Power in numbers: Bicycling in San Francisco just keeps growing

SFMTA says there was a 10 percent jump in 2016

People on bikes make the commute up Market Street. Photo: Adrienne Johnson/Human Streets

There’s no doubt that bicycling is booming in San Francisco, even if the infrastructure hasn’t kept up. But now we have more evidence: On this Bike to Work Day, city officials are out with new numbers that show ridership increased by 10 percent last year.

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency launched a new bike data website that shows an estimated 82,000 bike trips are taken on an average day in the city.

The 10 percent increase last year (when compared to 2015) comes from manual surveys at 19 different locations. The SFMTA has also culled numbers from its 44 bike counters embedded in the streets and found that there are an average of 25,000 bikes passing over them each day.

Take a look at some more findings from the SFMTA, which announced the numbers in a blog post:

“It’s increasingly clear that biking is a part of who we are as a city. The fact that the popularity of biking continues growing faster here than that of any other transportation mode should be a wake-up call for city leaders,” says Chris Cassidy, communications director at the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition.

“Too often,” he points out, “it seems like tragedies and massive mobilizations are the only way to see protected bike lanes delivered with urgency in San Francisco. The people of San Francisco require immediate leadership from city government to meet our very basic need for safe, healthy transportation.”

Bike trips now account for 4.3 percent of all trips taken in San Francisco, one of the largest bike mode shares for a U.S. city.

Cassidy says there a lot of reasons why more people are embracing the bicycle in San Francisco. Not only is it fun and healthy, but many are choosing to ride as a way to make ends meet, with transportation being the second-highest household expense in San Francisco.

It’s clear that when the city delivers infrastructure that feels safe and welcoming to people on bikes, more people will embrace active transportation.