After several weeks of work and planning, the San Francisco Streetsblog site quietly went live last Wednesday.

SF Streetsblog editor Bryan Goebel is an experienced journalist and active member of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. Reporter Matthew Roth is a recent transplant to the Bay Area from New York City, where he directed the New York City Streets Renaissance Campaign for Transportation Alternatives.

Fritz welcomes Streetsblog’s new presence in The City where Tony left his heart (as Randy the Caltrain conductor likes to say every day).

The BBC will film and interview cyclists who are over 50 in San Francisco this Sunday, in preparation for the upcoming Senior Games. Any and all who might participate should think about coming if you can. If you’d like your 15 minutes of fame, please meet at the far (eastern) end of the Marina parking lot closest to Fort Mason at 12:45pm.

The 2009 Senior Games for athletes 50 and over takes place in the San Francisco Bay Area. Cycling takes place in and around Cañada Rd in San Mateo County August 8 – 10 with time trials and road races.

The big “Ciclovia” style block party is this Sunday in San Francisco. A big stretch of 3rd Street and The Embarcadero will be closed from 9 AM to 1 PM on Sunday. The T-Third and F-Market Muni lines will be FREE from 8 AM to 2 PM for access to Sunday Streets.

Sunday Streets is modeled after the Ciclovia program in Bogota, Columbia. More here.

Update – Show Notes: Host Lynn Neary displayed a very clear and obvious anti-cyclist bias in this show, labeling cyclists as “arrogant” and “self righteous,” accusing cyclists of riding recklessly, causing collisions, getting in the way of motorists and causing road rage. Neary make Rob Anderson’s speaking points for him — she listed the potential problems of San Francisco’s bike plan and let Anderson elaborate on them — while all of her questions toward Noah Budnick were challenges about rude, law breaking cyclists. Neary allowed Anderson to respond to Budnick’s points.

For example, Noah Budnick noted that current research that shows accommodating different transportation modes is not a zero sum game, like Anderson claims, but that traffic demand is elastic. Case after case shows that when commuters are given alternatives, they’ll make use of those different modes. Anderson was then allowed to respond; he sneered a little about transportation “experts” — you could almost hear the quote marks in his voice — and expressed his distaste toward experts and planners who shove their design paradigms down the throats of the public.

Host Neary constantly brought up law breaking cyclists — I think she was trying to get a rise out of Budnick. Budnick said that studies show that most accidents are caused by inattentive motorists, not cyclists. Noah also pointed listeners to “Why bicyclists hate stop signs” (PDF), but reiterated that Transportation Alternatives constantly reminds cyclists to obey the rules of the road.

Neary then introduced a guest from Seattle (I didn’t catch his name), but he was woefully unprepared for the subject and didn’t know what was going on with cycling advocacy. Seattle man was clueless about the pioneering work of traffic engineer Hans Monderman. When asked about bicycle education efforts, he lamely responded that cities hand out pamphlets to cyclists — he was completely unaware that the Cascade Bicycle Club in his own city will teach bicycle safety education to 12,000 students this year.

San Francisco anti-bike crusader Rob Anderson and Transportation Alternatives Noah Budnick were guests today on NPR’s Talk of the Nation radio program. The show will be available for online listening later tonight.

You might enjoy this exchange between Anderson and Robert Hurst over at Anderson’s District 5 Diary blog.

Rob Anderson made the Wall Street Journal!

Rob Anderson is the guy who successfully challenged San Francisco’s implementation of a bike plan, by claiming in court that the bike plan must undergo an environmental review just like any other transportation plan. According to the Wall Street Journal, Anderson believes I ride my bike for political reasons!

“Regardless of the obvious dangers, some people will ride bikes in San Francisco for the same reason Islamic fanatics will engage in suicide bombings — because they are politically motivated to do so,” he wrote in a May 21 post.

Anderson claims he fights cycling because of our thought crimes of a “holier-than-thou” attitude and because many cyclists ride dangerously on city streets, zipping by dangerously closely to him and other pedestrians. Anderson is car-free, so I’m a little bemused that he doesn’t also criticize motorists for the same attitudes and behaviors. When it comes to entitlement attitudes, dangerous behavior and actual risk, motorists have cyclists beat by a long ways.

Most cyclists in the United States (including myself) are also motorists — the problem of dangerous behavior is not specifically a motorist vs cyclist problem, but a people problem. Some people are jerks, whether they’re on a bike or in a car. Whether you’re driving, cycling or walking, please be nice to those around you.