by the El Reportero’s news services
A Day Without Car Cyclists hold up their bicycles during a ‘Critical Mass’ demonstration on the European Car Free Day in Budapest, Hungary. (photo by Szilard Kosztick / EPA)
SAN FRANCISCO. – Community, business, health, and environmental leaders, protested in the Town hall to demand that the City lift the freeze put in place against the city’s safety measures for bicycle riding.
The problem is that the starting of the official plan on the environmental impact of the bicycles might take up to one year.
In practical terms this means that it might take all this time to install new lanes for the bicycles, grills to park them as well as to place safety signs that protect the cyclists.
The leaders taking part in the rally pressed Mayor Gavin Newsom to take all the necessary steps to prioritize the works of the bicycle’s plan.
“This delay in the advance of sustainable transportation should be unacceptable for a city that considers itself a green leader,” said Leah Shahum, executive director of the San Francisco Bicycle.
The Coalition of Bicycles of San Francisco groups 9,000 members.
Shahum thought that hundreds of thousands of people are suffering from the City’s failure to acting and putting in force the safety measures for the cyclists.
Critical Mass activists ride in one of their protests on the last Friday of every month.
After the rally there was a public hearing, held two years later after a judicial request stopped the plan for the City’s cyclists.
The plan was approved unanimously in mid 2005 by the Mayor and the Board of Supervisors. Nevertheless, it was stopped when a demand showed that an additional review of the environment was needed.
“San Francisco is struggling to be a green city, but a Republican judge has frozen the bicycles’ plan, preventing the implementation of the safety measures of a non-polluting mean of transportation,” said John Rizzo, member of the Executive Committee of the Sierra Club of San Francisco.
“The city needs to take urgent action so that they could take the Bicycle’ Plan back on track,” Rizzo said.
“The city needs to take urgent action so that the Bicycle’s Plan can again take its course,” he said.
Groups around the nation are concerned that a program as beneficial as the bicycle’s plan has been place in the waiting list for so long, especially when transport in bicycle to work is re-arising nationally and internationally.
“With gas prices exceeding four dollars for gallon and 50 percent of coal emission coming from cars, the majority of the cities are recognizing the financial and environmental benefits of sustainable transportation,” said, Amandeep Jawa, president of the League of Conservation Voters.
The city’s bicycle’s plan was approved in 2005 as an important step to reduce transportation congestion and coal emission at the increase use bicycles and safety. Nevertheless, it was delayed by a lawsuit and a slow response from the City.
Other cities such as New York, Paris and London are advancing aggressively to reduce this emission by building a wide infrastructure for bicycles.
