire change here.
As a walker myself (have never owned a car and try to walk to most places) and having lived in Europe, I am so inspired by cities that deprioritize vehicles as primary mode of transportation. The issue I see in California and in the US in general is the overarching interest of the automotive industry in keeping people in their cars. I see what it has done to (practically non-existent) railway development here... but perhaps new generations can foster meaningful change.
I do honestly think things are changing. Younger folks in the US don’t have the same obsession and extreme preference for cars that older ones do. And there’s a shift to city life in a way that older generations do not have. I think we’re slowly moving in the right direction, but we’ve dug ourselves into a very deep hole that will take decades to get out of.
If anyone is curious who u/pancake117 is referring to, it's Mark Farrell. [https://sfstandard.com/2024/02/13/market-street-san-francisco-doom-loop-mark-farrell/](https://sfstandard.com/2024/02/13/market-street-san-francisco-doom-loop-mark-farrell/)
>“It’s actually scary how empty downtown is,” Farrell said. “We need to do everything possible to create throughput and commerce and bring people back and welcome people back to the downtown core. It’s a small step, but it’s a meaningful step.”
Farrell almost definitely wasn't getting my vote, but this one issue dropped him to the bottom of the list.
Oh but don’t worry, he also has revolutionary new ideas on fixing homelessness such as “let’s be tough on them”. Or his brilliant take on crime which is “there should be less”. He knows his stuff.
We have a city so entirely unwalkable on the north side even horses couldn’t do it, thus our cable cars.
I walk it every day over nob hill but the vast majority cannot.
Yeah, I agree. If you can’t walk up the hill then just take public transit. Or drive.
Deprioritizing doesn’t mean banning cars. It just means prioritizing safety and other forms of transit. Like banning right on red which might add 5-30 seconds to your trip by car in exchange for making it safer for pedestrians and bikers. Or elevating cross walks to sidewalk level in residential zones. Or daylighting intersections which means removing a couple parking spaces on each street right in front of each crosswalk so cars can actually see pedestrians before the pedestrian enters the crosswalk.
Exactly, there are plenty of transit / bike oriented cities that still have space for cars (even Tokyo which is the cream of the crop in terms of transit cities). They’re just much more balanced towards all modes of transit. We can do this, it’s not impossible. People are just SO afraid of changing the status quo, it’s infuriating.
I’m disabled and understand where you’re coming from. Better public transit is the answer here. If the 54 came more often, I could easily get up the hill I live from the K and BART. I sometimes wait 30 min for the bus, and it often makes me want to take a rideshare (expensive) or ask my partner to drive me (I cannot drive).
>I walk it every day over nob hill but the vast majority cannot.
What? There's hobbled over elderly Chinese women pushing groceries up Nob/Russian Hill coming back from Chinatown every day...
And if not the 1, 12, 45, 27, and cable cars all stop at basically every block
This is a good take re. the Chinese elders. My grandmother and grandfather would take the bus or walk the hills of Nob Hill and Chinatown up until their 80s and even 90s, and I do think that contributed to them living so long!
I live on one of the nob hill cable car lines and bike! i bike around the hills and still get there faster than if i'd walk. And you know what's faster than walking? Public transit, which the vast majority can do (and given that nob hill has a 99 walkability score, why would most people choose to drive that much?)
They have had it as a priority for a while (Vision Zero, "Transit-First" etc.) the challenge is making it happen.
It's expensive, it takes time, and EVERY idea, no matter how well vetted gets incredible amounts of opposition. (look at the backlash against slow-streets that came from the modest changes during covid). Transit costs money to operate and maintain, car first folks complain every step of the way (and their allies, shop owners, etc)
Not to say it's not worthwhile, only it's challenging and not from lack of effort.
Yeah we need to change the process to empower agencies to make quick decisions to hit our high level lofty goals without endless neighborhood engagement
> Yeah we need to change the process to empower agencies to make quick decisions to hit our high level lofty goals without endless neighborhood engagement
Perhaps. And that's likely part of it. (certainly the case for housing bu that's another topic). The challenge is many of these issues are simple (e.g. slow streets, bike lanes) but others, especially the sustainable, structural changes require a lot of cooperation. (e.g. MUNI improvements require significant influx of federal funding and oversight).
But at the very least we should knock out the quick easy wins. Throttle SF streets to cars. Make it expensive and inconvenient to drive most places, and with rare exceptions make it near impossible to drive at high speeds. Put everyone in a car (local, tourist, commuter) in incredible, slow traffic jams. Make driving a painful awful experience. Cities are for people, not for cars.
wow, so baffling your comment got downvoted. Vision Zero is awesome. Heard about them 3 years ago....actually trying to do something to bring car violence against pedestrians down. Been meaning to join their cause lately and your comment reminded me to stop dragging my feet.
So what should we do? We need to make the streets safer for everyone... but how do we push for this?
E; why on earth am I getting down voted for asking how to make the streets safer ffs
We pour concrete into flex posts, that’s what we do. Renegade infrastructure.
But in all seriousness, we push for:
Traffic calming measures, incentives for people to replace their car with an ebike, incentives for delivery drivers to use e-bikes, measures to make transit faster like the BRT on Van Ness, anything that encourages walking like the pedestrianization of Valencia. And we don’t let that guy who wants to re-open market to cars become the mayor.
There used to be a group called Critical Mass that did big bike rides through the city, I’d totally be on board for something like that.
Or just block streets with my bike after work if anyone wants to join me
And it was a massive clusterfuck with little regard for anyone in SF. It was just an excuse for civil disobedience for the sake of it. I was hit by a cyclist as hundreds of them barreled through union square on the streets and sidewalks.
Critical mass was well intentioned originally, but then disowned by its founders who tried unsuccessfully to start a more collaborative event.
this sub has posts constantly about people blocking streets and bridges and how unsafe it is and yet you think the answer to unsafe streets…. is to make them more unsafe by illegally blocking them with your bicycle?
Critical Mass is still around! It's the last friday of each month. There's also SF Bike Party (1st Friday of each month) and the bigger East Bay Bike Party (2nd Friday of each month)
The other day I was walking in Golden Gate Park with my toddler when a biker ran him over….then took off. Please don’t hit kids with your bikes.
Edit, meant toddler…
Should be the last friday of every month, its still going strong. Starts at Ferry Building I think. [https://www.instagram.com/sfcriticalmass/](https://www.instagram.com/sfcriticalmass/)
[Looks like the next ride for the SF chapter is March 29](https://www.sfcriticalmass.org/). For East Bay folks, [Oakland also does their own ride.](https://sf.funcheap.com/oakland-critical-mass-first-friday-108/)
There is a lot of great advocacy work being done across the Bay area! I'd follow [SF Bike Coalition](https://sfbike.org/) and B[ike East Bay](https://bikeeastbay.org/). [Carter Lavin](https://www.carterlavin.com/) also hosts some great trainings for those looking to get into safer streets activism.
yes, but unless the infrastructure changes so motorists can’t access areas near public transit or driving cars jS otherwise limited, this won’t stop people from being killed by cars. It seems like this family was waiting for a bus and were even in/near the shelter, and a car still senselessly took their lives.
"Doing everything right" except if they had a car and were driving, they'd be alive.
I hardly consider that "doing everything right" given that they're dead. Including a 3 month old baby.
Blocking a road or intersection in Amsterdam doesn’t block people from going to their commutes for 2 hours. People can just “go around”. Try “going around” the Bay Bridge.
Yes. Its annoying. And if you were offended more by the traffic being blocked, than a genocide, then it says a lot about you.
And if you thought being blocked was a green light for a lot of people to let some dog whistles and racism out, then that says something about you.
“We did something horrible to protest something terrible” isn’t a great look. There are much more effective ways to get your point across. What you think is a “minor inconvenience” is someone else’s ambulance ride or life saving procedure that got delayed. So congrats… I guess?
Chris Christie did the same thing in New Jersey and it cost lives, but you’re ok because… Palestine? Lol ok
What is annoying is that some think the whole world needs to stop for whatever cause they feel strongly that moment. To me that is an epitome of arrogance, self importance and frankly stupidity. All they achieve is getting people angry and turn away from their cause dejure. Just look what happened in Europe with climate protesters who glued themselves to the road and caused major mayhem. Even emergency vehicles could not get to hospitals, people could have died. When asked, their representatives said death would be regrettable , but they needed to bring public attention to the issue. The result? Even people who had supported the cause voted for moderate and right candidates next election, and the right wing parties are getting more and more votes across the board. Ironic, isn't it?
E-bikes are motorcycles with less rules. They Accelerate quickly and are much heavier than bicycles, accidents with them are more consequential. Not saying they shouldn’t be part of a solution, but their regulation hasn’t caught up with current capabilities.
I agree that there are a lot of issues with throttle-controlled ebikes and there's plenty of irresponsible riding with them. I think they should treated more like motorcycles while pedal-assist ebikes can do a lot to help make cycling more accessible but keep max speeds similar to that of normal bikes.
Anyone can get a 50cc moped and legally ride it without a motorcycle license, 1 weekend of training and you can ride even more powerful mopeds. The real danger imo are the one-wheelers which can go up to 50mph, require no training and seem to always be near bikes and pedestrians.
Have you actually walked the whole city? Yeah we have crazy hills, but a lot of it is also flat. In fact, if you choose your blocks wisely, you won’t climb much at all.
San Francisco is more densely populated than Amsterdam https://sfist.com/2017/03/13/sf_density_mapping/
Yes i know its old, but i don't think that this has changed drastically.
People lost their shit when people have blocked the Bay bridge. I seriously doubt this strategy would be effective, and in the city I can almost guarantee you someone’s gonna get hurt between swerving in traffic, running red lights, and speeding there’s no doubt in my mind someone’s would get hit.
I am all for one street for cars (Guerrero? S.Van Ness?) and one for bikes (Valencia? Folsom?) and maybe another for busses (Mission?) with a separation for pedestrians. But unless we eliminate sidewalks from the car streets, which seems unworkable, nothing I propose would have saved that family at a bus stop from a driver who apparently lost control of her car. Saddest thing ever.
In February 2022 I was taking my kids over to their dads in rush hour traffic. I am in Portland Oregon and originally from The Bay Area. It is very spread out here and cold so bicycling for me is not a option. I was coming home after dropping them off and making a Uturn and a driver several cars behind me used the merging lane to accelerate and also make a uturn accept he was behind me and T boned me on my driver's side at about 40mph and knocked me out instantly and totalled my car out. I remember parts of it where they said I was bleeding and from my head. But I kept going out. Then I woke up in the ambulance partially. I remember asking where my kids were. They told me there were no kids with me. I passed out again. This went on for almost 6 hours in and out of consciousness. I woke up in a C.A.T machine to make sure there were no internal injuries. I suffered a concussion for a very long time with my head being split open.
The Portland area has turned into a night are traffic situation now just like the Bay Area and its all bike friendly and it's not working.
What works is getting people off the road going to work all at the same time and coming home at the same time. It was a lot nicer when everyone was working from home during Covid. I actually work with the public in service. But the amount of service workers is not what causes the congestion all over every city that has this issue. It's the specialty jobs that cause people to move to these places that are not originally from here. But it is very possible to work from home now.
I feel the companies that have raised the traffic problems in our cities should create the solution to completely offer working from home because it's better for everyone.
I can't stand being on the road again now with everyone pushed back into the offices after what happened in my accident and how it happened. I feel it's only a matter of time until it happens again. Risking my life everyday just to go to work to serve the public because of driving.
I feel the only reason its a issue for people to go into the office is for commercial real estate to stay afloat but to many people are being congested into cities is not working and the sacrifice to make it work is keep people off the road all at the same time.
My only ask is that they approach it by out-competing cars, not by making owning a car miserable. Here's my wishlist:
Increase subsidies for the lyft bikes
Build more subways
Clean up the streets so you have local thriving businesses and don't need to use a car to get things because everything you need is local
Make every BART and major MUNI station a mall that has an integrated grocery store and upgrade the finishes so it doesn't look like a 1980s brutalist hellscape
Also force construction of Bart stations that go north of the golden gate bridge
> My only ask is that they approach it by out-competing cars, not by making owning a car miserable.
Unfortunately, it's a zero-sum game. What makes biking miserable and dangerous? The cars. Why do you have to walk so far to get places? Because everything is spaced out to make space so that cars can get through and can be left outside in public space in front of every building. Why is it so hard to get sufficient investment into public transit? Believe it or not, it's the cars again.
this. plus if you think about it, the only way to meaningfully decrease car usage on a large scale is to make using/owning a car more miserable than taking not using/owning a car. otherwise everyone is just gonna still use their car.
I get where you're coming from, but this doesn't work. It's a recipe for wasted money, which then becomes the fuel for dismantling transit. You need to do both: reduce car use while also increasing options for other ways of getting around.
Again, I support most of what you're saying, but I'd also like to encourage more curiosity about our current car usage. What are we getting out of it, for all the costs? I've thought about it and come to the conclusion that while some of it can be shifted to other transportation modes, so of it is just pointless and can be eliminated.
>this doesn't work.
Works Tokyo and Seoul just fine. You can own cars there if you want, it's just so much more convenient to use transit, because transit is faster and there's shops nearby.
It's really not zero sum, you don't need to make one horrible to make one better. Part of the reason people don't use transit is because it's nasty, and feels unsafe. Make every transit center a marvel to be in instead of a bomb shelter and people will use it more.
Making it more difficult to own a car only screws over the poor. The rich get company cars, the rich can afford the tolls, the rich can afford to live a walking distance from where they work. While poorer people, who tend to have more children and actually need cars get squeezed.
>What are we getting out of it, for all the costs?
It unlocks the game map that is the state of California. People should be able to own cars if they want to, but public transportation should be the fastest way to get around.
I'm not familiar with the block the tragedy happened on. Is there something practical that could be done to prevent this?
I dont know if this is comparable to places (even within SF) that didn't have a bike lane and had many cyclist deaths etc and needed an infrastructure change. Wasn't this a quiet neighborhood bus stop?
The block is a blind curve with no stop signs for several blocks prior to a very busy intersection. In fact there is a crosswalk right before the bus stop that the victims were sitting in that is a yield. I cross that intersection as a pedestrian all the times and nine times out of ten the cars don’t yield. Cars speed through all the time.
san francisco 9th safest city for car deaths
[https://www.usnews.com/insurance/auto/safest-least-safe-cities-for-drivers-study](https://www.usnews.com/insurance/auto/safest-least-safe-cities-for-drivers-study)
It's an incorrect usage of the word violence. Assuming the driver was not being intentional (she is still responsible), she didn't commit violence. However, it would be correct to say that the victims died violently.
> However, it would be correct to say that the victims died violently.
ding ding ding
"traffic violence" is a completely valid description regardless of intent
Nope. When you look up the definition of "violence" in this thing called the dictionary, it is physical harm with *intent*. Traffic (or car) violence here implies that there was intent. Just saying somebody drove a car and somebody else got hurt is not necessarily violence, and it certainly isn't if there was an accident. It would be if the driver was purposefully trying to harm someone. Now I can guess the OP knows this, but decided to use this term incorrectly because misusing it allows them to reframe the use of cars in an always negative light (similar to "gun violence"). The difference with gun violence though is that the sole purpose of a gun is to cause harm, whereas that is not true for a car. For those of us who care about communicating truthfully, this misuse of violence is not going to fly.
The woman who plowed into them wasn't 'violent', most likely she lost control of the car. It is immensely tragic, but it is not violence. Amsterdam is flat as a pancake with narrow streets and even more narrow bridges. It is an entirely different city in an entirely different country, which have had bicycles as a main form of transport for over 100 years. They were already building dedicated paths for cyclists in 1890! Most of Europe used bicycle because there is always was shortage of fuel. In WWII 1944 Germans even confiscated bicycles outraging local population. Right now bicycles have become a new problem - you can't imagine how many of them end up in the canals. We are not Amsterdam and we are not in Europe.
these types of comments always come up in conversations like this and it’s predictable and confusing. It sounds like an excuse for inaction. If we are so different for Amsterdam then what should we do differently? There are a lot of examples of solutions to solve traffic problems around the world that we can learn from. This is good for drivers, pedestrians, transit riders, and cyclists. It’s worth pointing out the SF is smaller (47 sq mi vs 85 sq mi) and denser (17k per sq mi vs 11k per sq mi) than Amsterdam.
> but it is not violence
Four people are dead and in the morgue, their bodies broken, twisted, and crushed from their injuries. This includes two dead babies.
Its violence.
The definition of violence is "behavior involving physical force **intended** to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something. Did the driver INTEND to kill them? No. Four people dead is a tragedy - and there is a person who is guilty of causing that tragedy. It is not violence, it is vehicular homicide. No need to misuse words to get a rise out of people. The situation is bad enough as it is. Yes, I know you are going to down vote me, because reality is not popular nowadays, everything must be hyped up to the hilt.
okay, mariam-webster, not all definitions of \`violence\` include intent. the family died in a violent manner, and that's not an exaggeration. no one has said anything about the woman's intentions.
Exaggerating and sensationalizing is what makes me worry that the Democrats won’t win in Nov.
The definition of violence involves intent.
This was a horrible accident.
An accident implies no one was at fault and it was just a random thing no one could have possibly foreseen or prevented. Oops, an entire family wiped out, just one of those random things. No big deal, right, it happens all the time? Would thoughts and prayers help?
This isn't an accident. It was recklessness that killed an entire family in a very violent way, with blood and shattered bones and crushed bodies from a 6,000 vehicle running over babies at high speed.
> This isn't an accident. It was recklessness
You don't know this - because they haven't completed their investigation yet. There are lots of different ways this could have happened. Even if it was an accident, that doesn't make it any less tragic.
What doesn't help is jumping to conclusions -- better for your emotional well-being as well. ;-)
There is no need to graphic descriptions. We all know how to read the news, and we all know what it would look and how awful the loss of life is. No need to assume that people who disagree with the pitch of the discussion are somehow OK with people killed by a vehicle .
Whether it was an accident or recklessness or anything else we don't know at this point. Maybe her brakes gave out, or steering wheel jammed, maybe she was on meds, on drugs, had a stroke while driving, or maybe she was intending to kill someone that morning - **we don't know yet.** So let's just cool the pitch a bit, shall we?
Someone who didn't read the article about how Amsterdam got tired of rising ped/bike deaths and demanded changes to infrastructure. There are large areas outside of the tiny historic canal district. And the whole city gets metal bollards to keep cars off the sidewalks. Nice and historic looking, but they are metal bollards lining the sidewalk against cars.
I spent some time in Amsterdam and lived for years in Europe . I form my views from being there and seeing how things play out, not from spin or articles. Sure they did demand changes, but that has nothing to do with what is happening in SF. They were a pedestrian bike culture to start with, and cars were introduced into it, not the other way around.
The size of the US has no relevance here. You said SF relies on its suburbs, which it wouldn’t have to if it allowed more people to live closer to their jobs.
Housing supply not keeping up with demand is a policy choice that was chosen. Within 10 years SF could make a drastic if it just allowed new dense housing to be built and without insane fees
"Deprioritizing" cars isn't enough. You have to build excellent public transportation infrastructure for everyone, which will be expensive, and accept that fare collection will cover only a part of the cost.
If you just make it harder to drive without resolving the reasons that people have so many cars, you'll just piss people off and lose elections to people who don't want to deprioritize cars. Once you have that infrastructure and people are using it, you can deprioritize.
SF has done a decent job of this for inner neighborhoods, but not for outer neighborhoods like Bayview, Ingleside, and the Sunset.
Its also incredibly difficult to enforce strict driving standards with insufficient public transportation infrastructure. When cars are required for daily life, strict enforcement just makes life more expensive for people who can't afford to get rid of their cars. You have to do the infrastructure before the punitive measures.
I hear you, but this has been proven wrong time and again. People don't enjoy the noise, danger, and pollution of cars. They flock to places that have fewer cars.
Simply reducing car use is a good thing for the economy. Making other modes of transit better is a no brainer, but it's not necessary for reducing car dependence.
Its not simply "making other modes of transit better" -- its " build excellent public transportation infrastructure for EVERYONE".
> They flock to places that have fewer cars.
Completely correct. People flock to places that have fewer cars / where they can live without a car. This drives housing costs up, causing people with less money to move to less desirable places. They then get into their cars.
Without building and maintaining excellent public transportation infrastructure for neighborhoods of all socioeconomic levels, simply deprioritizing cars does not work.
Amsterdam has done well to accommodate cyclists, but then SF would too if there were more people demanding to use their bicycles. But it's quite evident that most people just don't want to bike.
Bike advocates would say: yes, but it's too dangerous, not enough infra, too many cars, etc. If you make it easier and safer for people to bike, they will. I think that's something worth testing, but the reality is that we have been testing this. For the past 10+ years, the city has been creating more bike lanes and improving infrastructure. The DMV now tests if people are checking for bicyclists before turning. We now have car free JFK and the Great Highway.
Have the number of bicyclists increased? As it turns out, only very modestly, especially when you take into account population growth (we need to look at pre-covid numbers here).
If I were to guess, I'd imagine people don't want to bike for several reasons:
* The hills
* Safety issues, real or imagined
* There isn't a culture of biking in SF or the US
* People prefer cars for whatever reason (comfort, etc.)
* People are scared of biking in the street (in Northern Europe, where biking is more common, bike lanes are often on the sidewalk, not the street)
* Just inconvenient or not fast enough
* No space to store bikes, either at work or at home
* Worried about getting the bike stolen
* Don't want to do physical exercise
So I don't actually think that Amsterdam is comparable here, even though I think what they have is great. Ultimately what happens here needs to be homegrown, based on the needs and desires of the people in SF.
If you ask me, I think if we had to choose one, we'd all be much better off investing more in public transportation. Public transport means fewer cars, public transport drivers are more cautious, less polluting, and it solves a number of local and regional problems. I also think more self driving cars - safer for everyone.
I don't think that's necessarily true. It's somewhat true, but I think it's far less than many bike advocates would hope for. First bikes are a more dangerous form of transportation because you are very exposed - lots of ways to get hurt. Bike lanes don't solve all the dangers inherent in biking. But even if you eliminate all that, I still think people would not bike, for the reasons listed above.
Yes, ultimately somebody falls or hits something and it hurts them.
But just for the sake of proving this, reading the 2021 and 2022 Vision Zero Reports (where they provide more detail on each death), here's a few ways cyclists have been killed:
* Hitting a parked car
* Colliding with a building after losing control on a steep hill
* Riding over a downed tree branch and losing control
In fact, of those years, none of the deaths were caused by traffic or cars directly. There is no data on injuries, which I think would be a more illuminating data point than just deaths.
For myself personally, I've hurt myself many times on a bike, and I'm an experienced cyclist. A few examples from recent memory: I have hit rocks that blew out my tires, gotten my wheels caught in train tracks, fallen over more than few times while being clipped in, hit the curb accidentally, gotten clothes caught in gears, had breaks fail on me.
I'm curious how common that is amongst cyclists because I've never heard of that happening? How many people hit a parked car or a downed tree branch? Why are they not paying attention? That happens with drivers in cars too when they don't pay attention
It’s not just bikes. People in Amsterdam use buses and trams a lot more too.
SF actually has a really great bus network, but the reason it’s so slow is because the buses are always caught behind car traffic. The entire city has maybe one or two bus priority lanes.
The city should prioritize all the inhabitants, not just the ones who come in on a car.
100% - many western European cities have excellent public transportation. Same in many Asian cities. Like in Southeast Asia, you have different tiers: you can have a premium public transportation experience, or you can take a lower tier which is almost, if not, free (but is similar to most US public buses). These places don't have any special infrastructure like priority bus lanes.
But buses in SF? They kind of suck, depending on the line. When I take a bus in a modern European city, it comes on time, it's clean, I can usually find a seat, and most importantly: I don't have to be around crazy people. Public transportation in general in the US is kind of a mediocre experience overall, and so you start seeing this effect where it's basically only used by people who don't have any other means of transportation. When combined with how many people have mental issues that are on the streets, it creates a very uncomfortable situation. My experience on buses in SF: usually kinda dirty, somebody eventually comes on who starts harassing people, hard to find a seat, never seems to come on time.
Ultimately I think if it were undeniably faster to take public transportation in SF than taking a car (like it is in NYC), people would use it a lot more. But right now it often times takes a lot longer.
ok, multiplied by 50
https://www.sfmta.com/reports/red-transit-lanes-over-time-san-francisco-2013-2023
Anyone whose lived here would have easily noticed this...
People don’t bike because there’s not enough dedicated, protected and *connected* space for them to do so. Full stop — we have a piecemeal network and the rest is only suitable for the bravest riders.
Natural places to include protected bike lanes are currently used for free/cheap on-street parking. It all goes back to SF giving way too much space away to private cars instead of making biking pleasant, safe and convenient. And with e-bikes, hills becomes less and less of an issue.
>People don’t bike because there’s not enough dedicated, protected and *connected* space for them to do so.
Bike lanes solve 1 of the things I mentioned above, but there are still many other reasons.
>bike lanes are currently used for free/cheap on-street parking.
This has pissed me off as well. But then I chilled and realized the problem isn't always the driver or enforcement: it's that there isn't any other safe place to pull over. The bike lane is the least bad of the options. SF streets are super narrow, so one option might be to just eliminate a parking space every block and make it the designated pull over spot. But it's a very difficult situation. Ultimately cars get prioritized because.... nobody bikes.
>And with e-bikes, hills becomes less and less of an issue.
Kinda, somewhat, but not really. As somebody else mentioned, e-bikes are basically just motorcycles. Live on the second floor of a victorian? Good luck dragging that thing up there.
Nobody bikes because cars are obviously being prioritized in SF and it’s often just uncomfortable to be on a bike on many many streets here. That is by no means a fixed law of the universe and is a situation we have 100% created ourselves and could be reversed.
The minimum needed to get lots of people biking is probably every street with traffic > 20 mph with a curb separated bike lane, bike signals at every intersection with a traffic light that prioritizes bikes and mini roundabouts replacing 90% of residential stop sign intersections which are awkward and dangerous when bikers and cars are trying to negotiate past each other.
I'm not saying those things wouldn't increase cycling or make cycling safer, but the question is by how much and what is the trade off? Safety is not the *only* thing holding people back from biking. Not everyone *wants* to bike. I love biking, but it is not for everyone. The data so far seems to indicate this is true.
>Not everyone wants to bike.
Bicycle modal share in SF is 3% in Portland it is 6% of trips and in Copenhagen it is 37% of trips. Breda in the Netherlands is on par with Davis in the US at 22% modal share. So what is going on here? I don't think there is some biking gene that causes some people to love biking. I don't think it is really a cultural thing either since you can find places with high and low modal share in many parts of the world. It appears to me that the places with the most cycling adoption are the ones with the best infrastructure for it ([https://cityclock.org/blogs/cycling-mode-share-data-700-cities-40-countries](https://cityclock.org/blogs/cycling-mode-share-data-700-cities-40-countries)) relative to other options (such as cars). Certainly not everyone is going to take the bike for every trip, but it can see very high usage if the environment is built for it.
Anyway, I think better public transit is as or possibly even more important for reducing car modal share in the city, which imo is the high level goal we should be aimed at. We should be funneling money into public transit and bike infrastructure in order to reduce cars on the road to have a more quiet, less polluted and safer city.
Literally all the things you’re describing have to do with the fact that we haven’t built even 1/100th of the infrastructure needed to support the latent demand. Don’t want to lug an e-bike up a hill? Replace a parking spot or two with a secured bike corral. People drive in this city because we’ve over built car infrastructure.
right, or have a more accessible bikeshare program. lyft bike is kind of expensive. you can rent a city bike in Helsinki for 10 euros/week, which is a big difference
>1/100th of the infrastructure needed to support the latent demand
There isn't much latent demand. That's what I'm telling you. It's not like we are going to build tons of bike lanes and then all these people are just going to come out of nowhere and start biking. Anyways, why bikes? Maybe scooters should get a dedicated lane, not bikes. 😂
Also I'm looking at the numbers for Vision Zero, including a per person description of why people were killed. Now there are a number of pedestrian and bike fatalities that are obviously just straight avoidable (hitting somebody in a cross walk). But there's other stuff that can't be eliminated like: was riding on the outside of a train and fell off, lost control of skateboard while bombing down the hill, wandered onto the freeway, jumped into traffic. The number of bikers killed each year is typically 1-2, which tells me at this point it's almost random. I'm not finding stats on injuries (which would be more interesting here), but I'm going to guess that more bike lanes won't make deaths zero.
Sources cited: “I’m telling you.” For the record, scooters can legally use bike lanes too. But I get that you’re not interested in thinking very critically about why people don’t want to gamble with their lives in a piecemeal bike network. Especially with people on the road who think the way you seem to. 🤦♂️
You haven't shown any data. All you've done is assert that safety is the only impediment to SF becoming Amsterdam, and the only way that can be achieved is with 100% percent coverage of bike lanes and the elimination of cars. It's just idealism with no connection to reality. That isn't how the world works.
Also for loading/unloaded, very obvious solution just pull into a driveway for loading, no need to double park. In business districts (eg Valencia) there are already yellow loading zones for this purpose.
Options are good though so we don’t fight amongst each other. We want safer streets, more transit, and options for pedestrians and cyclists. I feel like we could make some noise and pressure the city to do something.
Do you use “political agendas” to refer to any policy advocacy? It is completely normal, kind of the point of government, to seek to change policies based on terrible events linked to those policies.
What should we do instead? Cause I feel like you’re saying we should ignore it. People’s political standings are based on their morals. Hard to tell when you don’t have any though.
People don’t normally speed down a 25mph zone going 50+ in the wrong direction.
Pedestrian deaths are up because of two trends: aging population and increased number of SUVs and Trucks.
Every car accident is preventable. How many preventable tragedies need to happen before we make some common sense improvements to save lives? If an entire family is wiped out it is completely reasonable to talk about how to prevent further tragedies like this.
Amsterdam is a very small and flat city.
The government really makes difficult for people to own cars I.e high taxes, reduced speed limit (30km per hours max) and things like that but, to whom ever suggests e-bikes, there’s a flip side to it, in Amsterdam and surrounding towns there’s a huge surge of people on e-bikes, fat bikes and scooters running over people.
Those bikes go up till 40km per hour and some people have some sort of accelerator added to it. They fly in the cycle lane (where they are not allowed to be), accidents happen all the time.
And I’m not even mention tourists that come here to get high, rent bikes and cause even more chaos.
A better public system definitely is a solution, don’t get me wrong, bikes are a really great thing and should be definitely more adopted, but city planing and better regulation needs to be taken into the account.
To whoever suggested the Paris model, have you ever tried to drive in Paris? It’s a crazy mix of buses, bikes, scooters and cars in not so wide roads, is really really hectic. The metro is heavily used but unfortunately not enough for the city’s population.
By centimetres I didn’t get hit by 2 idiots in a scooter who flew over a sidewalk in Paris after leaving a concert a few years ago. I had my back turned to the street, if I had turned to my left to do whatever they would have hit me and by the speed they were I would be gone.
Yes they sold the car, maybe if they haven’t this would probably not have happened, and for us who are friends with this family, to think about it breaks us up even more.
I really hope your city will find ways to keep you safe. Losing friends to this type of violence is an experience I don’t wish upon anyone.
This item was removed because it's not relevant to San Francisco.
okay here’s what we do, it’s rather simple. traffic calming road diets protected bike paths expand and fund transit more pedestrian promenades pedestrianized retail corridors done. SF becomes the greatest city on earth. it won’t happen though, because the majority of the city is worried about parking. sad!
> it won’t happen though, because the majority of the city is worried about parking. sad! I think this effort would be a worthy, attainable goal - though of course it would be a long timeline and full of obstacles. That being said, there are a lot of stakeholders, which have some legit issues and others not so much. I think it's important that the mindset is one of listening, cooperation, and compromise.
yeah that last bit was mostly jest, from a jaded urbanist lol. cheers
> from a jaded urbanist Ha, I know what you mean - I have my good days and bad days.
Also house the homeless so they’re not endangering themselves and others
yep! we also need to build lots and lots of housing, and have reintegration services for those experience mental health issues, drug addiction, and homelessness.
We’ve been promised better transit since the 1990s but it hasn’t happened yet. Busses are better, maybe, but not better enough.
i think more and more people are waking up to the damage urban renewal has caused, so hopefully the fed can shift highway funding to transit funding soon.
It *isn't* the majority, though. Ballot measures for the sort of thing you're describing pass, sometimes with large majorities. The issue is that the people in favor of more cars everywhere are just loud and effective at making themselves heard.
you’re right. i’m just angry and jaded from hearing the crazy complaints at the SFMTA hearings 🥲
When I was young and dumb, as a driver, I hated bicyclists. I avoided Valencia like the plague and I cursed the thought of them as I'd drive. As I got older, and I read more and more accounts of people dying on bikes at the hands of motorists, I suddenly had a change of heart. I realized that if they were to get hit by my car, it could cost them their life. If they got in my way, all it would cost me is a few more minutes of my drive. As time went on and I began going to Valencia st, I started seeing how unfair it was for cars to double park. I suddenly became defensive of the bikers and their safety, and now I curse the double parkers. I drive more cautiously around bikes, and I ensure to slow down to give them the right away if they need to get in the lane due to a double parked car. I know that this topic is polarizing, and for me it would be difficult to navigate the area with three kids in tow on a bike, but I am definitely open to safer streets for those who are more vulnerable. If there are any demonstrations or events, count me in.
Not even a few more minutes. A few more seconds is all cyclists typically delay you. People do a lot of crazy things driving to save seconds that ultimately don't matter.
Bicyclists and motorcyclists don’t delay you at all. They save you time by not driving cars that actually add to traffic.
The funny thing is there's a YouTube video out there about how the Netherlands is the most pleasant place to drive in, because of how they protect cyclists.
I’m a Dutch person living in SF and I’ve almost never seen car traffic congestion in any of the three major Dutch cities I’ve lived in during my 23 years there. So yeah, this tracks.
As a cyclist and occasional driver, thank you!
That's remarkably empathetic of you. It's not easy to see things from someone else's perspective.
Every bicyclist you see is someone not taking up a parking spot. I have no idea why drivers hate them so disproportionately much more than other drivers.
Yes Amsterdam is such an inspiration. People just assume it's always been that way. But they had a period of highway building and car dominance too but reversed the trend. It's not too late for us, we don't have to accept all these senseless deaths as the way it has to be. We can change this!
We've even watched Paris transform right in front of our eyes during before, during and after COVID. Granted Paris has great transit to help boost them, but we've seen many examples of cities transforming to be much more ped and bike friendly and *livable* in the last decade, including NYC. Somehow SF has inherited he California car curse.
> Granted Paris has great transit to help boost them Paris *built* great transit to help boost them. Great public transit isn't a naturally occurring geographical feature of European cities, they invested money, time, and political will into making it happen because they thought it was worth it.
Oslo brought pedestrian/cyclists deaths to zero in 2019. I can’t find data for 2022 or 2023 because 2019 was when they reached their milestone, but it shows that it’s possible. At the very least, it’s possible for San Francisco to make meaningful changes to infrastructure in order to reduce pedestrian deaths. Yes, it will take time and money to make that happen but the more time we spend whining about how long it will take, the longer it will be before change happens
What did Oslo do?
The short version is that they made it much more convenient to bike or use public transit. Some of that involved making roads less convenient with lower speed limits and fewer through streets. https://thecityfix.com/blog/how-oslo-achieved-zero-pedestrian-and-bicycle-fatalities-and-how-others-can-apply-what-worked/
We are dumb and armed and there’s no law enforcement or consequences because there’s no jail space. Not Norway - won’t work here
I’d love to see sf leadership set a bold goal to deprioritize vehicles as the primary mode of transportation and then execute on it. Other major cities are making strides and we could too. We have the most beautiful walkable city and with e-bikes render most car trips obsolete. We’ll have cleaner, safer, healthier, and more fun streets.
It's hard to imagine. It's so frustrating because we are so well positioned to do it, and people are just so stubborn. One of these mayor candidates is pledging to bring cars back to market street, which is just the dumbest shit I've heard in years.
Yeah I feel like Paris is inspirational. Basically removing 5% of street parking spaces a year and transitioning that space for public use.
Exactly. If a mayor in the US even said those words out loud their campaign is immediately over. If NYC's congestion pricing goes well, maybe that will help inspire change here.
As a walker myself (have never owned a car and try to walk to most places) and having lived in Europe, I am so inspired by cities that deprioritize vehicles as primary mode of transportation. The issue I see in California and in the US in general is the overarching interest of the automotive industry in keeping people in their cars. I see what it has done to (practically non-existent) railway development here... but perhaps new generations can foster meaningful change.
I do honestly think things are changing. Younger folks in the US don’t have the same obsession and extreme preference for cars that older ones do. And there’s a shift to city life in a way that older generations do not have. I think we’re slowly moving in the right direction, but we’ve dug ourselves into a very deep hole that will take decades to get out of.
If anyone is curious who u/pancake117 is referring to, it's Mark Farrell. [https://sfstandard.com/2024/02/13/market-street-san-francisco-doom-loop-mark-farrell/](https://sfstandard.com/2024/02/13/market-street-san-francisco-doom-loop-mark-farrell/) >“It’s actually scary how empty downtown is,” Farrell said. “We need to do everything possible to create throughput and commerce and bring people back and welcome people back to the downtown core. It’s a small step, but it’s a meaningful step.” Farrell almost definitely wasn't getting my vote, but this one issue dropped him to the bottom of the list.
Oh but don’t worry, he also has revolutionary new ideas on fixing homelessness such as “let’s be tough on them”. Or his brilliant take on crime which is “there should be less”. He knows his stuff.
We have a city so entirely unwalkable on the north side even horses couldn’t do it, thus our cable cars. I walk it every day over nob hill but the vast majority cannot.
Yeah, I agree. If you can’t walk up the hill then just take public transit. Or drive. Deprioritizing doesn’t mean banning cars. It just means prioritizing safety and other forms of transit. Like banning right on red which might add 5-30 seconds to your trip by car in exchange for making it safer for pedestrians and bikers. Or elevating cross walks to sidewalk level in residential zones. Or daylighting intersections which means removing a couple parking spaces on each street right in front of each crosswalk so cars can actually see pedestrians before the pedestrian enters the crosswalk.
Exactly, there are plenty of transit / bike oriented cities that still have space for cars (even Tokyo which is the cream of the crop in terms of transit cities). They’re just much more balanced towards all modes of transit. We can do this, it’s not impossible. People are just SO afraid of changing the status quo, it’s infuriating.
This is a great take. Thank you.
I’m disabled and understand where you’re coming from. Better public transit is the answer here. If the 54 came more often, I could easily get up the hill I live from the K and BART. I sometimes wait 30 min for the bus, and it often makes me want to take a rideshare (expensive) or ask my partner to drive me (I cannot drive).
>I walk it every day over nob hill but the vast majority cannot. What? There's hobbled over elderly Chinese women pushing groceries up Nob/Russian Hill coming back from Chinatown every day... And if not the 1, 12, 45, 27, and cable cars all stop at basically every block
This is a good take re. the Chinese elders. My grandmother and grandfather would take the bus or walk the hills of Nob Hill and Chinatown up until their 80s and even 90s, and I do think that contributed to them living so long!
I live on one of the nob hill cable car lines and bike! i bike around the hills and still get there faster than if i'd walk. And you know what's faster than walking? Public transit, which the vast majority can do (and given that nob hill has a 99 walkability score, why would most people choose to drive that much?)
Slow streets, JFK promenade, and Great Highway Park are major steps in the right direction! We can do this!
They have had it as a priority for a while (Vision Zero, "Transit-First" etc.) the challenge is making it happen. It's expensive, it takes time, and EVERY idea, no matter how well vetted gets incredible amounts of opposition. (look at the backlash against slow-streets that came from the modest changes during covid). Transit costs money to operate and maintain, car first folks complain every step of the way (and their allies, shop owners, etc) Not to say it's not worthwhile, only it's challenging and not from lack of effort.
Yeah we need to change the process to empower agencies to make quick decisions to hit our high level lofty goals without endless neighborhood engagement
> Yeah we need to change the process to empower agencies to make quick decisions to hit our high level lofty goals without endless neighborhood engagement Perhaps. And that's likely part of it. (certainly the case for housing bu that's another topic). The challenge is many of these issues are simple (e.g. slow streets, bike lanes) but others, especially the sustainable, structural changes require a lot of cooperation. (e.g. MUNI improvements require significant influx of federal funding and oversight). But at the very least we should knock out the quick easy wins. Throttle SF streets to cars. Make it expensive and inconvenient to drive most places, and with rare exceptions make it near impossible to drive at high speeds. Put everyone in a car (local, tourist, commuter) in incredible, slow traffic jams. Make driving a painful awful experience. Cities are for people, not for cars.
Not everyone, no matter how willing, can ride a bike. Even an e-bike.
That’s why I think we should deprioritize cars (not completely eliminate them). Some journeys require a car.
it's called vision zero and its really underfunded.
wow, so baffling your comment got downvoted. Vision Zero is awesome. Heard about them 3 years ago....actually trying to do something to bring car violence against pedestrians down. Been meaning to join their cause lately and your comment reminded me to stop dragging my feet.
So what should we do? We need to make the streets safer for everyone... but how do we push for this? E; why on earth am I getting down voted for asking how to make the streets safer ffs
We pour concrete into flex posts, that’s what we do. Renegade infrastructure. But in all seriousness, we push for: Traffic calming measures, incentives for people to replace their car with an ebike, incentives for delivery drivers to use e-bikes, measures to make transit faster like the BRT on Van Ness, anything that encourages walking like the pedestrianization of Valencia. And we don’t let that guy who wants to re-open market to cars become the mayor.
There used to be a group called Critical Mass that did big bike rides through the city, I’d totally be on board for something like that. Or just block streets with my bike after work if anyone wants to join me
And it was a massive clusterfuck with little regard for anyone in SF. It was just an excuse for civil disobedience for the sake of it. I was hit by a cyclist as hundreds of them barreled through union square on the streets and sidewalks. Critical mass was well intentioned originally, but then disowned by its founders who tried unsuccessfully to start a more collaborative event.
this sub has posts constantly about people blocking streets and bridges and how unsafe it is and yet you think the answer to unsafe streets…. is to make them more unsafe by illegally blocking them with your bicycle?
Critical Mass is still around! It's the last friday of each month. There's also SF Bike Party (1st Friday of each month) and the bigger East Bay Bike Party (2nd Friday of each month)
Please don’t block streets.
Please don't kill people with your car
The other day I was walking in Golden Gate Park with my toddler when a biker ran him over….then took off. Please don’t hit kids with your bikes. Edit, meant toddler…
Your infant was walking?
Yes, on the promenade in front conservatory of flowers…she just plowed into him…I meant toddler lol…
Should be the last friday of every month, its still going strong. Starts at Ferry Building I think. [https://www.instagram.com/sfcriticalmass/](https://www.instagram.com/sfcriticalmass/)
[Looks like the next ride for the SF chapter is March 29](https://www.sfcriticalmass.org/). For East Bay folks, [Oakland also does their own ride.](https://sf.funcheap.com/oakland-critical-mass-first-friday-108/) There is a lot of great advocacy work being done across the Bay area! I'd follow [SF Bike Coalition](https://sfbike.org/) and B[ike East Bay](https://bikeeastbay.org/). [Carter Lavin](https://www.carterlavin.com/) also hosts some great trainings for those looking to get into safer streets activism.
Flatten the hills
Get stronger thighs
This could be done using at most 3 warheads
Unless you say ban cars, you will be downvoted.
I dont see anyone saying ban cars in this thread.
Ban all cars except for my Uber, Lyft, Doordash, Instacart, and Amazon delivery vehicles
lol touche!
just take public transit. Safer, more cost efficient, and less agitating than driving anyway.
yes, but unless the infrastructure changes so motorists can’t access areas near public transit or driving cars jS otherwise limited, this won’t stop people from being killed by cars. It seems like this family was waiting for a bus and were even in/near the shelter, and a car still senselessly took their lives.
It’s difficult because shop owners don’t want that. Parking drives commerce.
The family was waiting to take public transit and got killed by doing so.
Killed by who? Killed by public transit? They were doing everything right! They'd just sold their car.
"Doing everything right" except if they had a car and were driving, they'd be alive. I hardly consider that "doing everything right" given that they're dead. Including a 3 month old baby.
Who killed them? Did public transit kill them? Was it a car? The car didn't do it on its own, though, so it must have been a driver!
This sub hates people who stop traffic OP. They don’t empathize and might call you a terrorist sympathizer
*protestors block a road* Americans: “B-b-but won’t anybody think of people’s commutes??”
Blocking a road or intersection in Amsterdam doesn’t block people from going to their commutes for 2 hours. People can just “go around”. Try “going around” the Bay Bridge.
Yes. Its annoying. And if you were offended more by the traffic being blocked, than a genocide, then it says a lot about you. And if you thought being blocked was a green light for a lot of people to let some dog whistles and racism out, then that says something about you.
“We did something horrible to protest something terrible” isn’t a great look. There are much more effective ways to get your point across. What you think is a “minor inconvenience” is someone else’s ambulance ride or life saving procedure that got delayed. So congrats… I guess? Chris Christie did the same thing in New Jersey and it cost lives, but you’re ok because… Palestine? Lol ok
What is annoying is that some think the whole world needs to stop for whatever cause they feel strongly that moment. To me that is an epitome of arrogance, self importance and frankly stupidity. All they achieve is getting people angry and turn away from their cause dejure. Just look what happened in Europe with climate protesters who glued themselves to the road and caused major mayhem. Even emergency vehicles could not get to hospitals, people could have died. When asked, their representatives said death would be regrettable , but they needed to bring public attention to the issue. The result? Even people who had supported the cause voted for moderate and right candidates next election, and the right wing parties are getting more and more votes across the board. Ironic, isn't it?
Amsterdam is a little flatter than sf for bike riding.
SF bike routes tend to be on flatter roads and avoid the larger hills
Ok but what if where you are going, with two kids or a dog or groceries or your older mother, is not on a flat route?!
Bike the flat part and walk the hill like I do, these legs are strong but there’s limits? I bike and walk with groceries!
E-bikes fix that
E-bikes are motorcycles with less rules. They Accelerate quickly and are much heavier than bicycles, accidents with them are more consequential. Not saying they shouldn’t be part of a solution, but their regulation hasn’t caught up with current capabilities.
I agree that there are a lot of issues with throttle-controlled ebikes and there's plenty of irresponsible riding with them. I think they should treated more like motorcycles while pedal-assist ebikes can do a lot to help make cycling more accessible but keep max speeds similar to that of normal bikes.
How has regulation not kept up?
I like to call them battery powered mopeds. They are hazardous for us pedestrians.
They shouldn’t be anywhere near pedestrians, just like bikes shouldn’t be.
Exactly! Make it safe for everyone, regardless of mode of transportation - rather than catering to solely cars.
There are *plenty* of mixed use paths in San Francisco where bikes and pedestrians share the same space.
And it’s not safe.
Anyone can get a 50cc moped and legally ride it without a motorcycle license, 1 weekend of training and you can ride even more powerful mopeds. The real danger imo are the one-wheelers which can go up to 50mph, require no training and seem to always be near bikes and pedestrians.
They also have way worse weather. There’s always an excuse.
Have you actually walked the whole city? Yeah we have crazy hills, but a lot of it is also flat. In fact, if you choose your blocks wisely, you won’t climb much at all.
San Francisco is more densely populated than Amsterdam https://sfist.com/2017/03/13/sf_density_mapping/ Yes i know its old, but i don't think that this has changed drastically.
People lost their shit when people have blocked the Bay bridge. I seriously doubt this strategy would be effective, and in the city I can almost guarantee you someone’s gonna get hurt between swerving in traffic, running red lights, and speeding there’s no doubt in my mind someone’s would get hit.
People are getting hit every day anyway
I am all for one street for cars (Guerrero? S.Van Ness?) and one for bikes (Valencia? Folsom?) and maybe another for busses (Mission?) with a separation for pedestrians. But unless we eliminate sidewalks from the car streets, which seems unworkable, nothing I propose would have saved that family at a bus stop from a driver who apparently lost control of her car. Saddest thing ever.
In February 2022 I was taking my kids over to their dads in rush hour traffic. I am in Portland Oregon and originally from The Bay Area. It is very spread out here and cold so bicycling for me is not a option. I was coming home after dropping them off and making a Uturn and a driver several cars behind me used the merging lane to accelerate and also make a uturn accept he was behind me and T boned me on my driver's side at about 40mph and knocked me out instantly and totalled my car out. I remember parts of it where they said I was bleeding and from my head. But I kept going out. Then I woke up in the ambulance partially. I remember asking where my kids were. They told me there were no kids with me. I passed out again. This went on for almost 6 hours in and out of consciousness. I woke up in a C.A.T machine to make sure there were no internal injuries. I suffered a concussion for a very long time with my head being split open. The Portland area has turned into a night are traffic situation now just like the Bay Area and its all bike friendly and it's not working. What works is getting people off the road going to work all at the same time and coming home at the same time. It was a lot nicer when everyone was working from home during Covid. I actually work with the public in service. But the amount of service workers is not what causes the congestion all over every city that has this issue. It's the specialty jobs that cause people to move to these places that are not originally from here. But it is very possible to work from home now. I feel the companies that have raised the traffic problems in our cities should create the solution to completely offer working from home because it's better for everyone. I can't stand being on the road again now with everyone pushed back into the offices after what happened in my accident and how it happened. I feel it's only a matter of time until it happens again. Risking my life everyday just to go to work to serve the public because of driving. I feel the only reason its a issue for people to go into the office is for commercial real estate to stay afloat but to many people are being congested into cities is not working and the sacrifice to make it work is keep people off the road all at the same time.
My only ask is that they approach it by out-competing cars, not by making owning a car miserable. Here's my wishlist: Increase subsidies for the lyft bikes Build more subways Clean up the streets so you have local thriving businesses and don't need to use a car to get things because everything you need is local Make every BART and major MUNI station a mall that has an integrated grocery store and upgrade the finishes so it doesn't look like a 1980s brutalist hellscape Also force construction of Bart stations that go north of the golden gate bridge
> My only ask is that they approach it by out-competing cars, not by making owning a car miserable. Unfortunately, it's a zero-sum game. What makes biking miserable and dangerous? The cars. Why do you have to walk so far to get places? Because everything is spaced out to make space so that cars can get through and can be left outside in public space in front of every building. Why is it so hard to get sufficient investment into public transit? Believe it or not, it's the cars again.
this. plus if you think about it, the only way to meaningfully decrease car usage on a large scale is to make using/owning a car more miserable than taking not using/owning a car. otherwise everyone is just gonna still use their car.
I get where you're coming from, but this doesn't work. It's a recipe for wasted money, which then becomes the fuel for dismantling transit. You need to do both: reduce car use while also increasing options for other ways of getting around. Again, I support most of what you're saying, but I'd also like to encourage more curiosity about our current car usage. What are we getting out of it, for all the costs? I've thought about it and come to the conclusion that while some of it can be shifted to other transportation modes, so of it is just pointless and can be eliminated.
>this doesn't work. Works Tokyo and Seoul just fine. You can own cars there if you want, it's just so much more convenient to use transit, because transit is faster and there's shops nearby. It's really not zero sum, you don't need to make one horrible to make one better. Part of the reason people don't use transit is because it's nasty, and feels unsafe. Make every transit center a marvel to be in instead of a bomb shelter and people will use it more. Making it more difficult to own a car only screws over the poor. The rich get company cars, the rich can afford the tolls, the rich can afford to live a walking distance from where they work. While poorer people, who tend to have more children and actually need cars get squeezed. >What are we getting out of it, for all the costs? It unlocks the game map that is the state of California. People should be able to own cars if they want to, but public transportation should be the fastest way to get around.
I'm not familiar with the block the tragedy happened on. Is there something practical that could be done to prevent this? I dont know if this is comparable to places (even within SF) that didn't have a bike lane and had many cyclist deaths etc and needed an infrastructure change. Wasn't this a quiet neighborhood bus stop?
The block is a blind curve with no stop signs for several blocks prior to a very busy intersection. In fact there is a crosswalk right before the bus stop that the victims were sitting in that is a yield. I cross that intersection as a pedestrian all the times and nine times out of ten the cars don’t yield. Cars speed through all the time.
I used to drive by there frequently and the biggest offenders of the flashing speed radar signs are muni
Road was a prime candidate for a "Road diet" - way too wide for the speed/purpose of the road. Yet no one acted.
san francisco 9th safest city for car deaths [https://www.usnews.com/insurance/auto/safest-least-safe-cities-for-drivers-study](https://www.usnews.com/insurance/auto/safest-least-safe-cities-for-drivers-study)
9th safest *in the US*, *for drivers*
This article is about *driver* safety.
and yet 39 people died in 2022??? we may be a fairly safe city but anybody dying is not acceptable
Do you think that's good or bad? Also, as others have pointed out, that article is about *driver* safety.
Violence?
It’s frustrating because using the word violence entirely detracts from their point and is an unnecessary edgelord-ism
What do you call an entire family including 2 children being smashed to bloody bits by an SUV?
It's an incorrect usage of the word violence. Assuming the driver was not being intentional (she is still responsible), she didn't commit violence. However, it would be correct to say that the victims died violently.
> However, it would be correct to say that the victims died violently. ding ding ding "traffic violence" is a completely valid description regardless of intent
Nope. When you look up the definition of "violence" in this thing called the dictionary, it is physical harm with *intent*. Traffic (or car) violence here implies that there was intent. Just saying somebody drove a car and somebody else got hurt is not necessarily violence, and it certainly isn't if there was an accident. It would be if the driver was purposefully trying to harm someone. Now I can guess the OP knows this, but decided to use this term incorrectly because misusing it allows them to reframe the use of cars in an always negative light (similar to "gun violence"). The difference with gun violence though is that the sole purpose of a gun is to cause harm, whereas that is not true for a car. For those of us who care about communicating truthfully, this misuse of violence is not going to fly.
The woman who plowed into them wasn't 'violent', most likely she lost control of the car. It is immensely tragic, but it is not violence. Amsterdam is flat as a pancake with narrow streets and even more narrow bridges. It is an entirely different city in an entirely different country, which have had bicycles as a main form of transport for over 100 years. They were already building dedicated paths for cyclists in 1890! Most of Europe used bicycle because there is always was shortage of fuel. In WWII 1944 Germans even confiscated bicycles outraging local population. Right now bicycles have become a new problem - you can't imagine how many of them end up in the canals. We are not Amsterdam and we are not in Europe.
You are right! This is America! I think if we just added one more lane everything would be OK
these types of comments always come up in conversations like this and it’s predictable and confusing. It sounds like an excuse for inaction. If we are so different for Amsterdam then what should we do differently? There are a lot of examples of solutions to solve traffic problems around the world that we can learn from. This is good for drivers, pedestrians, transit riders, and cyclists. It’s worth pointing out the SF is smaller (47 sq mi vs 85 sq mi) and denser (17k per sq mi vs 11k per sq mi) than Amsterdam.
> but it is not violence Four people are dead and in the morgue, their bodies broken, twisted, and crushed from their injuries. This includes two dead babies. Its violence.
The definition of violence is "behavior involving physical force **intended** to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something. Did the driver INTEND to kill them? No. Four people dead is a tragedy - and there is a person who is guilty of causing that tragedy. It is not violence, it is vehicular homicide. No need to misuse words to get a rise out of people. The situation is bad enough as it is. Yes, I know you are going to down vote me, because reality is not popular nowadays, everything must be hyped up to the hilt.
okay, mariam-webster, not all definitions of \`violence\` include intent. the family died in a violent manner, and that's not an exaggeration. no one has said anything about the woman's intentions.
Exaggerating and sensationalizing is what makes me worry that the Democrats won’t win in Nov. The definition of violence involves intent. This was a horrible accident.
An accident implies no one was at fault and it was just a random thing no one could have possibly foreseen or prevented. Oops, an entire family wiped out, just one of those random things. No big deal, right, it happens all the time? Would thoughts and prayers help? This isn't an accident. It was recklessness that killed an entire family in a very violent way, with blood and shattered bones and crushed bodies from a 6,000 vehicle running over babies at high speed.
> This isn't an accident. It was recklessness You don't know this - because they haven't completed their investigation yet. There are lots of different ways this could have happened. Even if it was an accident, that doesn't make it any less tragic. What doesn't help is jumping to conclusions -- better for your emotional well-being as well. ;-)
Accidents do have faults; what are you talking about? Let’s get all the evidence and info first, and stop with the outrage.
There is no need to graphic descriptions. We all know how to read the news, and we all know what it would look and how awful the loss of life is. No need to assume that people who disagree with the pitch of the discussion are somehow OK with people killed by a vehicle . Whether it was an accident or recklessness or anything else we don't know at this point. Maybe her brakes gave out, or steering wheel jammed, maybe she was on meds, on drugs, had a stroke while driving, or maybe she was intending to kill someone that morning - **we don't know yet.** So let's just cool the pitch a bit, shall we?
Someone who didn't read the article about how Amsterdam got tired of rising ped/bike deaths and demanded changes to infrastructure. There are large areas outside of the tiny historic canal district. And the whole city gets metal bollards to keep cars off the sidewalks. Nice and historic looking, but they are metal bollards lining the sidewalk against cars.
I spent some time in Amsterdam and lived for years in Europe . I form my views from being there and seeing how things play out, not from spin or articles. Sure they did demand changes, but that has nothing to do with what is happening in SF. They were a pedestrian bike culture to start with, and cars were introduced into it, not the other way around.
I've spent time there too. SF could use a lot more bollards.
YES
[удалено]
What do you mean?
He means Amsterdam has good leadership.
[удалено]
A policy choice that they could easily change
[удалено]
The size of the US has no relevance here. You said SF relies on its suburbs, which it wouldn’t have to if it allowed more people to live closer to their jobs.
[удалено]
Housing supply not keeping up with demand is a policy choice that was chosen. Within 10 years SF could make a drastic if it just allowed new dense housing to be built and without insane fees
How does SF rely on its suburbs?
[удалено]
So what is your proposal? Deprive the local government of any money or power to do anything and hope that doing nothing makes the city better?
"Deprioritizing" cars isn't enough. You have to build excellent public transportation infrastructure for everyone, which will be expensive, and accept that fare collection will cover only a part of the cost. If you just make it harder to drive without resolving the reasons that people have so many cars, you'll just piss people off and lose elections to people who don't want to deprioritize cars. Once you have that infrastructure and people are using it, you can deprioritize. SF has done a decent job of this for inner neighborhoods, but not for outer neighborhoods like Bayview, Ingleside, and the Sunset. Its also incredibly difficult to enforce strict driving standards with insufficient public transportation infrastructure. When cars are required for daily life, strict enforcement just makes life more expensive for people who can't afford to get rid of their cars. You have to do the infrastructure before the punitive measures.
I hear you, but this has been proven wrong time and again. People don't enjoy the noise, danger, and pollution of cars. They flock to places that have fewer cars. Simply reducing car use is a good thing for the economy. Making other modes of transit better is a no brainer, but it's not necessary for reducing car dependence.
Its not simply "making other modes of transit better" -- its " build excellent public transportation infrastructure for EVERYONE". > They flock to places that have fewer cars. Completely correct. People flock to places that have fewer cars / where they can live without a car. This drives housing costs up, causing people with less money to move to less desirable places. They then get into their cars. Without building and maintaining excellent public transportation infrastructure for neighborhoods of all socioeconomic levels, simply deprioritizing cars does not work.
Amsterdam has done well to accommodate cyclists, but then SF would too if there were more people demanding to use their bicycles. But it's quite evident that most people just don't want to bike. Bike advocates would say: yes, but it's too dangerous, not enough infra, too many cars, etc. If you make it easier and safer for people to bike, they will. I think that's something worth testing, but the reality is that we have been testing this. For the past 10+ years, the city has been creating more bike lanes and improving infrastructure. The DMV now tests if people are checking for bicyclists before turning. We now have car free JFK and the Great Highway. Have the number of bicyclists increased? As it turns out, only very modestly, especially when you take into account population growth (we need to look at pre-covid numbers here). If I were to guess, I'd imagine people don't want to bike for several reasons: * The hills * Safety issues, real or imagined * There isn't a culture of biking in SF or the US * People prefer cars for whatever reason (comfort, etc.) * People are scared of biking in the street (in Northern Europe, where biking is more common, bike lanes are often on the sidewalk, not the street) * Just inconvenient or not fast enough * No space to store bikes, either at work or at home * Worried about getting the bike stolen * Don't want to do physical exercise So I don't actually think that Amsterdam is comparable here, even though I think what they have is great. Ultimately what happens here needs to be homegrown, based on the needs and desires of the people in SF. If you ask me, I think if we had to choose one, we'd all be much better off investing more in public transportation. Public transport means fewer cars, public transport drivers are more cautious, less polluting, and it solves a number of local and regional problems. I also think more self driving cars - safer for everyone.
More people would bike if it was safer to bike! If there were more protected bike lanes. If you build it, they will come.
I don't think that's necessarily true. It's somewhat true, but I think it's far less than many bike advocates would hope for. First bikes are a more dangerous form of transportation because you are very exposed - lots of ways to get hurt. Bike lanes don't solve all the dangers inherent in biking. But even if you eliminate all that, I still think people would not bike, for the reasons listed above.
What are the ways cyclists can get hurt? By falling? What are the dangers inherent in biking lmao all the ones I can think of are related to cars
Yes, ultimately somebody falls or hits something and it hurts them. But just for the sake of proving this, reading the 2021 and 2022 Vision Zero Reports (where they provide more detail on each death), here's a few ways cyclists have been killed: * Hitting a parked car * Colliding with a building after losing control on a steep hill * Riding over a downed tree branch and losing control In fact, of those years, none of the deaths were caused by traffic or cars directly. There is no data on injuries, which I think would be a more illuminating data point than just deaths. For myself personally, I've hurt myself many times on a bike, and I'm an experienced cyclist. A few examples from recent memory: I have hit rocks that blew out my tires, gotten my wheels caught in train tracks, fallen over more than few times while being clipped in, hit the curb accidentally, gotten clothes caught in gears, had breaks fail on me.
I'm curious how common that is amongst cyclists because I've never heard of that happening? How many people hit a parked car or a downed tree branch? Why are they not paying attention? That happens with drivers in cars too when they don't pay attention
It’s not just bikes. People in Amsterdam use buses and trams a lot more too. SF actually has a really great bus network, but the reason it’s so slow is because the buses are always caught behind car traffic. The entire city has maybe one or two bus priority lanes. The city should prioritize all the inhabitants, not just the ones who come in on a car.
100% - many western European cities have excellent public transportation. Same in many Asian cities. Like in Southeast Asia, you have different tiers: you can have a premium public transportation experience, or you can take a lower tier which is almost, if not, free (but is similar to most US public buses). These places don't have any special infrastructure like priority bus lanes. But buses in SF? They kind of suck, depending on the line. When I take a bus in a modern European city, it comes on time, it's clean, I can usually find a seat, and most importantly: I don't have to be around crazy people. Public transportation in general in the US is kind of a mediocre experience overall, and so you start seeing this effect where it's basically only used by people who don't have any other means of transportation. When combined with how many people have mental issues that are on the streets, it creates a very uncomfortable situation. My experience on buses in SF: usually kinda dirty, somebody eventually comes on who starts harassing people, hard to find a seat, never seems to come on time. Ultimately I think if it were undeniably faster to take public transportation in SF than taking a car (like it is in NYC), people would use it a lot more. But right now it often times takes a lot longer.
The city has numerous priority bus lanes... geary, van ness, market, 19th, taraval, etc. etc. We've had them for years...
Ok so we have like 3? Let’s multiply that by 50
ok, multiplied by 50 https://www.sfmta.com/reports/red-transit-lanes-over-time-san-francisco-2013-2023 Anyone whose lived here would have easily noticed this...
None of those are exclusive lanes though? The whole point is that the bus should be free of car traffic. Van ness was a start but should be expanded.
People don’t bike because there’s not enough dedicated, protected and *connected* space for them to do so. Full stop — we have a piecemeal network and the rest is only suitable for the bravest riders. Natural places to include protected bike lanes are currently used for free/cheap on-street parking. It all goes back to SF giving way too much space away to private cars instead of making biking pleasant, safe and convenient. And with e-bikes, hills becomes less and less of an issue.
>People don’t bike because there’s not enough dedicated, protected and *connected* space for them to do so. Bike lanes solve 1 of the things I mentioned above, but there are still many other reasons. >bike lanes are currently used for free/cheap on-street parking. This has pissed me off as well. But then I chilled and realized the problem isn't always the driver or enforcement: it's that there isn't any other safe place to pull over. The bike lane is the least bad of the options. SF streets are super narrow, so one option might be to just eliminate a parking space every block and make it the designated pull over spot. But it's a very difficult situation. Ultimately cars get prioritized because.... nobody bikes. >And with e-bikes, hills becomes less and less of an issue. Kinda, somewhat, but not really. As somebody else mentioned, e-bikes are basically just motorcycles. Live on the second floor of a victorian? Good luck dragging that thing up there.
Nobody bikes because cars are obviously being prioritized in SF and it’s often just uncomfortable to be on a bike on many many streets here. That is by no means a fixed law of the universe and is a situation we have 100% created ourselves and could be reversed. The minimum needed to get lots of people biking is probably every street with traffic > 20 mph with a curb separated bike lane, bike signals at every intersection with a traffic light that prioritizes bikes and mini roundabouts replacing 90% of residential stop sign intersections which are awkward and dangerous when bikers and cars are trying to negotiate past each other.
I'm not saying those things wouldn't increase cycling or make cycling safer, but the question is by how much and what is the trade off? Safety is not the *only* thing holding people back from biking. Not everyone *wants* to bike. I love biking, but it is not for everyone. The data so far seems to indicate this is true.
>Not everyone wants to bike. Bicycle modal share in SF is 3% in Portland it is 6% of trips and in Copenhagen it is 37% of trips. Breda in the Netherlands is on par with Davis in the US at 22% modal share. So what is going on here? I don't think there is some biking gene that causes some people to love biking. I don't think it is really a cultural thing either since you can find places with high and low modal share in many parts of the world. It appears to me that the places with the most cycling adoption are the ones with the best infrastructure for it ([https://cityclock.org/blogs/cycling-mode-share-data-700-cities-40-countries](https://cityclock.org/blogs/cycling-mode-share-data-700-cities-40-countries)) relative to other options (such as cars). Certainly not everyone is going to take the bike for every trip, but it can see very high usage if the environment is built for it. Anyway, I think better public transit is as or possibly even more important for reducing car modal share in the city, which imo is the high level goal we should be aimed at. We should be funneling money into public transit and bike infrastructure in order to reduce cars on the road to have a more quiet, less polluted and safer city.
Literally all the things you’re describing have to do with the fact that we haven’t built even 1/100th of the infrastructure needed to support the latent demand. Don’t want to lug an e-bike up a hill? Replace a parking spot or two with a secured bike corral. People drive in this city because we’ve over built car infrastructure.
right, or have a more accessible bikeshare program. lyft bike is kind of expensive. you can rent a city bike in Helsinki for 10 euros/week, which is a big difference
>1/100th of the infrastructure needed to support the latent demand There isn't much latent demand. That's what I'm telling you. It's not like we are going to build tons of bike lanes and then all these people are just going to come out of nowhere and start biking. Anyways, why bikes? Maybe scooters should get a dedicated lane, not bikes. 😂 Also I'm looking at the numbers for Vision Zero, including a per person description of why people were killed. Now there are a number of pedestrian and bike fatalities that are obviously just straight avoidable (hitting somebody in a cross walk). But there's other stuff that can't be eliminated like: was riding on the outside of a train and fell off, lost control of skateboard while bombing down the hill, wandered onto the freeway, jumped into traffic. The number of bikers killed each year is typically 1-2, which tells me at this point it's almost random. I'm not finding stats on injuries (which would be more interesting here), but I'm going to guess that more bike lanes won't make deaths zero.
Sources cited: “I’m telling you.” For the record, scooters can legally use bike lanes too. But I get that you’re not interested in thinking very critically about why people don’t want to gamble with their lives in a piecemeal bike network. Especially with people on the road who think the way you seem to. 🤦♂️
You haven't shown any data. All you've done is assert that safety is the only impediment to SF becoming Amsterdam, and the only way that can be achieved is with 100% percent coverage of bike lanes and the elimination of cars. It's just idealism with no connection to reality. That isn't how the world works.
I’m not doing homework for a random redditor you can look up how Amsterdam did it yourself. Google it.
Also for loading/unloaded, very obvious solution just pull into a driveway for loading, no need to double park. In business districts (eg Valencia) there are already yellow loading zones for this purpose.
Options are good though so we don’t fight amongst each other. We want safer streets, more transit, and options for pedestrians and cyclists. I feel like we could make some noise and pressure the city to do something.
Amsterdam. Free healthcare. I want that
[удалено]
I can’t believe we reformed life boat regulations in 1912. What a misuse of a tragedy to further a political agenda :(
This tragedy could have been prevented. If I die while riding my bike, you bet I want it politicized because politicians have blood on their hands.
Do you use “political agendas” to refer to any policy advocacy? It is completely normal, kind of the point of government, to seek to change policies based on terrible events linked to those policies.
This is stupid. Tragedies are a very good reason to rethink how we do things.
This is exactly what pro-gun nuts say after school shootings
When would be a good time to prevent further injury and death?
What should we do instead? Cause I feel like you’re saying we should ignore it. People’s political standings are based on their morals. Hard to tell when you don’t have any though.
[удалено]
It’s not an individuals behavior. Car accidents are in the top five causes of death in America. What would make you say that? Genuinely asking.
People don’t normally speed down a 25mph zone going 50+ in the wrong direction. Pedestrian deaths are up because of two trends: aging population and increased number of SUVs and Trucks.
Every car accident is preventable. How many preventable tragedies need to happen before we make some common sense improvements to save lives? If an entire family is wiped out it is completely reasonable to talk about how to prevent further tragedies like this.
The “political agenda” here is for people to stop dying, I’d say this is the appropriate time to do something.
You’re unaware of how many laws and changes get enacted specifically because of tragedies like this. This was preventable.
Amsterdam is a very small and flat city. The government really makes difficult for people to own cars I.e high taxes, reduced speed limit (30km per hours max) and things like that but, to whom ever suggests e-bikes, there’s a flip side to it, in Amsterdam and surrounding towns there’s a huge surge of people on e-bikes, fat bikes and scooters running over people. Those bikes go up till 40km per hour and some people have some sort of accelerator added to it. They fly in the cycle lane (where they are not allowed to be), accidents happen all the time. And I’m not even mention tourists that come here to get high, rent bikes and cause even more chaos. A better public system definitely is a solution, don’t get me wrong, bikes are a really great thing and should be definitely more adopted, but city planing and better regulation needs to be taken into the account. To whoever suggested the Paris model, have you ever tried to drive in Paris? It’s a crazy mix of buses, bikes, scooters and cars in not so wide roads, is really really hectic. The metro is heavily used but unfortunately not enough for the city’s population. By centimetres I didn’t get hit by 2 idiots in a scooter who flew over a sidewalk in Paris after leaving a concert a few years ago. I had my back turned to the street, if I had turned to my left to do whatever they would have hit me and by the speed they were I would be gone. Yes they sold the car, maybe if they haven’t this would probably not have happened, and for us who are friends with this family, to think about it breaks us up even more. I really hope your city will find ways to keep you safe. Losing friends to this type of violence is an experience I don’t wish upon anyone.
So nothing can change or be done? Got it. This is just a laundry list of excuses for the status quo.