San Francisco is supposed to be a “transit-first” city, a declaration cemented into the city charter in 1973. That might have been a bold stance 50 years ago, before it wasn’t just obvious but imperative to tie gas-guzzling cars to the existential threat of climate change.
But our transit-first policy has proven to be largely symbolic, much more rhetoric than impact.
Last year, the city’s climate action plan finally put an ambitious goal behind the policy: By 2030, 80 percent of all trips need to be made on sustainable transport modes — anything but cars, basically.
Yet as we’ve just seen with the yearlong fight over JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park, a massive shift away from cars is going to be one of the hardest things San Francisco ever does.
Could e-bikes be the secret weapon? When these bikes first rolled onto SF streets in 2013, they offered the promise of car-free trips for riders who otherwise wouldn’t take on longer distances or our many hills with pure pedal strokes.
Counting on people to buy their own wouldn’t get San Francisco to its goals fast enough, but bikeshare was billed as a way to make the pricey machines more accessible to the masses.
For a few years, it seemed to be working. In February 2020, the city’s bikeshare operators clocked more than 400,000 rides, a record spike. But COVID knocked everything sideways.
Now, as we fitfully emerge into a post-pandemic world, San Francisco is, well, heading in the wrong direction. Vehicle miles traveled keep creeping up, last month hitting 90 percent of pre-pandemic levels. Public transport hasn’t been as lucky. BART ridership is still one-third of what it was before COVID, and Muni’s weekend and weekday customers are at 67% and 54%, respectively, of pre-pandemic numbers. Pedal power has taken a big hit too: there were only 107,000 bikeshare rides in March 2022.
It’s possible private bikes, purchased during the pandemic, have bitten into those numbers, but there’s no way to tell. City data are several years old. Bikes won’t solve all our transit-first woes. But amid the advocacy around JFK Drive and to a lesser extent Slow Streets, another public policy question has been simmering. Would a bikeshare overhaul get a lot more people out of cars and onto two wheels?
Going public
SF was supposed to have bikeshare competition. In 2018 there were two operators, but one permit expired in 2020. Lyft’s Bay Wheels has had a monopoly since then, with a deal that runs through 2027.
SFMTA spokesperson Stephen Chun says the current setup benefits the city with no burden of ownership “at zero cost to taxpayers.”
Sup. Dean Preston and others aren’t so sure. Preston commissioned a study from SF’s Budget and Legislative Analyst about the possibility of the city running the program itself. Released in February, the report estimated it would take $33 million to purchase the existing 4,500 bikes, half of which are electric, and 8,755 charging docks, and $13 million to $18 million per year to operate the system. (SFMTA, which would likely run it, has a $1.3 billion budget this year, with upticks planned through 2024.)
Advocates believe the cost is well worth the increased oversight and control. They say a publicly owned bikeshare would allow the city to keep prices low; ensure more equitable distribution of the bikes and charging stations; and more cohesively fill gaps in Muni service.
SF Bicycle Coalition marketing and communications director Nesrine Majzoub said the group has pushed for a more equitable system for years, but with a single private operator, “our vision is far from reality. We’re strongly supportive of a city-owned system,” she said.
“My hope is to make bikeshare as transparent, accountable, equitable, and affordable as possible,” Preston said in a press release when the report came out.
We need to stop thinking that urban mobility needs to make a profit. It is a public good like water or electricity.
San Francisco State University professor Jason Henderson
When pressed about SFMTA’s position, Chun acknowledged that public funding for bikeshare, like Muni, could mean “more jobs, more consistent service, more pride, and more desire for improvement. It might also mean more accountability.”
Lyft says it does not earn money from Bay Wheels and covers all costs, but it continues to raise the prices of bikeshare, confusing riders and causing many to stop using the e-bikes altogether.
Most recently, the company hiked prices in September 2021 that bumped up the price from 15 cents to 20 cents per minute. Lyft was allowed to keep the higher prices if it installed 35 additional dockless stations, offered promotional pricing, and provided 2,000 reduced price memberships.
Half-baked at City Hall
Publicly owned bikeshare — in which a city owns the infrastructure, and either runs operations itself or hires a contractor — has been implemented in a handful of other cities, including Boston and Washington, D.C.
Montreal, the second-largest city in Canada, has seen solid results: According to the Montreal Gazette, among the 1.1 million people who rode bikes there in 2020, 600,000 of them used the bikeshare’s two-wheeled steeds. Overall usage increased 6 percent between 2015 and 2020, the report says, rising faster for recreation than for commutes and other functional purposes.
But this being San Francisco, the politics are complicated. One might think a vocally progressive Board of Supervisors would do all it can to push the city toward its climate and transit-first goals. Instead, half-baked mobility policies have become commonplace at City Hall, such as a timed Great Highway closure and watered-down bus lanes and street safety infrastructure.
In addition to Preston’s preference for public bike share, supervisors generally have not been kind to the private program. The board blocked funding that would have given all City College students a free Bay Wheels membership, and it has repeatedly slowed the process of installing new stations.
When merchants in the Mission and North Beach fought new stations in 2017 and 2018, respectively, saying the loss of parking would kill their business and hasten takeover by fancier shops, they gained the support of their supervisors, Hillary Ronen and Aaron Peskin. (Notably, Peskin has long been a vocal critic of privatizing alternate transport, including scooters, mopeds, and driverless vehicles, but he’s remained relatively quiet about publicly owned bikeshare.)
Gentrifying ride?
While vandalism might not be in the headlines anymore, the notion of bikes, shared or electric or whatever, serving as elitist tools of gentrification is still a common theme — tune into any public hearing on street changes for bike safety. But it has taken hits lately.
A recent analysis of census data shows that SF homeowners are far more likely to own cars than renters. Lyft’s own data suggest it’s not just rich white people using their bikes. According to its 2021 Multimodal Report, 53 percent of riders identified as members of racial or ethnic minority groups, and the median household income was $73,000 per year.
In other words, there’s an appetite for bike usage among the entirety of San Francisco’s diverse population. In the marathon debate over JFK Drive that led to a 7–4 vote to keep the road car-free, Preston took time out to criticize the “elitist” trope.
So what gives with the fear? “One big reason cycling is considered gentrification is because it is not as ubiquitous as the car,” says Jason Henderson, a San Francisco State University professor who focuses on the politics of mobility. “It is new, unique, and visible.”
It’s unclear if this perception of elitism would change if bikeshare were public, and we might not know for some time. (Lyft’s contract doesn’t expire until 2027.) However, SFMTA’s Chun says elected officials must act if bikeshare is to meaningfully move more people out of cars.
Advocates say a more comprehensive bike-lane network, with lanes physically separated from cars, would make biking a realistic option for new, casual, and advanced riders alike.
Advocates also say subsidies will be key. (In Montreal, about 25% of the program is covered by the city, with the rest by user fees and sponsors.) If public service, safety, and climate goals are paramount, bikeshare should provide increased access and mobility to lower-income residents. Whether public or private, making bicycles affordable “without the burden of ownership” makes it more likely “someone will choose to ride a bike instead of drive a car,” Chun says.
Henderson goes further, saying it can only make a difference if it is embraced as a public good, not as a money-maker. “We need to stop thinking that urban mobility needs to make a profit,” he says. “It won’t. It is a public good like water or electricity, and should be considered that way.”