One dad’s vision has turned into a pedal-powered Critical Mass for kids, as the second iteration drew more than triple the number than last month’s morning bike meetup.  

When SF dad Peter Belden started a monthly “Bike Bus” ride for kids heading to school in December, he told SFGate "There were almost 30 people in the bus, and I think the next one will be double or triple." Well, that “next one” was this morning, starting at 7:30 a.m. at Eighth Avenue in Golden Gate Park.

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And eyewitness accounts say Belden got more than double or triple those numbers. One rider tweeted that the meetup drew “over 100 kids, families, and supporters riding safely to school,” and the above video from the Page Slow Street Instagram account indicates there may have been more.

This concept seems to have started in Barcelona, which NPR reports is known as the “bicibús.” Those every-Friday rides spread to other cities in Spain, and apparently now to San Francisco as well.

And it is kind of a political advocacy move, as these are organized by KidSafe SF, who are vocal proponents of keeping JFK Drive car-free, the car-free Great Highway, and keeping Slow Streets.

There is not a specific announced date announced for a February Bike Bus, but the Page Slow Streets site says “there will be future events as well.“ They encourage interested riders of all ages to register with KidSafeSF for more information.

Related: SF Dad Starts ‘Bike Bus’ of Kids Riding to School, It Swells to Several Dozen In Size [SFist]

Image: @skttrbrain via Twitter

Bicyclists and pedestrians are zipping across the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge for the first time since the structure opened in 1956, completing a decades-long, $20 million quest.

When it comes to Bay Area bridges, SFist usually has terrifying news for you; whether it’s fires burning on the Carquinez Bridge, or cracks on bolts that hold our most trafficked bridges together, or the how-on-earth-does-this-happen issue of concrete falling on cars on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge. Some good bridge news was delayed roughly six months by those very falling concrete chunks, but now the ‘beware of falling concrete’ warnings have been lifted. The Marin Independent Journal reports that the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge Bike/Pedestrian Path opened Saturday, and for the first time in that bridge’s 63-year history, people are now biking and walking from Marin County to Contra Costa County, and vice versa.  

The map above shows the access points of the new “Bi-Directional Bike Ped Path,” though this animated gif from the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy shows the new bike lane in its full pedal-powered glory. The new path is on the bridge’s previously unused “third lane” of the upper deck, and according to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), can be accessed from “Vista Point at the end of East Francisco Boulevard/San Quentin off-ramp from westbound Interstate 580 in San Rafael, and a second at Castro Street and Tewksbury Avenue in Point Richmond.”

The bike and pedestrian path will be accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Former Marin County Supervisor and MTC board member Steve Kinsey told the Journal that Saturday was “a very proud day for the folks that have been there from the beginning,” counting himself as an advocate since the 1990s. “I think the turning point was when Caltrans realized that it’s not just a highway agency,” he said. “It’s a multi-modal agency, and took that to heart after some very critical management reviews back in 2014.”

But since this involves Marin County, there is of course controversy. Some current Marin supervisors and MTC higher-ups would prefer to see the bike-pedestrian lane open to cars on weekday morning commute hours. They note that daily westbound traffic on the bridge has risen 20% over the last six years — 68,000 cars each morning in 2013, compared to 82,000 cars per morning today, based on figures from the Transportation Authority of Marin. That authority estimates that the current weekday morning delays, which currently average  22 minutes, will increase to 27 minutes by next year with the current “bikes and pedestrians only” model for the lane in question.

The Rails to Trails Conservancy write-up points out that there are more bike and pedestrian paths to come, probably none bigger than the long-sought western span of the Bay Bridge bike path. But the latest MTC news on that front is still just fantasy renderings and a sad-sack excuse that “No source of funding has yet been identified.” Until then, the only non-car traffic on that part of the bridge will be damned-fool tourists obliviously riding e-scooters, which we reiterate is a massively stupid and highly illegal thing to do.

Related: Unhatched Hummingbird Egg Delays $70M Richmond Bridge Project [SFist]

Top image: HNTB Corp. via Metropolitan Transportation Commission

It's Etiquette Week at SFist, in which SFist's editors dole out some prescriptive advice for how to behave in this city we all share in order not to overly annoy, offend, or otherwise piss off your fellow citizens. Please read carefully.

Riding a bicycle in San Francisco is a liberating experience. Not subject to the vagaries of surge pricing, the patchwork of our city's public transit, or even the speed of one's own gait, the simple act of cycling redefines your relationship with SF. Geographies shrink as what was a 45 min walk becomes a 15 min bike ride, and, simultaneously, all that pedaling does wonders for your glutes — it's a win win. And yet. Despite all of this, riding a bike around these 7x7 miles can often be a fraught experience. All it takes is almost getting doored once, and the corresponding adrenaline spike, to realize that it's not all sunshine, lollipops and rainbows. But the constant threat of near death isn't the only thing raining on the cycling parade, as the constant drumbeat of criticism regarding bikers' "reckless nature" gives those on two wheels a bad name. So, here with SFist's definitive guide on how to ride a bike, we hope to put to rest all the questions of what is and is not acceptable behavior. Let's get to it.

Your Bike
To ride a bike, you first need a bike to ride. Unless you're going the bike share route (which, with a huge expansion planned, is a smart move), that means buying one. If you're planning on mainly commuting and bar hopping on the thing, resist the urge to blow your annual bonus on some carbon-fiber fanciness — you'll just look like an asshole and the bike will likely get stolen anyway. Instead, check out your local bike shop and take plenty of test rides before making your decision. The mechanics at most shops are super helpful, and are happy to find a bike that works for you. If those prices are too high, look to Craigslist. However, like buying anything on Craigslist, be extra cautious about sketchy sellers and potentially stolen bikes. And definitely don't buy one from a random person off the street, as it's likely the product of a chop shop.

To Helmet Or Not To Helmet?
Now that you have your bike (and U-Lock), it's time to decide on whether or not you need a helmet. While there's no legal requirement to wear a helmet if you're over 18, based on eight years of anecdotal commuting experience it appears that a majority of people do. However, it's totally a personal decision, and if a pedestrian, driver, or fellow cyclist tries to shame your helmet-less head it's absolutely fine to politely tell that person to buzz off. Likewise, if you wear a helmet, it's not your duty to lecture those who don't.

Bike Lanes
Bike lanes are great, but they're also deceptively dangerous. At any minute, a car door can swing open turning your glorious bike lane into an instant dead end. Also, with cars merging in and out of the bike lane with seemingly no knowledge of the law, it is often hard for a cyclist to know if riding in a bike lane is more dangerous than taking the entire lane. Well, lucky for you! Taking the entire lane is not only perfectly legal, but totally acceptable behavior. Seriously, it's not rude to be riding in the middle of a lane.

Salmoning
Salmoning refers to riding against the flow of traffic, and while it's a lot easier to get away with on a bike than in a car, you should never do it. It's illegal, dangerous (for you and other cyclists), and just a plain dick move. Don't do it.

Riding On Sidewalks
If you're over the age of 13 it's totally illegal to ride on the sidewalk. In additional to making every pedestrian you scare hate cyclists for life, when you decide to bike on the sidewalk you're highlighting yourself as a target for police. SFPD loves to stop and search cyclists riding on the sidewalk, and as this is SF, those searches frequently turn up drugs. As a police officer long ago advised me, "Don't do something illegal while you're doing something illegal." Stick to the streets.

Passing Cars (And Other Cyclists)
In theory, this one is easy: Pass on the left. This only becomes hard in practice when cars don't merge into the bike lane before turning (as they're legally required to do), or when drivers who don't know the law get upset with your two-wheeled ability to pass them. Regardless of this nonsense, you should always pass cars on the left. The same goes for other cyclists — pass them on the left, and be communicative while doing so. It's not rude to holler "on your left" at someone as you ride by. In fact, not only is it polite, it's safe! I once swerved left to avoid a car pulling out in front of me only to body check a silently passing cyclist on my left. Communication is key.

Idaho Stops
While still illegal, if cars can have their California Stops, cyclists can have their Idaho Stops. The Idaho Stop, of course, is when a cyclist treats a stop sign like a yield sign — yielding to pedestrians (as you do all the time when on a bike) or cars with the right of way, but otherwise not coming to a full and complete stop before proceeding through the intersection. Doing so isn't an inconvenience to drivers (it actually keeps traffic flowing), and may in fact be safer than the current alternative.

Yelling At Cars and Pedestrians
Yelling at cars and pedestrians is not only acceptable behavior by cyclists, but sometimes can be an absolute must when done for reasons of safety. People on bikes don't have loud horns, and with some exceptions (think bells) a scream is the only thing that will prevent a pedestrian from blindly stepping into the bike lane in front of you or a car from merging straight into your tiny body. But, and here's the key thing, there's no reason to be a jerk about it. Instead of yelling insults, a succinct "watch out" or even a "hey" will do the trick. However, don't yell at pedestrians in crosswalks — it makes you look like a dick, and as mentioned above, they have the right of way anyway, always. Also, keep any and all confrontations to words — don't ever physically hit a car (or person!) or reach into a car window for any reason. Especially with tempers flaring, if something goes down (and you either are unwilling or unable to leave the situation) your best bet is to call the police and start recording with a cell phone.

Related: Etiquette Week: How To Ride A Muni Bus

Valencia Street cyclist-counting machine, counting cyclists on Valencia Street:https://t.co/G0XTgJeofX pic.twitter.com/gPmoNs670O

— Mission Mission (@missionmission) May 3, 2016

With the 22nd annual Bike to Work Day coming up on May 12th, how many of us will zip by Market Street's "bicycle barometer," pedaling forward to be counted?

Last year, despite some rain, the turnout was 60,000 according to the San Francisco Bike Coalition. And this year, Mission Mission writes, you'll be counted as you cycle down Valencia — that street has installed a "bike barometer," just like the one on Market Street, between 16th and 17th Streets.

For some environmental heroes, every day is bike to work day. As per the US Census Bureau, that number nationally was tiny, at 0.6 percent back in 2014. The good news: San Francisco easily topped the list that year.

2015 was even bigger for cycling in Frisco according to 15 automated SFMTA bike counters. Those concluded that weekday bike trips went up by 8.5 percent, or 200,000 rides, since 2014.

There are, however, some question about the accuracy of the "barometer," with its visible count on Market Street. According to a 2013 Examiner article, it may have been missing as many as 1,000 riders a day.

Nonetheless, Streetsblog wrote last year that the city had bought two more barometers, though at the time it wasn't clear where they would be installed, and we still seemingly don't know where the third one will go. Each barometer costs about $62,000, covered by SFMTA operating funds and Prop K sales tax funds. The first barometer was partially funded by a one-time, $20,000 grant.

Related: Mayor Vetoes 'Idaho Stop' Law As Promised

A bike rider was killed in the the Davis Double Century ride after being run over by a truck in Solano County.

The biker, whose name has not been released, was run over at the intersection of Tremont Road and Sparling Lane around 5:10 a.m. early Saturday morning. According to SFGate, the rider was on Tremont Road and rode into the path of an oncoming tractor-trailer that could not stop in time.

According to the report, the rider was on Tremont Road, which has a stop sign at the intersection, whereas Sparling Lane does not. The rider reportedly did not stop.

The rider, described only as a 50-year old from Rocklin, was run over and pronounced dead at the scene. The crash occurred in Dixon, only six miles from the race's start in Davis.

Alcohol has been ruled out as a factor in the crash.

It's 2015, so why aren't you renting out all of your stuff on the internet? Your apartment is a hotel, your car is a taxi, and now your bike belongs to the block thanks to sharing economy company Spinlister.

Spinlister, the Chronicle reports, is popular with travelers looking for a bike in a new city. In fact, about 90% of renters are tourists. But Spinlister has also partnered with IronMan to provide bikes for its triathlons. And, like Airbnb, the site lists plenty of unique and cool looking options you wouldn't normally get to try, so it might be good for locals to use?

Rentals range from about $5 to $150 per day, with Spinlister putting parties in contact and letting them do the rest. For that, the company takes a 17.5% cut and also insures each bike rented through the site for up to $10,000 for repair or replacement. Renters stand to make $500 a month, the site advertises. And it's not just for bikes, either. Now on Spinlister you can rent out your skis, snowboard, surfboard, or SUP (stand up paddle board).

Spinlister itself has been around the block. It's once "risen from the dead" according to TechCrunch. In 2013 Marcelo Loureiro, a Brazilian entrepreneur who seed funded the company, took over operations. Despite $2 million in that seed round, the site had gone dark after the company "pivoted" super weirdly into file sharing, even changing its name.

But it looks like Spinlister is back, for now, begging the important question: Where's the line on what we will and won't share? Last year, Wired wrote that Airbnb and Lyft got us to "trust eachother." Then New York magazine wrote that it was actually about desperation and tough economic times. Is Spinlister a bellwether of "Airbnb-for-x" sites?

Anyway, the company is making a push locally to increase its member numbers, which are kind of low at around 2,000. And that push seems real enough, with this banner ad appearing on the Chronicle article after I visited Spinlister's website:

The latest pageview-friendly Top Whatever List comes to us by way of Bicycling Magazine, who has done us a favor by rating America's Top 50 Bike-Friendly Cities for this month's edition. San Francisco managed to break the Top 10 thanks to the settlement of that long-standing ban on new bike lanes, the new bike-friendly Market Street and one eighties movie starring Kevin Bacon as a day trader-turned-bike messenger. We should have known Kevin Bacon would fit in to this somehow.

The #8 spot puts San Francisco behind lesser American metropolises like Minneapolis, Boulder and Madison, Wisconsin. Even the mean streets of New York eked out a #7 spot. Portland, America's rain-drenched bicycling utopia, claimed the #1 spot in the poll.

Anyhow, if you've never had the pleasure of experiencing two-wheeled freedom in any of these other bike-friendly cities, we've done you a favor and compiled these videos of biking in Portland, New York and San Francisco that we feel are 100% accurate:

Portland:

New York:

And, of course, San Francisco:

[Bicycling]

First off, we apologize for not giving you all a heads-up about the first Sunday Streets that happened yesterday at Embarcadero. It totally went under our radar. But according to Streetsblog, it was a huge success. There were reportedly thousands of people biking, walking, rollerblading, and hula-hooping along the three-mile stretch of the northbound Embarcadero lanes.

The next Sunday Streets will be on April 11 in conjunction with 1000 Cities, 1000 Lives. The route will be through Golden Gate Park and along Great Highway. Check out the whole line-up of Sunday Streets this spring, summer, and fall!

Say you've taken a bike ride out to Sutro Baths, lollygagged on the sands of Ocean Beach, and then brunched at the Cliff House. It's kind of cold out there, right? A bit too nippy, really. Screw this!, you grumble. You've had enough. It's high time you cracked open that trust fund to purchase the silver Mercedez SUV of your dreams.

But how, exactly, do you get to the Mercedez dealership at 500 8th Street? No problem. Google's got you covered. Today the Mountain View-based company released biking directions for Google Maps, complete with wiggles and all. According to Google, "we wanted to do it right: we wanted to include as much bike trail data as possible, provide efficient routes, allow riders to customize their trip, make use of bike lanes, calculate rider-friendly routes that avoid big hills and customize the look of the map for cycling to encourage folks to hop on their bikes."

And that's what they've done, making them the first major mapping folks to provide such a glorious service. Be sure to check it out when planning your next ride.

by Chris Jones

Unsuspecting pedestrians and MUNI patrons should be warned that tonight's Critical Mass ride may be a little more celebratory than usual. Last night the San Francisco Planning Commission voted unanimously to certify the EIR for the City's Bicycle Plan. You may recall that three years ago the City's Bicycle Plan was placed under injunction pending completion of an EIR, thanks to the efforts of a couple crazed neighborhood NIMBYs lead by local anti-bike menace and perpetual District 5 supervisorial candidate, Rob Anderson. Since that dark day so very long ago, only cruddy bicycle infrastructure improvements that were already approved were allowed to move forward. Once the Bicycle Plan has finally been adopted, cyclists can expect the beginning of major improvements to city streets, including the addition of 34 miles of new bike lanes, bike oriented traffic signals, and colored pavement for some lanes. Yay Bike Plan!

Next stop, the MTA, where this morning the board will vote to adopt the EIR findings and the Bicycle Plan itself. It's anticipated that the meeting will be fraught with emotion as the same local crazies who opposed the plan in the first place are expected to show up, tear off their blouses ala Code Pink, and holler for automobile justice (and freedom for Mumia) before being dragged from the room, kicking and screaming that the Bike Plan is bad for children and other living things. Should make for high quality theater. Stay tuned for details.

Update: The meeting is being streamed live here. Thus far, it looks like bike fans are dominating public comments. The Bike Plan should be a shoo in