LOCAL
What’s white, male and 5 feet wide? Bay Area’s bike lanes
Phil Matier | on February 26, 2020
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Photo: Gabrielle Lurie / The Chronicle 2019
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Male bike commuters outnumber female riders by a 2-to-1 ratio in San Francisco, census data show.
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Photo: Jessica Christian / The Chronicle
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About 13,500 men bike to work in San Francisco, compared to 5,800 women, according to a survey.
When it comes to exclusivity, one would be hard-pressed to beat San Francisco’s bike lanes, where most regular riders are male, affluent, white “bike bros,” with 1 in 4 making $250,000 or more a year, according to the most recent U.S. census data.
And it’s not just in San Francisco.
“Bicycle commuting is mostly the province of wealthier white men all across the Bay Area,” Metropolitan Transportation Commission spokesman John Goodwin said.
Just look at the numbers.
Male bike commuters outnumber female bike commuters by at least a 2-to-1 ratio in all nine Bay Area counties, according to the 2014-2018 American Community Survey taken by the U.S. Census Bureau.
In San Francisco women accounted for only 5,800 of the morning bike commuters compared to 13,500 men who pedal to work each day. In Marin, women make up about 600 of the 1,500 daily bike commuters.
And they tend to be white.
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Across the Bay Area, white riders represented 61% of the bike commuters, followed by Hispanics at 17%, Asians at 15% and African Americans at 2.4%.
In San Francisco, the white percentage was even higher — 65% of regular riders — followed by Asians and Hispanics at 14% each and African Americans at just over 1% of regular San Francisco bike commuters. How do those numbers
compare to the city’s population as a whole? Whites: 40%; Asian: 34%; Hispanic: 15%; African American: 5%.
As for age, about 7 out of 10 bike commuters in San Francisco are between 20 and 40 years old, a trend replicated in other Bay Area counties, except for Marin, Napa, Solano and Sonoma, where the lion’s share of bike commuters are in their 50s.
The Census Bureau’s American Community Survey data is collected through a combination of mail, telephone and in-person surveys, with results then adjusted to reflect the population of each Bay Area county.
“Given the state of San Francisco’s streets, the demographic numbers are about what I would expect,” newly installed San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency General Manager
Jeffrey Tumlin said. “The ethnic and income breakdown from the census survey is fairly consistent with the demographics of the neighborhoods served by our current network.”
In other words, the city’s bike lanes tend to be in more affluent areas, easily accessible to downtown.
“For many neighborhoods, a protected bikeway to downtown is not their highest priority — getting kids safely to school may be more important,” Tumlin said
There may be other factors at play as well.
“We Latinos like our cars,” SFMTA board member
Art Torres said. “But seriously, this is something that needs to be talked about. We are spending a lot of money on bike programs that are used by people who live and work in San Francisco and can bike to work.
“At the same time, a lot of lower-income people use Muni, which needs money as well,” Torres said. “And we may need to figure out how to get more people on their bikes.”
Overall, bike commuting has grown to about 20,000 riders a day in San Francisco —that’s an increase of about 1,000 workday riders since 2017.
To speed them along, the city installed more than 106 miles of bike lanes between 2006 and 2018, and there’s another 20 miles in the pipeline. The city has also added 2,676 bike racks in the past five years and plans to add 1,200 more this year. The most recent push to attract more pedal power was closing Market Street downtown to private cars.
Torres’ fellow board member
Cheryl Brinkman sees a sign of progress, however, in attracting a more diverse crowd of riders.
“I see the gender gap every time I bike. I also see that protected bike lanes are helping to add more cyclists who identify as female,” Brinkman said.
San Francisco Bicycle Coalition Executive Director
Brian Wiedenmeier thinks his organization is helping in that effort.
“We’ve seen some success recently when it comes to closing the gender gap in biking,” he said. “Our Women Bike SF program, which serves to create community for women, trans and femme people who are interested in biking, continues to grow.
“And most recently we hosted our first women, trans, femme Community Repair Night as part of our Bike It Forward program that distributes free bicycles to individuals who wouldn’t otherwise have access,” he added.
For now, however, the roads are ruled by the bike bros.
San Francisco Chronicle columnist Phil Matier appears Sundays and Wednesdays. Matier can be seen on the KGO-TV morning and evening news and can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call 415-777-8815, or email pmatier@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @philmatier
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