How San Francisco Got its Bike Lanes

Bay Curious

KQED

History, Society & Culture, Places & Travel

4.9 • 999 Ratings

🗓️ 23 February 2023

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

There are hundreds of miles of bike lanes in San Francisco, making it one of the most bike friendly cities in America. But that wasn't the case until the 90s. The transformation was due, in large part, to two groups working without coordination: The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition – an advocacy organization, and Critical Mass – the name of a regular group bike ride. This week, reporter Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman tells the story of how these two groups changed the way people cycle in San Francisco, whether the city liked it or not. Additional Reading: The Night That Changed San Francisco Cycling Forever (KQED) Read a transcript of this episode This story was reported by Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman. Bay Curious is made by Olivia Allen-Price, Amanda Font and Brendan Willard. Special thanks to Scott Shafer, Paul Lancour and Dan Brekke for their help with this story, and to Ted White who shared archival audio from his documentaries “We Are Traffic” and “Return of the Scorcher.” Your support makes KQED podcasts possible. You can show your love by going to https://kqed.org/donate/podcast

Transcript

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0:00.0	From K-QED.
0:09.0	So I am cruising down Valencia Street on my bike on a beautiful green bike
0:17.7	with K-QED's Azul Dostrom Ekman. Hey Azul.
0:22.0	Hey Azul Dostrom Ekman. Hey Azul. Hey!
0:23.2	It's hard to imagine because there's bike lanes all over the city now.
0:29.5	San Francisco is actually one of the best cities for cycling in America, but at one point it wasn't.
0:37.0	Yeah I mean it's hard to believe right now I mean we're riding down this beautiful green
0:39.9	bike lane, there's bullbouts, there's soft hit posts, there's good signage, I mean there's all this
0:44.1	stuff protecting us, but 30 years ago there pretty much weren't any kinds of protections
0:49.2	for cyclists in the city. The reason that we have this now is sort of two different groups working in
0:54.7	tandem but also a part what we have on one side is the bicycle coalition
0:58.5	they were sort of the mainstream political group organizing to change things
1:02.2	from within City Hall.
1:03.9	Then you had critical mass, which was also starting around the same time, which was just
1:07.9	this event where basically people would meet up and ride their bikes together on the
1:11.4	last Friday of every month.
1:13.0	These two forces combined sort of ended up accidentally working together to change San Francisco forever.
1:20.0	Today I'm curious, we are going to be learning a lot more about critical mass and all that these
1:27.1	bike groups did to bring better bike infrastructure to San Francisco.
1:31.5	And figuring out how to record while on a bike. This is very dicey. Support for Bay Curious
1:46.7	Beecurious is brought to you by Sierra Nevada Brewing Company, still family owned,
1:50.9	operated and argued over.
	...

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