South San Francisco, CA July 21, 2023
Note: Over the years, the focus of cities and the county on improving bike and pedestrian forms of transportation has increased, (see page five)the number of bicyclists in San Mateo County has not increased since 2002, according to the California Household Travel Survey, which is regularly used for data on the number of bicyclists in a community, but is restricted to commuting.
The 2002 and 2012 surveys showed only 1% of SMC’s population rides bicycles as a form of transportation. Looking at the various municipalities’ Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plans, and the surveys and counts discussed in the plans, bicycle commute ridership still hovers at approximately 1% within SMC.
However, The World Health Organization has found that “If every adult EU citizen walked or cycled for 15 extra minutes per day, we’d have 100,000 fewer people dying prematurely, each year.
The full report is below, causing many to question why outside non-government agencies are mandating these tax-paying programs, when bicycle use has not increased in our County, questioning priorities. Further, community leader Jeffrey Tong has worked for years to bring awareness to hazardous walking/biking on Junípero Serra and on ECR in Millbrae, which has fallen on deaf ears.
I agree, Roberta L. This is not well planned at all. On ECR, they took out all the parking spaces. Why aren’t the potholes and traffic signals taken care of before our city takes on another project? On Westborough, the new (and replaced twice) green bike lanes are barely used. Some don’t know how to ride a bike so to ride in this crowded vehicular traffic city (before even more developments on the horizon) is dangerous..You don’t have a bike or know how to ride one, too bad for you — use your hard earned money to take Uber — oh, wait, that’s not taking a car off the road though, is it?
WAIT didnt you just say they are changing el camino for bike saftey but riders have not increased in another post.? i live in westborough it was great to see when they put in sidewalks years ago on the lower end of westbough buy i agree with Jeffrey that we need help on that intersection. i do not trust my kids safety crossing there when they want to go to orange park or boys club or library this is not well thought out so they have to wait until i can drive them. they are 12 and 15.