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: China Calls U.S. Policy ‘Misguided’ in High-Level Talks

https://ift.tt/3iPgwS0 TIANJIN, China — China came out swinging at high-level face-to-face talks with the United States on Monday, blaming the U.S. for a “stalemate” in bilateral relations and calling on America to change “its highly misguided mindset and dangerous policy.” Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng accused the administration of President Joe Biden of trying to contain and suppress China’s development, according to an official summary of his remarks in talks with visiting U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman. The fundamental reason why relations between the two face serious difficulties is because some Americans portray China as an “imagined enemy,” the Foreign Ministry quoted Xie as saying. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Sherman, America’s No. 2 diplomat, is the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit China since Biden took office six months ago. She was having separate meetings with Xie, who is in charge of U.S.-China relations, and Foreign Minister Wang Y...

New top story from Time: DOJ Reportedly Investigating Whether New York Gov. Cuomo Manipulated Data on COVID-19 Nursing Home Deaths

https://ift.tt/3u8AJab (ALBANY, N.Y.) — New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo faced mounting challenges to his leadership on the coronavirus pandemic Wednesday as state lawmakers threatened to strip him of the power to issue emergency orders and federal investigators scrutinized his administration’s handling of nursing home data. The U.S. Justice Department has been examining the governor’s coronavirus task force and trying to determine whether the state intentionally manipulated data regarding deaths in nursing homes, two people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press. The people, who weren’t authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Cuomo administration had not been cooperative with prosecutors, especially in the early stages of the probe, and for months had not produced documents and other data the Justice Department had requested. The inquiry began months ago in the Justice Department’s civil division, and parts of it have ...

New top story from Time: The Green Knight Is an Extravagant Unicorn Tapestry of a Movie

https://ift.tt/2UHqxst In a guttural growl, as if possessed by a demon, a medieval queen reads aloud a threatening letter that has just been delivered by a gargantuan bark-covered warrior on an equally imposing steed. She faints as she reaches the letter’s final line; the paper drops to the floor and bursts into flames. Cinema! There’s nothing more ridiculous, or more awesome. There is no lettre flambée, specifically, in the late 14th century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. But it’s part of the embroidery writer-director David Lowery uses to fill out his extravagant unicorn tapestry of a movie, The Green Knight, a detail that makes this ambitious adaptation feel both lived-in and magickal, with all the self-aware grandiosity that superfluous ancient k implies. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Dev Patel stars as the aimless yet mildly arrogant young knight-to-be Gawain, who, as the movie opens, still lives with his mother (Sarita Choudhury) and isn’t quite sure h...

New top story from Time: Sunisa Lee Is Representing America in the Tokyo Olympics—and a Community America Left Behind

https://ift.tt/3zIdc1R In March 2019, a day before her 16th birthday and just over a year before the Olympic Trials were supposed to begin, Sunisa “Suni” Lee appeared on 3 Hmong TV , one of the most popular Hmong-language news shows in the Twin Cities. Cushioned between her parents, John Lee and Yee Thoj, wearing her Team USA jacket, the newscaster asked, “Do you feel you have high potential to go to the Olympics?” “Um, I think. I’m not really sure,” Lee says. Her father interrupts, “The important thing is that she has as much potential as anyone on the team.” [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Now, two years later, Suni Lee is a singular talent in the world of gymnastics—poised to carry both the hopes of the United States and a community that has not always felt a part of it. Lee is the youngest of six gymnasts representing the U.S. in Tokyo and the first Hmong-American to compete for Team USA. She has advanced to the finals in the all-around, beam and uneven bars events...

New top story from Time: Environmental Crises Are Forcing Millions Into Cities. Can Countries Turn Climate Migrants Into an Asset?

https://ift.tt/3sEUWCv When he was a child, James Owuor loved hearing the elders talk about the way life used to be. So it comes as something of a surprise that at 38, he is now the one tasked with the job of describing the Before Times in Kenya’s Rift Valley. Before Lake Baringo started to rise, before it flooded and stole everything he knew. “At the beginning, we just thought it was a bad rainy season, that the water would recede when the dry season came. It didn’t,” he says ruefully, peering over the edge of his motorized canoe at what used to be houses below the milky brown waters. Over the past decade, an unprecedented increase in annual rainfall—widely attributed to climate change —has raised the lake by 40 ft. (12 m), inundating nearly 22,000 acres and destroying homes, businesses and Roberts Camp, the lakeside resort where Owuor has worked for most of his adult life. In 2014, he watched the waters overtake the two-story-tall shorefront lodge. The restaurant went next...

New top story from Time: What Women Owe One Another on Black Women’s Equal Pay Day

https://ift.tt/2Vlj9D9 Given the durability of the so-called “ glass ceiling ,” it is apt that, when the U.S. government brought its first gender pay discrimination lawsuit, in the late 1960s, the company at the center of the case was a large New Jersy glassmaking facility . The company had been founded in the late 1880s , but by 1956 ran headlong into what it described in court documents as a shortage of male workers . The situation prompted the company, in an agreement with a union representing its workers, to hire women as “selector-packers,” forbidden from lifting items over 35 lbs. Beyond that one limitation, many men and women inside the company did the same work and were responsible for almost all the same tasks. And yet, they did not take home the same salaries—until the government’s lawyers ultimately prevailed at the U.S. Supreme Court in January 1970 , winning wage equality (and back pay) for the women. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The case established a cor...

DU's academic, executive council members ask VC to scrap online open book exams https://ift.tt/2YubRfc

The academic and executive council members of the Delhi University on Thursday wrote to the vice-chancellor asking him to scrap the online open-book exams. Their letter to DU Vice-Chancellor Yogesh Tyagi comes in the wake of Union HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal 'Nishank' asking the University Grants Commission (UGC) to revisit the guidelines issued earlier for intermediate and terminal semester examination, and the academic calendar. from IndiaTV: Google News Feed https://ift.tt/2YByOxg

New top story from Time: To Vaccinate U.S. Veterans, Health Care Workers Must Cross Mountains, Plains and Tundra

https://ift.tt/3uavmaw A Learjet 31 took off before daybreak from Helena Regional Airport in Montana in late January, carrying six Veterans Affairs medical providers and 250 doses of historic cargo cradled in a plug-in cooler designed to minimize breakage. Even in a state where 80-mph speed limits are normal, ground transportation across long distances is risky for the Moderna mRNA-1273 vaccine, which must be used within 12 hours of thawing. The group’s destination was Havre, Mont., 30 miles from the Canadian border. About 500 military veterans live in and around this small town of roughly 9,800, and millions more reside in similarly rural, hard-to-reach areas across the United States. About 2.7 million veterans who use the VA health system are classified as “rural” or “highly rural” patients, residing in communities or on land with fewer services and less access to health care than those in densely populated towns and cities. An additional 2 million veterans live in remote ...

New top story from Time: The ‘Badass Chief of Staff’ of Turkey’s Opposition Faces Years in Jail After Challenging Erdogan’s Power. She’s Not Backing Down

https://ift.tt/2ZKUTZP Snow brings back memories for Dr. Canan Kaftancioglu. Of recess snowball fights in the Black Sea village where she grew up, of warming her hands at her elementary school’s stove before class — and of discovering a poem by Turkish writer Ataol Behramoglu, a favorite of a beloved uncle who would bring left-wing newspapers to her childhood home and discuss the articles inside. “It is about how the snow brings equality between people,” Kaftancioglu says of the poem. “In the snow, we build a new, more equal world.” The Turkish politician is speaking through an interpreter at her friends’ apartment in Istanbul’s Beyoglu district, seated in an armchair with a beige and brown-spotted dog curled up beside her. In a matter of days or weeks but likely not months, Kaftancioglu expects she will be taken to jail. For now, she’d rather focus on her work: the poverty rate is increasing, and people in her city are suffering. Kaftancioglu represents something unfamil...

FOX NEWS: Couple gets married at 'most beautiful' Taco Bell: 'It was the best of both worlds' Analicia Garcia, 24, and Kyle Howser, 25, from Sacramento, California, got married on Tuesday, Oct. 26 and had their reception at the famous Pacifica, California, Taco Bell.

Couple gets married at 'most beautiful' Taco Bell: 'It was the best of both worlds' Analicia Garcia, 24, and Kyle Howser, 25, from Sacramento, California, got married on Tuesday, Oct. 26 and had their reception at the famous Pacifica, California, Taco Bell. via FOX NEWS https://ift.tt/3ES5g0B

My precise view

Search This Blog