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Entries tagged: San Francisco Bicycle Coalition

(SAN FRANCISCO, CA) — According to a press release issued today by the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, “Parents and students will be taking to the sidewalks and forming ‘walking school buses’ all across the city when SF schools celebrate Walk to School Day, Oct. 7th. Walk to School Day is also the kick off for a new program that will help raise a new generation of walkers and bikers. The new two-year Safe Routes to Schools program, funded by a $500,000 grant from the federal government, aims to make biking and walking to school easier for parents and kids through education, safer streets and incentives.

The Safe Routes to School Program is led by the SF Department of Public Health and supported by the SF Bicycle Coalition, SF Unified School District, SF Police Department, and the SF Municipal Transportation Agency. It will be launched at five elementary schools this school year including: Bryant (Mission District), George Washington Carver (Bayview), Longfellow (Excelsior), Sunnyside (Sunnyside), Sunset (Outer Sunset). 68% of the students at these schools live within one mile of their school, so there’s an amazing opportunity to increase the number of kids who get to school by bike and foot. Next year 10 additional schools will be added to the program for a total of 15 schools.

“The Safe Routes to Schools program teaches students and parents about how easy it can be to save our earth by reducing pollution,” says Phyllis Matsuno, Principal of Longfellow Elementary School (SFUSD) Principal Phyllis. “We’re thrilled that Longfellow was selected to participate in this program, it’ll help us promote healthy, active and attentive students.”

Getting more children to walk and bicycle to school is a much-needed solution. In San Francisco, one quarter of children are overweight and studies show that 75% of these overweight children will become overweight as adults, translating into more cases of diabetes, asthma and other chronic diseases. During the past four decades the obesity rate for children ages 6 to 11 has more than quadrupled (from 4.2 to 17 percent), and the obesity rate for adolescents ages 12 to 19 has more than tripled (from 4.6 to 17.6 percent). In addition, communities throughout the U.S. report that as much as 21 percent of morning traffic can be parents driving their children to schools.

The Safe Routes to School is a popular nationwide program that has a proven track record at over 5,440 schools for helping more children and communities become healthy, safe, and green. Schools in Oakland, California reported an amazing 10% increase in students walking and biking to school after just one year of launching their Safe Routes to School.

“Safe Routes to Schools is one of the best ways to improve conditions for walking and biking,” says Leah Shahum, Executive Director of the 10,000-member SF Bicycle Coalition, which promotes bicycling for everyday transportation. “We know that fewer and fewer kids are walking and biking to school today and that this is having a direct, negative effect on kids’ long-term health and habits. Fortunately, we know we can turn this alarming trend around.”

Studies show that 78% of school age children are not getting enough exercise and that this generation will likely be the first to have a lowered life expectancy than their parents. “Bicycling and walking are wise public health investments because they encourage active lifestyles that will help prevent disease,” says Mitch Katz, MD, Director of the San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH).

“Walking is an important part of our day and a great time for us to talk about what she did at school, go over her spelling words and take in the view from the top of Morse and Allyson streets,” says Jacquie Chavez, ‘Walk to Win Wednesday’ co-founder and mother of a first grader at Longfellow Elementary. “My daughter is learning to be safe, smart and independent and we are making the streets safer by not adding another car to the road.”

For more on International Walk to School Day in San Francisco, see: http://www.sfwalktoschool.com. For more information on the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition and the SF Safe Routes to Schools Program see http://www.sfbike.org.”

According to the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, “After years of SFBC advocacy, on Friday June 26, the SFMTA Board unanimously voted yes on an ambitious Bike Plan and gave the green light to 45 new bike lanes.This is a momentous time for better bicycling in San Francisco, as these changes will dramatically improve bicycling and increase the number of people riding in San Francisco.
 SFMTA Board members heard over 3 hours of testimony from more than 200 supporters, including mothers with children in tow, business owners, health workers, city department heads and students who packed the hearing room and an overflow room in City Hall. This victory is the result of this testimony and more than three years of strong SFBC advocacy, including more than 150 letters of support from businesses, thousands of support letters, and countless hours of grassroots organizing by committed SFBC volunteers and staff. Together, we did it! See photos, watch a video and read what the media had to say about our victorious day.”

According to the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (SFBC), a record number of people came out for the ciclovia-style Sunday Streets in San Francisco’s Mission district in early June. The party stretched nearly a dozen blocks and the festivities included walking, biking and dancing. Sunday Streets was initiated in 2008 by SFBC, Livable City, and other local partners. See photos of the event here. The overwhelming turnout illustrates a yearning for more car-free recreational areas.

For more information, click here…

This month the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (SFBC) will honor Sunday Streets at their annual awards ceremony, the Golden Wheel Awards. Each year, this event honors those individuals or organizations that have dedicated all of their resources to advance biking and other avenues of sustainable transportation in San Francisco. SFBC is proud to have initiated the idea of Sunday Streets, a temporary car-free event that encourages San Franciscans to “get out and get active” on selected Sunday mornings. Sunday Streets was championed by a broad coalition of organizations and has been expanded for 2009.

For more information, click here…

The San Francisco Bike Coalition (SFBC) is revving up the fight for 56 bike improvement projects up for review this spring. Over a year ago, all implementation of the San Francisco Bike Plan was stopped by a court injunction, and since then, bike improvements have been at a standstill. With a completed EIR and the possibility of the injunction being lifted soon, SFBC is organizing neighborhood teams to gather signatures and gain support to make sure that all 56 projects of the Bike Plan get approved.

For more on information, click here…

According to the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, “We cheered at Thursday’s decision by Superior Court Judge Peter J. Busch to reject the SF Municipal Transportation Agency (MTA) proposal to remove a bike lane and protective barrier at the notoriously dangerous Market and Octavia intersection. Thanks to the more than 200 bicyclists, as well as state and local officials, who came out to rally with the SFBC to save the Market and Octavia Bike Lane—the bike voice was heard!”

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According to the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, “Thousands of adults and kids took to the streets to play during the first very successful Sunday Streets event! The route from Chinatown along the Embarcadero all the way down Third Street to the Bayview became a huge playground full of hoola hooping, yoga, dancing, rollerskating and of course bicycling. It was fantastic to see so many people participating, especially so many parents and kids—we lost count of the number of kids out learning to ride their bicycles on the car-free streets.” San Francisco’s first Sunday Streets events, where four miles of downtown streets were closed to cars, took place August 31st and September 14th.

Check out a video of the event or visit Visit SFBC’s Web Site for more information.

San Francisco’s 14th Annual Bike to Work Day was a record-breaking success.  The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (SFBC) welcomed 704 new members through 25 Energizer Stations, which takes SFBC to over 9,000 members! The city also counted twice as many bicycles as cars on Market Street in downtown San Francisco. Bicyclists made up 64% of the eastbound traffic on Market St. at Van Ness Ave., while motorists comprised 32% between 8am and 9am (a 31% increase in biking over last year). 

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