[Carfreeliving] Will LA leapfrog San Francisco?

[Dave Snyder]

Car-free people,

I personally think that given all the obstacles -- democratic 
process, bureaucratic hoops, and the funding process --- that Mike 
and Oliver and Peter and Deirdre and Nick etc. are doing a great job 
and being pretty damned expedient. I know for a fact sometimes some 
of them work until 11 pm to meet a deadline. Most bureaucrats don't 
do that. The problem is not the staff's efforts or abilities, it's 
the vision and context in which they operate.

What would happen if we got the right group of people together to try 
to change the context, to agree on points 1 and 2 below:

1. What we want: a complete and delightful bike network, 75% built in 
five years, 95% in ten years. And built to a very high standard: 
every section of street with a clearly delineated space for bikes, 
smooth pavement, preferential traffic light treatment, attention to 
detail for beauty and convenience, and a degree of safety such that 
in surveys 80% of people of all ages and genders and ethnic groups 
say, "yes, I think I am safe from cars when I use my bike in San 
Francisco." Let's remove the "it's not safe" excuse from most 
people's reasons for not biking.

2. Considering that at the current pace and with current funding, it 
will take 50 years to get that, what kinds of changes to the system 
-- the democratic process, bureaucratic hoops, and the funding 
process -- do we have to make to accomplish this goal, or how can we 
manipulate that system differently?

Now that we have the updated Bicycle Plan Policy Framework in place, 
and the set of improvements in the "network improvement document" are 
rolling along--and I do believe that we can count on that set of 
improvements to be done in the next five years--it's time to start a 
new planning process. We need to plan the bicycle network in its 
entirety, develop the high standards to which it will adhere, and 
propose an answer to #2 above so that we can accomplish #1. Without 
such a process, backed by that vision, the adopted plan's goal of 
accommodating 10% of all trips by bicycle by 2010 is a pipe dream.

I've thought about this question a great deal: to do it right, with 
planners and engineers, heavy GIS-based analysis and outreach, and 
outreach professionals, it would cost about $800,000 over two years. 
We could do it for less, but $800K is not a lot for a planning 
process. That's about how much we spent on the one we just completed, 
which provides the foundation for this one I'm proposing.

It's timely that this conversation is happening on the car-free list 
at the same time that Deb Hubsmith and I have been having a heated 
exchange on the sfbike list about the recent windfalls for Marin, 
which is spending $60 million in the next five years compared to our 
$10 million, even though we have three times the population and 
roughly twice the bicycling rate. It's a wake-up call for San 
Francisco bicycle advocates.

In a separate post I'll share that email in which Deb explains what 
the Marin County Bicycle Coalition did differently than the SFBC that 
has resulted in such greater success, so far.

Dave