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: Hurricane Ida Winds Hit 150 MPH Ahead of Louisiana Strike

https://ift.tt/3jmdoyl NEW ORLEANS — Hurricane Ida rapidly grew in strength early Sunday, becoming a dangerous Category 4 hurricane just hours before hitting the Louisiana coast while emergency officials in the region grappled with opening shelters for displaced evacuees despite the risks of spreading the coronavirus. As Ida moved through some of the warmest ocean water in the world in the northern Gulf of Mexico, its top winds grew by 45 mph (72 kph) to 150 mph (230 kph) in five hours. The system was expected to make landfall Sunday afternoon, set to arrive on the exact date Hurricane Katrina ravaged Louisiana and Mississippi 16 years earlier. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The hurricane center said Ida is forecast to hit at 155 mph (250 kph), just 1 mph shy of a Category 5 hurricane. Only four Category 5 hurricanes have made landfall in the United States: Michael in 2018, Andrew in 1992, Camille in 1969 and the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935. Both Michael and Andrew were u...

New top story from Time: Quarantine, What Quarantine? Nicole Kidman, Expats and White Privilege

https://ift.tt/38jNJQt The unsaid but common understanding about foreigners in many parts of the non-Western world is that there is one group of them who can get away with a great deal: white people. They are mostly referred to as expats, whereas non-white aliens fall into such categories as immigrants and guest workers . And being an expat comes with a range of privileges. Call it white privilege if you want. It does not only exist in America ; it is a global phenomenon. This privilege was the subject of heated debate last week in Hong Kong, a city that has for a long time been enthralled by all things Western due to its 150 years of colonization by the British. But even in Westernized Hong Kong, outrage was sparked because the Hollywood actor Nicole Kidman was allowed into the city without quarantine (7 days for Australian travelers at the time of her arrival, but increased shortly after to 14 days for the fully vaccinated and 21 days for the unvaccinated). This waiver was...

New top story from Time: ‘Garbage Freaking Everywhere’ as Americans Venture Outdoors After a Year of Lockdowns

https://ift.tt/31mr3M8 Across the country, as the weather improved and pandemic lockdowns were lifted, Americans ventured outside and noticed that their neighborhoods looked a little different. A little. . . dirtier. They saw mattresses piled outside cemeteries and disposable masks clogging the gutters. Vacuum cleaners left in the woods, fast food wrappers blowing on the highway, piles of tires. Neighborhoods that had been relatively clean before the pandemic were now full of litter. “There is garbage freaking everywhere,” says David Biderman, the executive director and CEO of the Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA). In Portland, Ore., the city picked up more garbage in 2020 than any other year on record: 3,000 tons, 50% more than the previous year. Additionally, requests to clean up trash and remove graffiti were up 300% over 2019. Norfolk, Va., is seeing “historic highs” in litter and illegal dumping, according to Sarah Sterzing, the program manager of Ke...

New top story from Time: Thinking About Buying a New Car? It May Be Smarter to Wait a Year—Or Longer

https://ift.tt/3zeivWQ Before the pandemic, Earl Stewart could count over 300 new cars sitting on the lot of his family’s Toyota dealership in South Florida on any single day. The high inventory meant customers could find the exact model and color they wanted for well below sticker price. But now, Stewart’s lot has just a fraction of the cars he had before, with inventory down to 31 as of Friday. That’s because a global shortage of semiconductor chips supplied primarily from Southeast Asia—where COVID-19 cases are among the highest in the world—has forced automakers to cut production. Nearly 20 auto factories have stopped or reduced production in recent weeks due to supply chain issues, affecting plants across the globe. At Ford’s Kansas City assembly plant, which builds the F-150 pickup and Transit van, employees were temporarily laid off for one week as they continue to wait for back-ordered chips to become available. General Motors announced it will temporarily stop produc...

New top story from Time: R. Kelly Found Guilty in Sex Trafficking Trial

https://ift.tt/3kMSmKc (NEW YORK) — The R&B superstar R. Kelly was convicted Monday in a sex trafficking trial after decades of avoiding criminal responsibility for numerous allegations of misconduct with young women and children. A jury of seven men and five women found Kelly guilty of racketeering on their second day of deliberations. The charges were based on an argument that the entourage of managers and aides who helped the singer meet girls—and keep them obedient and quiet—amounted to a criminal enterprise. Read more: A Full Timeline of Sexual Abuse Allegations Against R. Kelly [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Several accusers testified in lurid detail during the trial, alleging that Kelly subjected them to perverse and sadistic whims when they were underage. For years, the public and news media seemed to be more amused than horrified by allegations of inappropriate relationships with minors, starting with Kelly’s illegal marriage to the R&B phenom Aaliya...

New top story from Time: How the Giant Boat Blocking the Suez Canal Was Freed: Dredgers, Tugboats, and a Full Moon

https://ift.tt/39oSyJn The congregation of tugboats and dredgers that freed a skyscraper-sized container ship from Egypt’s Suez Canal on Monday had help from an extremely foreign body over the weekend: The moon. The recovery vessels took advantage of high spring tides around the full moon on Sunday to free the Ever Given, which had blocked Egypt’s Suez Canal for almost a week . Its partial refloating just before dawn on Monday drew cheers and foghorn blasts from the bridges of other vessels caught in the bi-directional snarl that had held up hundreds of ships and billions of dollars worth of cargo each day since March 23. Images on shipping trackers and reports from on the ground gave credence to the Suez Canal Authority’s (SCA’s) Monday afternoon announcement that the ship had been “fully refloated”, allowing for “restoration of the vessel’s direction so it is positioned in the middle of the navigable waterway”. As of Thursday evening, the Ever Given was headed for Gr...

New top story from Time: Godzilla vs. Kong Pairs Two Formidable Monster Foes—Too Bad About the People

https://ift.tt/3fqtTbb The mere concept of King Kong going up against Godzilla is, as the fancy people say, a false dichotomy. Though many of us may harbor a slight preference for one or the other, there can never be a clear winner or loser because, face it: both are awesome. In fact, the only problem with any enterprise featuring these two most enduring titans is that there is always a necessary but troublesome plot involving people. And humans in these movies—unless being held aloft from a skyscraper-top in a skimpy dress, or trampled beneath a pissed-off reptile’s clumsy, unmanicured toes—are almost always a bore. They certainly are a plot liability in Godzilla vs. Kong, though it’s not exactly the fault of the actors, who are all perfectly attractive and capable: Rebecca Hall plays brilliant person Ilene Andrews, also known as the Kong Whisperer, for obvious reasons. Alexander Skarsgård is Nathan Lind, a hottie masquerading as a slouchy academic—his specialty is a ...

How to Pay for Parking at The City's New Multi-Space Paystations

How to Pay for Parking at The City's New Multi-Space Paystations By Pamela Johnson One of San Francisco's new paystations as the city moves away from its aging parking meters. How drivers pay for street parking in San Francisco continues to evolve. In March 2022, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) began the Citywide Parking Meter Replacement Project to replace San Francisco's aging 27,000 parking meters. Half of the parking meters will be replaced with new single-space meters and the other half with multi-space paystations that use a brand-new pay-by-license-plate system. The project is expected to be completed by the end of 2024. San Francisco uses paid parking to create curb availability in commercial districts and high-demand neighborhoods. When parking meters are in operation, drivers spend less time circling the block looking for a space. Less circling means less congestion and fewer greenhouse gas emissions. To help drivers use the new m...

New top story from Time: The Huge Cargo Ship Blocking the Suez Canal Is Now Afloat, Maritime Company Says

https://ift.tt/31pOrIH Salvage teams freed the Ever Given in the Suez Canal, according to maritime services provider Inchcape, almost a week after the giant vessel ran aground in one of the world’s most important trade paths. While the ship is floating again, it wasn’t immediately clear how soon the waterway would be open to traffic, or how long it will take to clear the logjam of more than 450 ships stuck, waiting and en route to the Suez that have identified it as their next destination. The backlog is one more strain for global supply chains already stretched by the pandemic as the canal is a conduit for about 12% of global trade. Some ships have already opted for the long and expensive trip around the southern tip of Africa instead of Suez. The breakthrough in the rescue attempt came after diggers removed 27,000 cubic meters of sand, going deep into the banks of the canal.

New top story from Time: Netflix’s Serial Killer Drama The Serpent Is Nihilistic Murder Porn in Prestige True-Crime Packaging

https://ift.tt/31lof1W There is a whole lot of vomiting in The Serpent . Young hippie couples on holiday who’ve unwittingly befriended a murderer suddenly lose their dinners or pass out in puddles of puke. A guy in John Lennon sunglasses who dances too close to the murderer’s girlfriend soon collapses, spewing liquid, at a pool party in Thailand. At an upscale establishment in India, some students of the murderer’s acquaintance spill their guts. I can’t say exactly how many times vomit happens in this globetrotting true-crime drama, but if you’re the type who can’t see too much of it without retching, this probably isn’t the show for you. Don’t worry, you won’t be missing much. The Serpent , a multilingual BBC production that comes to the U.S. via Netflix on April 2, tries mightily to wring a sumptuous, eight-episode, 1970s-set thriller out of the most monstrously productive years in the life of serial killer Charles Sobhraj . Although suspected of murdering at least 12 pe...

My precise view

Search This Blog