For those of us who grew up riding our bikes to school and around the neighborhood, it seems weird how much less free kids are to ride in this age of hyper-protective parenting. I’m by no means an expert in parenting or child development, but I can’t help but feel something ends up being lost when we have to shut down an entire portion of the city’s biggest park, just to give kids (and, yes, adults) a chance to ride free from fear.

Because it’s Bike to Work Week*, I’ll try to post something about bikes every day. For probably most of the readers of this blog, the most (only?) interesting thing about bicycles is their role in a more livable and sustainable transportation mix in San Francisco and the Bay Area. So I’ll be focusing on that.

Here’s an interesting video from Streetfilms about the transformation of Melbourne, Australia into a transit-, pedestrian-, and bicycle-friendly city.

* Yes, for some of us, every week is Bike to Work Week.

This story in today’s Chronicle was fun to read.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/05/03/BAD210EGLU.DTL

Congratulations to the happy couple who met on the 31AX (my morning bus) and are getting married today in Pleasanton. Their reception has a MUNI theme.

Some public relations person and MUNI’s General Manager Nate Ford are probably are already talking about using this story to increase ridership…

Tuesday night, Director of the San Francisco Department of the Environment Jared Blumenthal spoke at the SF Bike Coalition’s Golden Wheel Awards. I assume he was tailoring his message to the audience, but he proposed some really interesting ideas about how to decrease the environmental impact of transportation in San Francisco.

(Note that I didn’t take notes, so this is from memory. There may be some innacuracies, but I believe I am rendering the substance of his remarks accurately).

I have a bunch of items stacked up that I’ll try to get to in the next day or so, including the Chronicle’s report assigning blame to cyclists for accidents and the SFBC’s response.

For today, I first give you Energy Wasting Day:

Tomorrow, the MTA will be hosting a Bike Plan Open House at 101 Grove:

Citywide Bike Plan Open House on March 26

Learn about San Francisco’s plans for better bicycling at a Citywide Bicycle Plan Update Open House, presented by the SF Municipal Transportation Agency (MTA), on Wednesday, March 26 (6:00 pm, 101 Grove Street).

I’m famous! For admitting I don’t have a clue…

Magee continues, the “Chron also reports … there has been a sharp increase in cycling deaths over the last two years, even as the number of bike accidents and injuries overall have decreased. I don’t really have a solid idea of why this is. … The large number of cycling fatalities that have occurred in Santa Clara County make me think it’s possible that the combination of increased cycling in San Jose, possibly unaccompanied by an aggressive bike awareness campaign, might be a contributing factor. But that’s speculation.”

KQED’s Forum today featured a discussion of bike safety, and included the Bike Coalition’s Leah Shahum, along with anti-cyclist suer Rob Anderson and some guy from the AAA. I haven’t had a chance to listen to it yet, but you can here the episode on KQED’s site.

Fritz from Cyclicious live-blogged some of it, including this exchange:

Host Michael Krasny asked if road conditions are a factor in safety. MTA planner Co responded that “90% of collisions are due to human factors. If you throw money into improving roads and other engineering, you can only get so much in return. The most important thing is changing behavior.”

Not to get exclusively bike-centric, but there’s an interesting short test that shows the effects of awareness on perception (or maybe it’s the other way around). It’s here.

It looks like Chicago is cracking down on behavior that endangers bikes.

And SFist notes a new traffic counter in the bike lane at everybody’s favorite intersection, Market and Octavia.

I don’t have a huge amount to say that hasn’t already been said about the tragic deaths of the two cyclists that’ve been splashed across the front page of the Chronicle the last couple days. I didn’t know either of them (although I do know some of their teammates) and I haven’t ridden the road where they were killed.

An event that’s been overshadowed by this accident, however, has been the hit-and-run collision at urban planning’s low point, Octavia and Market. This one doesn’t appear to be a result of the no-right-turn-onto-the-freeway design, but it makes the “that intersection’s not so dangerous” claims seem even more flimsy.

A recent study showed a significant uptick in the number of cyclists in San Francisco.

The number of San Francisco bike riders rose by 15 percent from 2006 to 2007, according to a report by The City’s bicycle program.

In the study, which will be presented today at the Bicycle Advisory Committee, observers from the Municipal Transportation Agency’s Bicycle Program counted 6,454 cyclists on the streets during sample days in August 2007, which is 800 more than noted in 2006, the first year of the bicycle counting program.