A Visitor’s Perspective On Bicycling in San Diego
Posted By Thomas Bahde on January 26, 2010
Photo by Flickr user busbozo, from the Bike San Diego Flickr Pool.
Boston’s Chic Cyclists blog posted a reflection on bicycling in San Diego today:
Cycling in downtown San Diego is a little like Boston except with no separate bike lane. It was cool for San Diego and intermittent rain. Hardly any bikers. Didn’t see any bike commuters. Rode around using roadway and sidewalk when available. Cars gave me room. There is a wide promenade along the shoreline which is good for sightseeing, including the aircraft carrier Midway. Rode out to airport to pick up my rental car saving the $12 cab fare… Picked up a bike map put out by the County, but didn’t get chance to use it. The bike rental shop was right downtown, two blocks from my hotel. Closed on Sunday so big problem for weekend rental. My car rental was $13/day. The mountain bike was $25/day, $10/hour.
I would sure love to see more positive evaluations of our infrastructure, ease of movement, and bicycle culture. We have the attractions (zoo, museums, beaches, parks, restaurants, neighborhood culture, etc.), so how can San Diego capitalize on its many virtues to make our city more bike-friendly? Most short-term visitors stay downtown and along the waterfront, so what could a bike-friendly urban core look like here? How could we make what already exists better? Comments are open, give us your ideas!
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6 Responses to “A Visitor’s Perspective On Bicycling in San Diego”
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Reading this really bummed me out, quite honestly. I kept thinking to myself, “why didn’t he go here… why didn’t he go there.” But he’s right to an extent. We don’t have a critical mass of commuters and visible infrastructure that would give the impression to outsiders that this city is bicycle-friendly.
I just spent 2 weeks in Encinitas on a Road cycling training camp / VeloSocial. The San Diego county region is just bursting with potential for cyclists. Anyone who’s interested in developing the region should think about getting involved in local groups to lobby the powers to be – from bike shops to cafes to local councils, it’s time to put SD on the map. Read up more on my blog post:
http://bit.ly/cNAzFE
I’m glad you’ve noted this here on BikeSD. Global competition to attract the new bicycle class is heating up.
Attracting bicycle tourists is a great way to convince city and business leaders to develop a comprehensive bicycle infrastructure system.
Again, bicycle tourists = $$$$$
- focusing on the urban core is right
- increase rental shops with different bicycles (not just cruisers)
- hotel bicycle rental
- social bike rides
- cycle chic blogs
- urban bicycle tours
- free air pumps around the city
- bicycle site-seeing brochures & guide books (can someone hire me to do this please?)
One thing I LOVE about cycle tourist, they are hugely open to seeing more than the basic attractions, they are 100% more friendly, especially to local cyclist, and I’ve found that if you extend some courtesy thier way while they are here, they return the offer if you visit thier town. Can’t find anything bad about it!
We went on a vacation to Palm Springs a while ago and I remember being struck by how much bike infrastructure there was (e.g., lots of nice paths via shortcut routes along golf courses), how flat it was, how wonderful the weather was, and yet the absence of bicyclists.
Esteban wrote: “We don’t have a critical mass of commuters and visible infrastructure that would give the impression to outsiders that this city is bicycle-friendly.”
That’s a great sentence, Esteban, packs in a lot.
I’m curious about the relationship between these three factors:
A) critical mass of commuters (and other types of bicyclists, presumably, both utilitarian as well as recreational)
B) visible infrastructure
C) bicycle-friendly impression
To this list I would like to add one more factor, because I believe it plays an enormous role in cities that have high bike modal usage, probably the most significant role:
D) car-UNfriendly impression (expensive and/or impractical to use a car due to high congestion, too little and very expensive parking, etc.)
In particular:
1) How effective is more visible infrastructure (B) in encouraging more bicycling (and, in particular, more commuting)?
2) When you have both critical mass of bicyclists (A) and visible infrastructure (B), is one or the other more important in creating (C), the bicycle-friendly impression? Can you have (C) with only (A) or only (B)?
3) Can (A) be achieved without (D)? Can (A) be achieved with only (D)? – That is, by making it expensive and inconvenient to use a car for commuting, shopping, etc., is that enough to achieve critical mass of bicyclists, or do you really need the infrastructure (C) too? And if (D) (car-unfriendliness) is not achieved to any degree, can any amount of (B) (infrastructure) make much significant impact towards achieving a critical mass of bicyclists (A)?
4) If infrastructure (A) creates problems for bicyclists, and if without carrying out car-unfriendly measures (D) it does little if anything in terms of increasing bike modal use, is there really good reason to work for more infrastructure?
It seems to me that as long as most SD destinations continue to have adequate free or inexpensive parking, and the roads aren’t too congested most of the time, and case stays below $4, there is very little we can do to effectively encourage more bicycling instead of motoring. In contrast, consider what kind of boost we (and bicycling all over the U.S.) would get if gas doubled in price, or Lance won an 8th Tour, without any additional infrastructure anywhere…
I really think the main factor, by far, in encouraging more bicycling is D, discouraging motoring. Make no mistake, that’s a big component in the ability of N. European cities being able to achieve high bike modal uses. Not only do they have narrow streets with lots of congestion and expensive parking that is far away from most destinations (so the motorist often still has to walk or bike a ways after parking), but there are enormous taxes on cars and gas too. Politically and culturally, that might be impossible to achieve here, but that’s no reason to ignore reality and pursue sure-to-be-doomed alternatives.
Serge
I see tourists toodling around downtown on rented “pedal cars” and have also seen them cruising about on those beach cruisers. But when I had friends in town we were hard pressed to rent her a bike that she could ride. She’s tiny like me and barring a kids pink Huffy, the rest she just couldn’t safely ride.
So yes, we need to encourage the infrastructure, get the gov’t on board, but we also need to offer the bikes to get people out and about.
When we B&B up in Northern Cal, they always have a “bike barn” on site for us to grab a bike and go. If it’s not profitable for someone to start a business renting them out, perhaps the hotels could just have them to offer?