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According to a press release issued by the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, ” Hundreds of thousands of people, including members of the Board of Supervisors, community leaders, and other first- and long-time bike commuters, will pedal to work as part of the 16th Annual Bike to Work Day on Thursday, May 13. This year’s event is a celebration of the city’s first fully-separated,  green bike lane on Market Street and other innovations and additions that are improving streets all across the city.

“Scores of people will be experiencing the comfort of bicycling in the newly separated and now green Market Street bike lane for the first time on Bike to Work Day,” says Renee Rivera, acting Executive Director of the SF Bicycle Coalition, a non-profit which promotes bicycling for everyday transportation and organizes Bike to Work Day in San Francisco. “We are thrilled to have Mayor Newsom leading these exciting biking innovations on Market Street, the city’s busiest biking street. This is a great first step towards a separated bikeway the full length of lower Market Street.”

San Francisco has seen a whopping 53% increase in the number of people bicycling in the city since 2006, according to counts by the SF Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA). This number is expected to surge in the coming year with dozens of bicycling improvements planned for streets all across San Francisco.

“We are taking hold of an incredible opportunity to transform Market Street into one of the greatest streets in the world,” said Mayor Gavin Newsom. “San Francisco is an innovator and this newly separated, green bike lane is one example of how we can make Market Street safer and more bike friendly for the tens of thousands of people who use it everyday.”

The SF Bicycle Coalition is organizing “Commuter Convoys” which will escort VIPs on tours of Market Street to show them firsthand the positive changes transforming the city’s most important biking, walking and transit street. These tours will converge on the steps of City Hall at 8:30am for a press conference celebrate and build support for the fully separated and continuous bikeway on Market Street from Van Ness all the way to the Embarcadero.

San Francisco-based companies also understand that a Market Street bikeway will be good for business, good for employee health and safety, and key to a vibrant future for our city’s main street.

“We support a fully separated, continuous bikeway on Market Street as a way to improve the safety of our employees that bicycle regularly to our office as well as to meetings at other companies in the area,” says Christopher Sacca, Managing Partner of Lowercase Capital. “I also anticipate that this improvement will be just the encouragement needed to get more of our employees and the founders of our portfolio companies choosing this healthy form of transportation.”

Market Street is just one of many streets that has improved in the last few months. California’s first colored bike box (an advance stop line for cyclists) was added to Scott Street at Oak on the busy ‘wiggle’ bike route, new bike lanes have been striped on numerous streets and hundreds of new bike parking racks installed all over the city. These additions are making it easier and more inviting for people to choose to bicycle every day.

The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition will host 27 morning and afternoon Energizer Stations in neighborhoods across the city to fuel up commuters with free snacks, fair trade certified coffee and distribute bicycling information. The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition will end the day in style with the Bike Away from Work Party and Fashion Show (6-10pm, Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell Street) where dozens of models will pedal the runway in functional finery.

Bike to Work Day 2010 is presented by Kaiser Permanente, the Bay Area Bicycle Coalition, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition and hundreds of local volunteers. For more information on San Francisco’s Bike to Work Day, visit http://www.sfbike.org/btwd.”