Golden Gate Bridge bicycle safety virtual open house

[John P]

No mention of wind from the new rail in the referenced safety study

John P in SF

From the Golden Gate Bridge District:

VIRUTAL OPEN HOUSE

• What: Golden Gate Bridge Virtual Open House on Bicycle Safety
• When: Open for review and public comment Friday, September 24, 2021, through Sunday, October 10, 2021
• Link to Attend: Click Here>>
• Additional Materials: Bicycle Safety Study for the Golden Gate Bridge 

The purpose of the Open House is to give Bridge sidewalk users and other interested stakeholders an opportunity to review and comment on the key findings and recommendations of the bike safety study, and to offer any suggestions they might have to improve safety on the Bridge sidewalks.

For the past 18 months, Bridge District staff have engaged in review of our bicycle safety policies and current conditions for bicyclists and pedestrians at the Bridge. The key outcome of this review period was the October 2020, Bicycle Safety Study for the Golden Gate Bridge (Study). The study was a collaboration between District staff and an independent consulting group,  Alta Planning Design (Alta), to gather data and observations on current Bridge sidewalk conditions. These data and observations have provided us with opportunities to increase bicycle and pedestrian safety while ensuring maximum utility and accommodation for bicycling on the Bridge for commute and recreational travel which you can review in the study.

---------

VIRTUAL TOWN HALL

• What: Virtual Town Hall Meeting to present key findings and recommendations on bike safety
• When: Wednesday, October 6, 2021, at 12:00pm
• Link to Register:  Here>>
• Additional Materials: Bicycle Safety Study for the Golden Gate Bridge

Golden Gate Bridge District staff along with independent consulting group,  Alta Planning Design (Alta), will be hosting a live 1-2 hour virtual town hall meeting to present key findings and recommendations of the October 2020, Bicycle Safety Study for the Golden Gate Bridge and solicit questions, comments, and suggestions regarding safety from Bridge sidewalk users and other interested stakeholders.

Thank you!

[Mathew Bittleston]

Wow, how many holes can we poke into that "study"? Clearly it's a justification of the threat from cyclists, rather than concerned with safety of cyclists.

There's a short single paragraph discussion of the role of speed in collisions, without breaking out whether ( for examples ) it was a bicycle-pedestrian collision, or a cyclist skidded on  wet slippery metal plates, or rode into the construction related junk that lives on the bridge, or got blown into another cyclist by the wind, or maybe they were riding slowly and lost balance... There's no data on that, but they do end the paragraph boldly stating that "speed is a factor in all collisions" right next to a pie chart that shows "unknown" as 79%. "I guess if I'd been riding zero miles per hour, I may not have crashed because I'd never have got there."

They even have tables with hour by hour average speeds on the east and west sides, and graphs showing the times of peak collisions (not broken down by side). Zero effort to make any statistical analysis there.

Yet based on that one paragraph, their first safety recommendation is establishing bicycle speed limits. And to try to add some engineering validity, they try to justify 15mph by saying it "is consistent with the 85th percentile speeds observed in the speed study". Yikes.

- Mathew Bittleston