Report card for the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition: A

The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition does an amazing job of promoting their cause and getting people to take action. Through their actions they have helped pass a bike plan that will make San Fran one of the most bike-friendly cities in the US. The plan includes 45 new bike lanes on city streets.

Instead of focusing on lofty goals, like getting everyone to ditch their cars (but, hey, I drive a hybrid!) and ride bikes instead, they’ve focused on values like safety, community, sustainability, and the environment. They also did research and found out what people wanted and needed in order to make their goal (by 2012, 25% of San Franciscans will use bicycles as a frequent mode of transportation) become a reality. What did they find out? That in order to make the streets safer for biking, they needed to get more people out of their cars and onto bikes. How would they get them to do this? Well, they had to make the streets safer for bikes.

By promoting safety, community and sustainability, this group has been able to make strides in legislation in order to help citizens get the safe, bike-friendly streets they need.

And these values and strategies have paid off, because of their efforts, the number of people using bikes as a form of transportation has doubled in the last decade. Now, “over 30,000 San Franciscans use bicycles as their primary mode of transportation.”