Bike riders have a serious PR problem in the city, since so many are extremely rude, especially to pedestrians. I’ve nearly been run down in crosswalks several times myself, and I’ve witnessed a lot of other incidents involving others. Along with making the city safer for bike riders, you need to do some outreach to teach cyclists how to behave on city streets.

And then there’s Critical Mass, which shows disrespect both to workers trying to get home and to small businesses in the downtown area. Critical Mass is politically counterproductive, and it would be helpful to cyclists’ image in the city if you discouraged your membership from taking part. You could start by taking Critical Mass off your calendar, since that implies that your organization approves of disrupting rush hour traffic downtown every month.

Of course riding bikes is benign environmentally, but no matter how safe we make it in the city, it will never be a genuinely safe way to get around in an urban environment. You folks tend to oversell bikes, given the inevitable danger involved.

Do you use a bicycle in the city? If so, how? (commuting, recreation, errands) Please indicate how you most commonly commute to work.
A Muni fast pass is my main means of transportation. I don’t own a bike; I think it’s too dangerous.

An estimated 4% of San Francisco adults (30,000+ people) currently commute regularly by bicycle. Studies and experiences show that increased accommodation for bicyclists, such as bike lanes, bike parking, and showers and lockers encourage more people to commute by bike. Given this, would you actively support an official city goal that 10% of commute trips in San Francisco be made by bicycle by 2010, given that it will likely require the removal of parking and traffic lanes on some select streets?
Maybe. I personally would never use a bike in SF. We can surely make using a bike in the city safer, but it will never really be safe. Of course it’s good for the environment to get people out of their cars and onto bikes, but I wouldn’t encourage any of my friends or family to do so just because I think it will always be more or less unsafe.

The traditional process for improving bike lanes has been slow and cumbersome, often taking several years to study, improve and implement a single lane. The City and the SFBC have taken a new approach by studying and proposing a package of bike lane projects to help fill multiple gaps in the Citywide Bike Network at once. Given extensive community outreach and professional analysis, will you support a package of Bike Network improvement proposals, understanding that some opposition is expected to arise from recommendations to remove some parking and traffic lanes?
Maybe.

Proposition E, passed by voters in 1999, elevates the city’s Transit-First policy, which includes bicycling as a priority mode of transportation. With the merger of Muni and the Department of Parking & Traffic (DPT), Muni has been resistant to bike lane proposals considered on bus routes, despite the fact that bike lanes on other bus routes have prove successful (Polk, Valencia, Arguello, Folsom). Will you support a directive to the newly merged Municipal Transportation Agency (MTA), which oversees Muni and DPT, to live up to its multimodal mandate by supporting the Citywide Bike Network, including on bus routes, when needed?
Maybe. But I think buses are a more important means of transportation than bikes in the city and always will be.

Standard practice in model bicycle cities around the world (including Amsterdam, Copenhagen, and Berlin) is the use of colored pavement to demarcate bike lanes. These colored bike lanes help delineate space for bicyclists, increase awareness of bike lanes among drivers, and discourage cars from double-parking in bike lanes. Would you support the use of colored pavement in bike lanes in San Francisco?
Yes.

A transportation plan by the SF County Transportation Authority recently recommended reducing private vehicle traffic on Market Street in order to improve transit efficiency and bicycle and pedestrian safety. Do you support this proposal?
Yes.

Current laws require every housing developer to provide one off-street parking space for every housing unit, increasing housing costs by $20,000 to $50,000 per unit and adding to car dependence and traffic congestion. It applies to the whole city, regardless of vast differences in land use and transit service throughout the city. Would you support eliminating or reducing this requirement? Indicate all that apply:
___ I would eliminate the minimum parking requirement citywide
___ I would reduce the minimum parking requirement citywide
___ I would eliminate the minimum parking requirement in transit-rich areas only
___ I would reduce the minimum parking requirement in transit-rich areas only
X    I would not change the current parking requirements
___ Other

If you eliminate the parking requirement, I suspect that people will just park on the street.

The CA Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) was designed to help policymakers understand the environmental impact of development proposals by requiring environmental impact reports (EIRs) on such projects. Currently, the SF Planning Department chooses to apply that requirement to the conversion of mixed-traffic lanes to bus-only and bike-only lanes, and even wider sidewalks, increasing the cost of such proposals and delaying their implementation even though these projects are clearly beneficial to the environment. Would you support an ordinance to exempt such transit-first projects from environmental impact reports?
No. These important changes need to be thoroughly studied. Cost and delay are not necessarily the most important considerations.

Would you support the implementation of “bicycle boulevards” that function as bicycle priority streets, similar to ones in use in Berkeley and Palo Alto, even if it meant restricting continuous auto access at some intersections?
Maybe