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: The Documentary Final Account Is a Rare Trove of Unfiltered Interviews With Former Nazis—Too Unfiltered, Some Historians Say

https://ift.tt/3u2CDYI In 2008, documentary filmmaker Luke Holland was looking for a sense of closure. His Viennese maternal grandparents had perished in the Holocaust and, more than six decades later, he wanted to better understand what had happened. So he decided to ask the people who would know: SS members , Wehrmacht fighters, concentration-camp guards and civilian witnesses. “ At first, I embarked on a project with the completely improbable aim of trying to find the people who had killed [my grandparents]. It was quickly clear that I was not going to achieve that,” Holland wrote in a statement about the project. “But I realized I could actually meet their peers. I could meet people who had also raised their arms and their guns for Hitler , people who had committed atrocious crimes. And maybe through them, I might better understand the context in which the Holocaust played out in the heart of a supposedly civilized Europe.” Holland did more than 250 interviews, bu...

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...

New top story from Time: Keeping Up with the Kardashians Is Ending. But Their Exploitation of Black Women’s Aesthetics Continues

https://ift.tt/3gahnMY The inaugural episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians , which debuted on E! in 2007, begins with an irreverent domestic scene. Kim Kardashian , the undisputed protagonist of the show, rummages through the fridge as she’s teased by her family for the size of her posterior. “I think she’s got a little junk in her trunk,” says Kris Jenner, the family’s matriarch and “momager.” She calls her daughter’s butt “jiggly,” as Kim’s sister Khloé Kardashian chimes in from the kitchen table, “Kim’s always had an ass.” [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] That the opener of the watershed reality show—which ends June 10 after 20 seasons—centered on the family’s fixation on Kim’s rear foreshadowed the now-ubiquitous public obsession with her body, and particularly that specific feature of it. This outsize fascination was perhaps best embodied by her controversial 2014 Paper magazine cover, shot by Jean-Paul Goude, where her bare bottom is flanked by the line, “Br...

New top story from Time: City Heat is Worse if You’re Not Rich or White. The World’s First Heat Officer Wants to Change That

https://ift.tt/2Us9kTo Jane Gilbert knows she doesn’t get the worst of the sticky heat and humidity that stifles Miami each summer. She lives in Morningside, a coastal suburb of historically preserved art deco and Mediterranean-style single-family homes. Abundant trees shade the streets and a bay breeze cools residents when they leave their air conditioned cars and homes. “I live in a place of privilege and it’s a beautiful area,” says Gilbert, 58, over Zoom in early June, shortly after beginning her job as the world’s first chief heat officer, in Miami Dade county. “But you don’t have to go far to see the disparity.” [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] A mile or two inland, in lower income, mostly Black and Latino neighborhoods like Little Haiti, Little Havana and Liberty City, tree cover can be as little as 10%, compared to around 40% in upscale coastal areas, according to Gilbert. Residents wait for buses on unshaded benches. Many can’t afford to buy or run an AC unit. “You ...

FOX NEWS: Man modeled ex-fiancée's wedding dress to try and sell it: Video Sometimes you’ve got to do a little more to snag that sale.

Man modeled ex-fiancée's wedding dress to try and sell it: Video Sometimes you’ve got to do a little more to snag that sale. via FOX NEWS https://ift.tt/3iwCTgo

New top story from Time: We’re in the Third Quarter of the Pandemic. Antarctic Researchers, Mars Simulation Scientists and Navy Submarine Officers Have Advice For How to Get Through It

https://ift.tt/2MtohAV McMurdo Station, an Antarctic research base 2,415 miles south of Christchurch, New Zealand, is a strange place to ride out the COVID-19 pandemic. But it’s been a home of sorts for Pedro Salom since he took a dishwashing job there in 2001, when he was 24. Now an assistant area manager with more than a dozen Antarctic deployments behind him, Salom has grown accustomed to the ebb and flow of life on the ice. There’s the surge of excitement when new arrivals join the camp, the feeling of isolation from the rest of the world when earth and sea disappear in the endless night from April to August; and the joy when the sun finally appears behind the mountains once again. He’s also been around long enough to know that, as people reach the end of their deployments, many begin to struggle—whether they’ve been at McMurdo for over a year, or even just a few months. “One of the things I look for is dramatic changes in people’s habits,” says Salom. “If somebody has...

New top story from Time: China Says It Will Provide COVID-19 Vaccines to Almost 40 African States

https://ift.tt/3f34nYP BEIJING — China said Thursday it is providing COVID-19 vaccines to nearly 40 African countries, describing its actions as purely altruistic in an apparent intensification of what has been described as “vaccine diplomacy.” The vaccines were donated or sold at “favorable prices,” Foreign Ministry official Wu Peng told reporters. Wu compared China’s outreach to the actions of “some countries that have said they have to wait for their own people to finish the vaccination before they could supply the vaccines to foreign countries,” in an apparent dig at the United States. “We believe that it is, of course, necessary to ensure that the Chinese people get vaccinated as soon as possible, but for other countries in need, we also try our best to provide vaccine help,” said Wu, who is director of the ministry’s Africa department. While the U.S. has been accused by some of hoarding vaccines, President Joe Biden on Monday pledged to share an additional 20 mi...

FOX NEWS: Alligator invades Florida post office This gator needs to say later to the post office.

Alligator invades Florida post office This gator needs to say later to the post office. via FOX NEWS https://ift.tt/3gdiGdY

New top story from Time: House Democrats Pass Sweeping Voting Rights Bill Over GOP Opposition

https://ift.tt/3bVXJAY (WASHINGTON) — House Democrats passed sweeping voting and ethics legislation over unanimous Republican opposition, advancing to the Senate what would be the largest overhaul of the U.S. election law in at least a generation. House Resolution 1, which touches on virtually every aspect of the electoral process, was approved Wednesday night on a near party-line 220-210 vote. It would restrict partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts, strike down hurdles to voting and bring transparency to a murky campaign finance system that allows wealthy donors to anonymously bankroll political causes. The bill is a powerful counterweight to voting rights restrictions advancing in Republican-controlled statehouses across the country in the wake of Donald Trump’s repeated false claims of a stolen 2020 election. Yet it faces an uncertain fate in the Democratic-controlled Senate, where it has little chance of passing without changes to procedural rules that curr...

New top story from Time: How Spirited Away Changed Animation Forever

https://ift.tt/3xVoGP5 Twenty years ago, on July 20, 2001, a film that would become one of the most celebrated animated movies of all time hit theaters in Japan. Directed by Hayao Miyazaki and produced by Studio Ghibli, Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi, titled Spirited Away in English, would leave an indelible mark on animation in the 21st century. The movie arrived at a time when animation was widely perceived as a genre solely for children, and when cultural differences often became barriers to the global distribution of animated works. Spirited Away shattered preconceived notions about the art form and also proved that, as a film created in Japanese with elements of Japanese folklore central to its core, it could resonate deeply with audiences around the world. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The story follows an ordinary 10-year-old girl, Chihiro, as she arrives at a deserted theme park that turns out to be a realm of gods and spirits. After an overeating incident ...

My precise view

Search This Blog