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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.”

The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition recently announced that they have joined forced with Streetsblog San Francisco and the SF Chronicle to create Bay Area Transit, a new blog that will appear on sfgate.com. According to the Coalition, “This blog is an opportunity for us to write about our work and highlight all of the exciting new bicycling improvements (hello Market Street separated bike lane) that are making San Francisco a better place to ride a bike. We’ll certainly be sharing the faces and stories of some of the 120,000 San Franciscans who bicycle frequently and showcasing great biking events and rides that are bound to get even more people riding. You can check it out here: Bay Area Transit.”

According to the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, “Last week, The South Bay Bicycle Coalition (SBBC) and LACBC were notified that they were awarded a RENEW grant from the LA County Department of Public Health to create a regional South Bay Bicycle Master Plan. This plan would aim to create an inter-jurisdictional bikeway system and connect cities in the South Bay region of Los Angeles.

To read more about it go to: lacbc.wordpress.com/2010/03/30/success-in-the-south-bay-south-bay-bicycle-coalition/

For some important facts about some of LACBC’s recent grants go to: lacbc.wordpress.com.”

According to a press release issued today by the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, “Responding to the growing interest in bicycle transportation, the city began installing its first physically separated bike lane on Market Street today, the busiest corridor in San Francisco for two-wheeled transportation.

White, soft-hit posts are being added to the existing bike lane on Market Street between Octavia Boulevard and Eighth Street, creating an exclusive path of travel for bicycle commuters and deterring cars from illegally parking in the busy bike lane.

This first-of-its kind improvement in San Francisco comes as a welcome addition for the more than 120,000 people who bicycle regularly in San Francisco. Biking increased 53% on the streets of San Francisco between 2006 and 2009, according to counts from the SF Municipal Transportation Agency.

“Physically separated bike lanes are a proven way to encourage more people to ride bicycles for transportation, and what better street to add this safety innovation to than Market Street, the city’s most important bicycling corridor,” says Neal Patel, Community Planner for the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, an 11,000-member nonprofit group that promotes bicycling for everyday transportation. “We expect to see the numbers of people choosing to bike on Market Street grow dramatically as the city continues to invest in more welcoming conditions for riding.”

Businesses along Market Street are also seeing the positive impacts of more people bicycling. “A lot of our customers arrive by bicycle” says Josefine Gylleback, Manager of Cafe Trieste on Market St. and Gough. “I think these improvements will attract more bicycling customers, which is good for business, and the addition of the posts means bicyclists don’t have to worry about cars parked in the bike lane.”

In a February survey, 90% of bicyclists said the one-block separated bike lane on Market St., which was piloted initially, made them feel safer, and 80% of respondents said they would bike on Market Street more often if the separated bike lane was extended farther.

“The separated bike lane has transformed my commute and vastly improved this stretch of Market Street, making it safer and more pleasant for me and other people riding bikes,” says Steve Hall, a Marketing Director for an investment firm who has been bicycle commuting from his home in the Mission to his office at the Ferry Building for more than a decade. “I would love to see this separated bike lane extended to the full length of Market Street, so I would feel more comfortable bicycling regularly with my 7-year-old son to the Embarcadero.”

The SF Municipal Transportation Agency reported that Market St. often has more bike commuters than automobiles during the peak morning commute, according to counts taken at Van Ness. “We are eager to see the city continue this fully separated bikeway on Market Street from Octavia Blvd. to the Embarcadero, which will encourage more first-time bicyclists to ride comfortably,” says Neal Patel, of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. “This will attract people of all ages and skills to travel our city’s main corridor in a healthy, non-polluting way—whether for work, for shopping, or just for fun.”

The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition is working with city officials to plan an event to officially unveil the completion of the new physically separated bike lane on Market Street in the coming week.  Please stay tuned for an announcement.”

For more information, visit the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition.

The Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition (LACBC) has just released a new report about cyclists and pedestrians across the city of Los Angeles, CA. L.A. Bike Count: Every Cyclist Counts is an in depth assessment of the use of the city’s public streets by bikers and walkers on a typical day for commuting and recreational purposes.

To produce this report, LACBC brought together and trained over 100 community volunteers who contributed hundreds of hours and counted over 14,000 cyclists and 60,000 pedestrians at over 50 strategic locations citywide. The count also included gender, helmet use, sidewalk riding, and riding on the wrong side of the street. All this information can be found in the report and is key in influencing and guiding future decision making about where to focus engineering, education, enforcement, and other improvements to increase bicycling and walking in LA.

Key findings, as mentioned in LACBC’s press release, include:

• Overall, women riders were in the minority, accounting for just 15% of all riders observed across the three time periods studied. This translates to a male-to-female ratio of 6:1. These findings speak to the need for safer streets to encourage women, children, and other risk-adverse groups to feel welcome on our public roads.
• Helmet use was highest during the weekday morning period (7:00 - 9:30 AM) when 49% of riders wore helmets. These baseline data may be useful for targeting educational campaigns promoting bike safety.
• Overall, 4% of bicyclists were observed riding on the wrong side of the street in any given intersection. However, only 2% of riders in intersections with bike infrastructure rode on the wrong side.
• Where bike paths and bike lanes are present, 17% of riders were seen riding on sidewalks, compared to 52% where there is no bike infrastructure.

To view the full report and description of LACBC’s efforts, visit http://la-bike.org/index.html

With strong support from the San Luis Obispo County Bicycle Coalition, the San Luis Obispo City Council approved the adoption of the Orcutt Area Specific Plan which is set to include 1,000 new homes, approximately 100 acres of parkland and open space, and a new bicycle and pedestrian bridge.

The new bridge will provide a safe crossing over the railroad tracks and will allow for a stronger connection between the Orcutt area and local businesses and amenities. The city council has agreed to finance half of the cost of the bridge by seeking grant money because of its expectations of significant use by San Luis Obispo residents.

The SLO County Bicycle Coalition will continue its efforts in providing strong support for facilities that accommodate active transportation and encourage connectivity within the county.

For more information about the SLO County Bicycle Coalition visit www.slobikelane.org.
To view the Orcutt Area Specific Plan click here.

According to the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, tens of thousands of adults and kids flooded the car-free Embarcadero on this year’s first San Francisco Sunday Streets event. The second 2010 Sunday Streets event is planned for Sunday April 11th from Golden Gate Park to the Great Highway. According to the SF Bicycle Coalition, “the Sunday Streets route will be hopping with activity from bicycling to dancing and rollerskating, yoga to hula-hooping.”

The SF Bicycle Coalition is coordinating the volunteer corps that make all Sunday Streets events possible. For each of the nine 2010 Sunday Streets events, more than 150 volunteers will make the event happen. If you’re in San Francisco and want to get involved, sign up at sundaystreetssf.com/volunteer.

For more information on SF’s Sunday Streets see http://www.sundaystreetssf.com.
Read press coverage of the 1st 2010 Sunday Streets event at the SF Chronicle.