Rolling Out the Latest Bike Data

With "Bike to Work Day" rolling in this Thursday, we wanted to update everyone on this past year's bike count data.

As the city of San Francisco continues to grow, making the streets safe for people biking has never been more important.

In 2018, 10 miles and 30 intersections were added or upgraded on our bikeway network. Of these, 5.5 miles received protected facilities, which are facilities that use a variety of methods for physical protection from passing traffic. Types of physical protection can include a parking lane, concrete/landscaped buffers or flexible soft-hit posts. 

Each bikeway project that focuses on bringing safety improvements to the area, is a step in the right direction towards creating a safer and more sustainable city. By focusing on creating streets that are easy to use whether you’re 8 or 80, we can provide accessible and sustainable trip options for more people.

To understand how people are moving through San Francisco on bikes, the SFMTA monitors key bicycle data metrics and annually evaluates them to get a snapshot of biking in the city. This year the agency focused on: evaluating data collection locations to better align with today’s bike network, looking at ridership data from our bike share operators and working with data from our automated counter network to better capture and best convey the story of who bikes in San Francisco. In addition, like years prior, bike ridership statistics are also pulled from project tracking and US Census data.

Here's a snapshot of biking facts pulled from 2018 data sources.

• Over 8 million bikes were counted at 40 locations in 2018. Bike counts remained relatively steady, with a slight increase of 1.2 percent compared to the year prior.
• 10 miles (over half received protected facilities) and 30 intersections were added or upgraded on the bikeway network.
• 63 percent of SF’s average weekday ridership occurred at just 17 of our 51 consistently reporting counters.
• In 2017 GoBike was launched and over 400,000 riders were taken in San Francisco. In 2018, with the expansion of GoBike and addition of JUMP, approximately 2 million rides were taken in San Francisco. 
• 501 bike racks were installed across San Francisco.
• Approximately 19,000 city residents commuted to work by bike in 2017. Census tracts with the highest percentage of residents who commute to work by bike are in the Mission, with some tracts reporting approximately 20 percent of residents commuting to work by bike.
• The Marina Bike Path was our highest volume counter in 2018, with over 1 million bikes recorded.
• July was the month with the highest ridership, with 1.2 million cyclists — 22 percent greater than the monthly average.
• In 2018, ~ 45,000 cyclists were observed at 37 locations during the AM and PM peak periods during a single day in October. 18 of these locations saw between 1,000-4,400 cyclists during the AM and PM peak periods.

For more information on the interactive bike count data dashboards and 2018.
For information on the Vision Zero Action Strategy.
For information on the Safe Streets Evaluation Program.