How People Traveled Through San Francisco in 2021

How People Traveled Through San Francisco in 2021
By Maia Moran

Earth Day is April 22 and a great time to think about changes we can make in our own lives to support the health of our planet. When it comes to climate change, one of the most meaningful actions we can take is to drive less and get around more by biking, walking and taking forms of public transportation like Muni. Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) in San Francisco, with personal driving accounting for 72% of the sector’s emissions. By comparison, Muni accounts for about 1% of GHG emissions in and out of the city.

But when it comes to driving less, the San Francisco Bay Area is going in the wrong direction. Public transit use fell by 11% between 2019 and 2021 and private automobile use increased by 13%, according to the results of the 2021 Travel Decision Survey. That’s why we’ve been working so hard to make transit, walking and biking more appealing and convenient with new transit lanes, better ventilation on Muni, protected bike lanes and more.

Travel Decision Survey

Once every two years, the SFMTA conducts a telephone survey of over 750 Bay Area residents to ask them questions about their daily travel patterns and how they get to destinations in and around San Francisco. Results from the 2021 Travel Decision Survey (TDS) indicate that the COVID-19 pandemic has driven a shift away from our vision for a transit-first city. The survey allows us to understand whether people in San Francisco are traveling by “priority” modes (walking, biking and public transit). Priority modes are those encouraged by San Francisco’s long-standing transit-first policy, which seeks to improve the city’s economy, environment and quality of life. Trips by transportation network companies (TNCs) such as Uber and Lyft, driving with others and driving alone are all categorized as “privately owned vehicle” modes and grouped into one category.

Key Findings

Using San Francisco County Transportation Agency data, the total number of anticipated daily trips decreased from 4.5 million in 2019 to 4.4 million in 2021, consistent with daily travel pattern shifts prompted by the pandemic such as more people working at home and fewer commuting to offices. Despite an agency goal of increasing travel by priority modes, the share for these trips fell from just under half (46%) in 2019 to just under two-fifths (38%) in 2021.

The most significant decrease in travel mode was by public transit, which fell 11% between 2019 and 2021. The most significant increase in travel mode was by private automobile use, including both driving with others (up 8%) and driving alone (up 5%). Walking and biking both had minor increases.

Mode share change from 2019 to 2021 bar chart. Between 2019 and 2021 surveys, mode share change was 1 percent increase for bicycle, 2 percent increase for walk, 11 percent decrease for transit, 0 percent change for other, 5 percent increase for drive alone, 8 percent increase for drive with others, and 3 percent decrease for TNC.

San Francisco residents still used priority modes twice as often as non-residents for trips within San Francisco. Respondents with a household income of $75,000 or less had the highest transit ridership, while a majority of those with incomes over $75,000 chose non-priority modes. Individuals identifying as women or non-binary were more likely to travel by privately owned vehicles than those identifying as men.

The Future of Travel

Many of the travel pattern changes revealed by the survey were likely a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, during which many people limited their non-essential travel and worked from home instead of commuting to an office.

But as the city recovers from the effects of the pandemic and travel begins to increase, we urgently need to educate Bay Area residents about how their travel decisions impact our environment. To meet San Francisco’s climate goals, including net zero emissions by the year 2040, it is critical that many of us shift from driving personal vehicles to taking public transit, walking, bicycling and using other “non-carbon” travel modes.

To encourage that shift, the SFMTA has improved the speed and reliability of our most popular bus lines by creating an unprecedented number of transit lanes. We introduced changes to make Muni more equitable. We recently increased the staff presence on Muni vehicles to deter crime and increase safety. We also upgraded our transit fleet HVAC systems, which now turn the air over once every minute. Earlier this month, we launched the Van Ness Bus Rapid Transit Corridor, and later this year the Central Subway extension to Chinatown will be open to one and all.

To complement transit use, we have created safe bicycling and walking routes throughout San Francisco. The city now boasts 42 miles of protected bike lanes and approximately 43 miles of Slow Streets where through traffic is limited. By lowering speed limits and completing Quick Build street improvements, we’ve made walking and bicycling safer and more comfortable.

Now, we need to make sure people in the San Francisco Bay Area know about and take advantage of these improvements.

The 2021 Travel Decision Survey report and results are available to download here.

Published April 19, 2022 at 08:02PM
https://ift.tt/v9gLHZ8

Comments

New top story from Time: Sunisa Lee’s Incredible Journey to a Historic Olympic Gymnastics All-Around Gold Medal

https://ift.tt/3zRsjGq The women’s gymnastics all-around final at the Tokyo Olympics was the coronation everyone expected it to be. Only the star was different. After Simone Biles withdrew from the competition to prioritize her mental well-being, American Sunisa Lee stepped into the gaping void left by her iconic teammate and stepped up to win her first gold medal and Team USA’s fifth straight in the event. With a steely calm, the 18-year-old Minnesotan leaned on her consistent execution and a spectacular uneven bars routine—the hardest of any gymnast competing—to triumph in a competition that until days before had seemed a foregone conclusion. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The absence of the defending gold medalist opened the door for the rest of the field, including Americans Lee and Jade Carey, who replaced Biles . “We were all coming in to compete for second place,” said Lee. “I just had to switch gears. I feel like the whole season I was second to her, so when th...

Republic Day: 38 Delhi cops awarded police medal https://ift.tt/3sVo5uw

Thirty-eight Delhi Police personnel have been awarded police medal for their services, officials said. Seventeen have been awarded the Police Medal for Gallantry (PMG), three President’s Police Medal for Distinguished Service and 18 Police Medal for Meritorious Service on the occasion of the Republic Day.

New top story from Time: The Security Perimeter Around the Capitol Starts to Recede — and Washington Feels a Little More Normal

https://ift.tt/3ssgaEo This article is part of the The DC Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox every weekday. Washington isn’t a city particularly known for its rationality. We do overreaction better than most, and that talent is rivaled only by underreaction. Passions fuel far too much public policy, personalities dictate what is possible and personal relationships often triumph over pragmatism. It’s something I usually bemoan and curse under my breath — or, increasingly, in this newsletter. So you’ll forgive a moment of indulgent irrationality and some merriment. For, you see, the fencing around the U.S. Capitol has come down. Well, not all of it. And the barriers that remain don’t have an expiration date and may never get one. But at least some of the garish barricades that went up in response to the deadly failed insurrection on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6 have been dismantled. The razor-wire on its top is gone, too...

New top story from Time: What Counts as a Mass Shooting? Why so Much of America’s Gun Violence Gets Overlooked

https://ift.tt/3dg1qSG In the past two weeks, two horrific mass shootings have made national news across the United States. On March 22, a gunman killed 10 people at a Boulder, Colo. grocery store, including a police officer responding to the scene. A 21-year-old man has since been charged with ten counts of murder, after surrendering to police at the scene. Just six days earlier, on March 16, a mass shooting occurred at three spas and massage parlors in the Atlanta metropolitan area. A 21-year-old man has since been charged with eight counts of murder, having been arrested after a police chase. Of the eight people killed, six have been identified as Asian and Asian-American women; the incident has been widely viewed targeted attack against the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community, at a time when violence and racism against the AAPI community in the country has been on a marked rise. Read more: The Atlanta Shootings Fit Into a Long Legacy of Anti-Asian ...

Meet the People of the Next Generation CIS: Leon Yu

Meet the People of the Next Generation CIS: Leon Yu By Deanna Leo Leon Yu, Graphic Artist, Creative Services What do you do on the project? I help design the user experience: What users see on the new displays, how they see it and how often they see it, down to the actual graphics. How do you feel your work impacts our customers? Who will benefit? My work communicates transit information to customers as cleanly and clearly as possible, so the information is easy for any member of the public to understand. We only have a small space to work with on the displays, so we must make it count. People of all backgrounds, languages and abilities, so need to get this information quickly at a glance. What was your favorite part of the project? My favorite part is working with the team and all the different CIS systems. This is such a multidisciplinary project involving many staff and people I’ve never worked with before. Being able to coll...

A Brief History of the T Third Part 1: 1860-2007

A Brief History of the T Third Part 1: 1860-2007 By Jeremy Menzies Earlier this month, we launched free weekend shuttle service in the Central Subway . And come January 7th, our 4 new stations will connect directly to the rest of the T line from Sunnydale to Chinatown. Through this two-part blog series, we will look back at some of the history of the T from the 1860s to today! In Part One, we’ll look over the first 150 years from the 1860s to the 2000s. Next month in Part Two, we will take a closer look at the history of the T and Central Subway projects leading up to today’s service. The Horsecar Era: 1860s-1890s Starting in the 1860s, transit service along today’s T Line was provided by horsecars. These were small rail cars (that looked much like a cable car) that were pulled along tracks by horses. Two companies, the Omnibus Railroad and the North Beach & Mission Railway, operated horsecar lines on parts of the path of today’s T. These lines were mainly meant to ...

'Dangerous precedent', tweets Rahul Gandhi after Punjab farmers burn effigies of PM Modi over farm laws https://ift.tt/31GpARn

Congress leader Raul Gandhi on Monday renewed his attack on the Modi government over the three farm laws. Rahul in a tweet asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to reach out to the farmers and listen to the grievances.

New top story from Time: Tropical Storm Zeta Expected to Hit U.S. Gulf Coast by Midweek

https://ift.tt/2J1aWNX (MIAMI) — A strengthening Tropical Storm Zeta is expected to become a hurricane Monday as it heads toward the eastern end of Mexico’s resort-dotted Yucatan Peninsula and then likely move on for a possible landfall on the central U.S. Gulf Coast at midweek. Zeta, which on Sunday became the earliest ever 27th named storm of the Atlantic season, was centered about 260 miles (420 kilometers) southeast of Cozumel island late Sunday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. It had maximum sustained winds of 60 mph (95 kph). Though nearly stationary, the storm was expected to begin advancing on a path that would take it over the Yucatan Peninsula late Monday. It would then head into the Gulf of Mexico and approach the U.S. Gulf Coast by Wednesday, though it could weaken by then, the hurricane center said. Officials in Quintana Roo state, the location of Cancun and other resorts, said they were watching the storm. They reported nearly 60,000 tourists in th...

New top story from Time: Immigration, Guns and the Filibuster: Joe Biden Confronts Challenges in First Press Conference

https://ift.tt/2PrZX3B Joe Biden held his first formal news conference as president 65 days into this presidency, after making a series of consequential moves in the early weeks of his Administration to help curb the COVID-19 pandemic and ease the economic pain in the country. But he didn’t get asked any questions about the coronavirus. Instead, reporters pressed Biden on things his Administration hasn’t done— like taking a position against the Senate filibuster rule, implementing executive action on gun control in the wake of two mass shootings, and stopping the flow of unaccompanied children coming to the U.S. southern border. The focus on Biden’s problems rather than his victories was a reminder that, in the highest office in the land, reality intrudes on even the best laid plans. The Biden Administration has so far been a model of coordinated message discipline. But once Biden formally faced reporters, he was forced to answer questions with responses that stretched ...

Gene Henderson: Honoring Muni’s First Black Division Manager

Gene Henderson: Honoring Muni’s First Black Division Manager By Jeremy Menzies In recognition of Black History Month, we bring you the story of Gene Henderson, the first Black man to become the head of a Muni bus division, Muni’s Kirkland Division. Henderson’s Background Gene Henderson was born in Houston, Texas, in 1916. He married his wife Naomi in 1939 and then served in the U.S. Army during World War II. Following the war, Gene and his family moved to San Francisco where he began his career at the San Francisco Municipal Railway. Early Career On February 1, 1946, Henderson was hired as a streetcar motorman out of Sutro Division, which was located on the corner of 32nd Ave. and Clement St. He was hired just five years after Muni’s first Black transit operator, Audley Cole, had successfully fought to integrate the carmen’s union in 1941. In his early days at Muni, Gene worked one of the three lines running out of Sutro Division from the Ferry Building to the Richmond District o...

My precise view

Search This Blog