http://www.pottsmerc.com/site/news.c...d=662710&rfi=6

Could bike lanes cause pollution?
By: Phred Dvorak, For the Associated Press
08/20/2008
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SAN FRANCISCO - New York is wooing cyclists with chartreuse bike lanes. Chicago is spending nearly $1 million for double-decker bicycle parking.


San Francisco can't even install new bike racks.

Blame Rob Anderson. At a time when most other cities are encouraging biking as green transport, the 65-year-old local gadfly has stymied cycling-support efforts here by arguing that urban bicycle boosting could actually be bad for the environment. That's put the brakes on everything from new bike lanes to bike racks while the city works on an environmental-impact report.

Cyclists say the irony is killing them - literally. At least four bikers have died and hundreds more have been injured in San Francisco since mid-2006, when Mr. Anderson helped convince a judge to halt implementation of a massive pro-bike plan.(It's unclear whether the plan's execution could have prevented the accidents.) In the past year, bike advocates have demonstrated outside City Hall, pushed the city to challenge the plan's freeze in court and proposed putting the whole mess to local voters. Nothing worked.

"We're the ones keeping emissions from the air!" shouted Leah Shahum, executive director of the 10,000-strong San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, at a July 21 protest.

Mr. Anderson disagrees. Cars always will vastly outnumber bikes, he reasons, so allotting more street space to cyclists could cause more traffic jams, more idling and more pollution. Mr. Anderson says the city has been blinded by political correctness. It's an "attempt by the anti-car fanatics to screw up our traffic on behalf of the bicycle fantasy," he wrote in his blog this month.

Mr. Anderson's fight underscores the tensions that can circulate as urban cycling, bolstered by environmental awareness and high gasoline prices, takes off across the U.S. New York City, where the number of commuter cyclists is estimated to have jumped 77 percent between 2000 and 2007, is adding new bike lanes despite some motorist backlash. Chicago recently elected to kick cars off stretches of big roads on two Sundays this year.

Famously progressive, San Francisco is known for being one of the most pro-bike cities in the U.S., offering more than 200 miles of lanes and requiring that big garages offer bike parking. It is also known for characters like Mr. Anderson.

A tall, serious man with a grizzled gray beard, Mr. Anderson spent 13 months in a California federal prison for resisting the draft during the Vietnam War. He later penned pieces for the Anderson Valley Advertiser, a muckraking Northern California weekly owned by his brother that's known for its savage prose and pranks.

In 1995, Mr. Anderson moved to San Francisco. Working odd jobs, he twice ran for a seat on the city's Board of Supervisors, pledging to tackle homelessness and the city's "tacit PC ideology." He got 332 of 34,955 votes in 2004, his second and best try.

That year Mr. Anderson, who mostly lives off a small government stipend he receives for caring for his 92-year-old mother, also started a blog, digging into local politics with gusto. One of his first targets: the city's most ambitious bike plan to date.

Unveiled in 2004, the 527-page document was filled with maps, traffic analyses and a list of roughly 240 locations where the city hoped to make cycling easier. The plan called for more bike lanes, better bike parking and a boost in cycling to 10 percent of the city's total trips by 2010.

The plan irked Mr. Anderson. Having not owned a car in 20 years, he says he has had several near misses with bikers roaring through crosswalks and red lights, and sees bicycles as dangerous and impractical for car-centric American cities. Mr. Anderson was also bugged by what he describes as the holier-than-thou attitude typified by Critical Mass, a monthly gathering of bikers who coast through the city, snarling traffic for hours. "The behavior of the bike people on city streets is always annoying," he says. "This 'Get out of my way, I'm not burning fossil fuels.'"

In February 2005, Mr. Anderson showed up at a planning commission meeting. If San Francisco was going to take away parking spaces and car lanes, he argued, it had better do an environmental-impact review first. When the Board of Supervisors voted to skip the review, Mr. Anderson sued in state court, enlisting his friend Mary Miles, a former postal worker, cartoonist and Anderson Valley Advertiser colleague.

Ms. Miles, who was admitted to the California bar in 2004 at age 57, proved a pugnacious litigator. She sought to kill the initial brief from San Francisco's lawyers after it exceeded the accepted length by a page. She objected when the city attorney described Mr. Anderson's advocacy group, the Coalition for Adequate Review, as CAR in their documents. (It's C-FAR.) She also convinced the court to review key planning documents over the city's objections.

In November 2006, a California Superior Court judge rejected San Francisco's contention that it didn't need an environmental review and ordered San Francisco to stop all bike-plan activity until it completed the review.

Since then, San Francisco has pedaled very slowly. City planners say they're being extra careful with their environmental study, in hopes that Mr. Anderson and Ms. Miles won't challenge it. Planners don't expect the study will be done for another year.

Meanwhile, Mr. Anderson and Ms. Miles have teamed up to oppose a plan to put high-rises and additional housing in a nearby neighborhood. He continues to blog from his apartment in an old Victorian home. "Regardless of the obvious dangers, some people will ride bikes in San Francisco for the same reason Islamic fanatics will engage in suicide bombings - because they are politically motivated to do so," he wrote in a May 21 post.

"In case anyone doubted that you were a wingnut, this statement pretty much sums things up!" one commenter retorted.

Mr. Anderson is running for supervisor again this November - around the time the city will unveil the first draft of its bike-plan environmental review. He's already pondering a challenge of the review.

 

It's a contrarian view, "Cars always will vastly outnumber bikes, he reasons, so allotting more street space to cyclists could cause more traffic jams, more idling and more pollution."

If they had hybrids, the traffic jams and idling would not be so much a problem.

 

can i just say; i think the 'bike movement' is laughable in vanouver, it rains (i kid you not) approx 10 mo or 300 days a year here ... and it drives me nuts that there are all these incentives to ditch your car for a bike!

you'll get wet, smell bad by the time you get to where ever, have bad hair, have to carry other clothes (which will look like hell by the time you get to where ever you were going), make up will run, you'll be cold probably most of the day.

what would be BETTER than bikes, would be rapid transit that works & i mean actually works.

this porbably isn't as big of an issue for a lot of you in the states, but i just had to share b/c it makes me angry!


i ALSO hate it when they take away car spaces for bikes or we loose lanes on the road for bike lanes (this doesn't make ANYthing more efficient). it creates traffic jams!!

 

Yet another wacko who has enough of a loud mouth to stall what other cities seem to be implementing without the fanfare. I do agree that a study will help provide additional data but in the end, once motorists and cyclists learn to share the pavement in unison, it will likely be a good alternative.

The cities can provide updated car parking and having to see rows upon rows of cars in the street will be a thing of the past. This is based on parking I saw while in Japan where multi-level car parking made the streets clear. In so doing this also provide additional space for emergency vehicles that have to wade through the usual downtown congestion and parked cars can be a hindrance.

The stereotypical downtown of past times is due for an update. Hanging onto designs developed in the post war through 60's is not practical. Most major cities have continued to grow despite the finite land they are on.

B-I-L works for a city DOT. They recently had a series of seminars on cycling and traffic flow. I might ask him what's up and his thoughts.

 

Er, has anyone noticed the HILLS in San Francisco? You'd have to be Lance Armstrong to get up some of those.

 

I was thinking the same thing.

He does bring up a valid point about huge groups of bikers holding up traffic but I would argue that motorcyclists and large car caravans can also do the same thing.

 

This is the kind of common sense thinking we need in our government.
One day they will get series about setting a good example to reduce pollution and time traffic lights so cars don't have to stop at every intersection.

Don't confuse activity with acomplishment

 

We can do both methinks. Reduce pollution in cars, and allow people to bike (it's healthy too!).

 

Critical mass is SF is such a freak show - blocking streets, not obeying traffic signs.. a total free for all. I get the hell outta there after work right before it starts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OCDFJazsJ8

 

those people at critical mass are completely inconsiderate of others for their own personal views...

every single time i hear one of them say "it's for everyone", all i can hear is "it's for me because i'm a douche"

 

A lot of the guys here at work are starting to bike in. Difference is these guys are working professionals so most I believe ride their bikes safely and obey traffic laws. However, I live near the university and the students are crazy. They never stop at stop signs and sometimes stop at the stop lights. So many times we have almost collided. I mean, I wait at a stop sign for a car to pass, then I look and proceed, yet out of nowhere a student on a bike tried to fly though the stop sign. I just keep on going and make them stop. If they want to run into me that is fine by me. I have nothing against bicyclists. Only the ones that ride on the sidewalk (Sidewalks are for pedestrians) and the ones that run stop signs and lights.

 

what a joke.

speed bumps are the actual cause of pollution. no wonder japan doesn't have any!

 

We have reduced pollution in cars to the point that it may be impossible to kill oneself by leaving the engine running in a closed garage & we have always allowed people to bike I just think it is dumb to allow one person to delay 100 people.