I'm moving to a more residential part of San Francisco in about a month and I'm tempted to buy a bike. However I'm still scared of biking around the city at all (cars + steep hills) and I'm not sure it'll be necessary (I'll be close to a BART stop + some bus lines). Can anyone who bikes around a big city chime in with their experiences?
@bilbono Bike/bus or bike/train combo is super magic, there aren't good trip planners for it but as you are thinking about your likely destinations, keep it in mind. I know BART runs out of bike space a lot, I haven't had problems with that up here but I still kind of want a folding bike so I can take it in friends' cars, Car2Go etc. You don't have to be 100% bike the whole trip.
@mcmoots Yeah, bus + bike should be sufficient to get anywhere in SF, especially because it's a relatively small city by area. But I am worried about aggressive drivers. Luckily it looks like there are enough streets with bike lanes to get around if you're nervous about biking with traffic like me.
@bilbono As I've gained more experience/confidence I've felt both less comforted by & less tied to bike lanes. When they're in the door zone for a line of parked cars they can be scary, I don't like feeling that cars expect me to stay inside the lines even when there's little or no actually usable safe space.
I think my weirdest hostile driver experience so far was someone screaming at me to "get in the bike lane" on a street with a sharrow 🤷
@mcmoots Interesting. I guess outside of a protected bike lane you're never really safe from cars and that's something you have to accept when biking in the city.
Also yeah, I've been told in general that cars have no idea how to share the road with bikes.
@bilbono
I bike in Chicago, which honestly makes it so much easier to get around - quicker than the train or bus in a lot of cases and no more bus transfers.
There are barely any hills here which makes it less physically challenging, but also very windy....
Traffic took a lot of my attention at first, but I got used to it a lot like I did when I was first learning to drive.
@bilbono
Another pro is actually getting to know the streets and neighborhoods around you instead of just the ones around the stations you use!
@doodler This is a good point I hadn't considered.
@bilbono I biked SF downtown every day for 4 years and never had an injury. Bike infrastructure is rapidly improving in SF, esp. around Folsom and 7th Sts. Still not 💯, but not terrible either! Also, sfbike.org has urban biking classes which I've heard great things about!
@nornagon Exactly what I was hoping to hear! Urban biking classes would make me feel a lot more comfortable I think.
im chicagoan biker: grid, flat biking with lots of cars and traffic, rubble sometimes
Remember to get a bike with gear shifting for those steep san fran hills!
Bikes the best way to open up the freedom of living in a city, especially the size of san fran at least thats what ive found. My family digs biking the surrounding area too
@bilbono I bike around Seattle, which has similar hills (and similar cars, though I feel like SF drivers are more aggressive in general). Hills + roads with too much traffic to ride on definitely change which places feel "nearby" on a bike, but as you learn good routes, the city opens up. Even when I've let my fitness lapse a bit I still feel like I can go where I want without problems, with maybe 1-2 exceptions - and I can put my bike on the bus to get up those.