San Antonio is a car-centric and sprawling city, encircled by two major freeways – Loop 410 and Loop 1604. If you count the convergence of several other freeways in the downtown area, there’s actually three highway loops wrapped around the city. According to walkscore.com, San Antonio has a 37 walk rating, a 31 public transit rating, and a 45 bike rating, making San Antonio a mostly car-dependent city.
Car-dependent cities all over the world are generally not very safe for pedestrians or bicyclists. When a city is designed so that people can get from Point A to Point B as rapidly as possible in a car, there’s going to be unsafe sidewalks and little to no protection for bicycles.
Since the end of 2022 and continuing through 2023, I’ve been collecting crash data for cities in the United States that have an officially recognized Vision Zero Action Plan from the Vision Zero Network. San Antonio is one of those cities with a Vision Zero Action Plan and, since I live here, I want to know more about what the city is doing to promote active transportation and reduce car-dependency. To that end, I created a dashboard with a map of pedestrian and cyclist crashes and some basic summary tables. You can view San Antonio’s official Vision Zero crash map here.
The summary tables in my dashboard provide some basic information regarding crash injury types and the demographics of people who are unfortunate enough to be involved in a crash. I want to go a little further here and incorporate some newer data on San Antonio’s City Council Districts and bike facilities from San Antonio’s Open Data portal.
Using the city’s City Council District shape file, I was able to determine which district each crash in my dataset occurred in. This gave me the aggregate number of pedestrian and cyclist crashes occurring in each district throughout San Antonio. Districts 1 & 5 have the highest aggregate amounts of pedestrian & cyclist involved crashes, followed by Districts 2 & 3.
Districts 1 & 5 lead the way again when it comes to crashes only involving pedestrians. District 1 saw significant increase in pedestrian crashes from 2014-2019 before the pandemic, while District 5 saw fairly steady numbers of pedestrian involved crashes until 2016, when the district saw a 52% increase in pedestrian crashes.
Districts 1 & 5 lead the way again in cyclist involved crashes, with crashes in District 1 doubling crashes in District 5 in 3 out of the last 10 years.
Aggregate pedestrian and bicyclist crashes in San Antonio did dip in 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic in full force, dropping to the city’s lowest level in 2020. Unfortunately, pedestrian deaths have climbed the last three years across the country and some of San Antonio’s Council Districts have experienced that trend, as well.
I’m going to be doing a closer look at the population and density of each district, but on the surface, I’m not surprised Council District 1 has the most crashes involving both pedestrians and cyclists. District 1 encompasses San Antonio’s downtown, which is small, has fairly narrow streets, and a lot of vehicular traffic, especially on weekends. San Antonio’s downtown could be a walker’s paradise with some big tweaks (especially regarding parking and car travel) but that’s a subject for another post.
Using population and population density data from SA2020, I came up with each council district’s pedestrian/cyclist crashes per capita. Population densities vary widely throughout San Antonio. The districts were redrawn in 2022 because of new 2020 Census population numbers and the goal was to get as close as possible to 143,949 (San Antonio’s 2020 Census population divided by 10 districts). Prior to the redraw, Districts 1 & 5 had 20,000 fewer people than the ideal number but there’s now 141,216 and 141,149 people in those districts respectively.
I do plan to dive more into San Antonio’s population density based on the concept of walkable density in a future post, one in which gets more how a pedestrian experiences walkability in their own neighborhood. For now, I’m just using basic density calculations based on population size and the square mileage of each district.
Districts 5, 7 and 1 have the highest population density in San Antonio while districts 3 & 4 have the lowest. Before this, I didn’t realize that district 3 was more than twice the geographic area of district 1 despite having less people. San Antonio’s smallest district by population is district 4, with only 135,763 people despite being the second largest by geographic size.
Now that I have this population and density information, the crash data I have on cyclists and pedestrians takes on a different hue. Districts 1 & 5 don’t have as high of populations as other districts yet crashes involving cyclists and pedestrians make up 40% of city-wide crashes over the last decade. If we look at total pedestrian/cyclist crashes in each district, 1 & 5 also have the highest crash rate – 12 and 9 crashes per 1,000 people since 2013. Districts 2 & 3 are close behind, with 6 crashes per 1,000 people, but no other district in San Antonio is above 4 crashes per 1,000 people.
The densest council districts in San Antonio have the highest crash rates despite having fewer people within their boundaries as some of the other districts. My instinct is that denser areas of San Antonio should actually see fewer crashes involving pedestrians and cyclists but that’s clearly not the case. Each person who lives in San Antonio experiences walking differently, so comparing population densities in a district-to-district manner isn’t ideal.
Part of having a safe bicycle network is having actual areas where people can bike without the stress of worrying whether the driver in the Toyota Tundra with a 6-inch lift kit can see them before they make a turn. In my opinion, this should mean that there are bike lanes clearly separated from the car lane with a physical barrier, not simply a stripe of paint. Ideally, the physical barrier is some sort of sturdy bollard (Target has the best bollards in the US), a raised bike lane next to the sidewalk but clearly delineated from the pedestrian pathway, and at worst (but still better than paint), flexi-posts that at least provide a physical signal to drivers that they should avoid the area. Below are some decent examples from around the world.
Luckily, San Antonio provides a dataset on all bike facilities throughout the city and in which district the facility is located. As of June 17, 2023, San Antonio has 3,069 active bike facilities, 85 inactive bike facilities, 5 buffered lanes pending completion, and 10 more buffered bike lanes that have been recommended by city staff. That’s only 15 new bike facilities planned through 2024, according to the data.
Below is a table showing San Antonio’s bike lane types and the total throughout the city. Districts 1, 5, and 6 have the most total bike facilities (448, 391, and 380 respectively) while Districts 4, 8, 9, and 10 have the least amount of facilities (216, 237, 205, and 215 respectively). Districts 1 & 5 have the highest bicyclist crash rate in the city, yet they also have the most bike facilities.
| Bike Lane Type | Count |
| Bike Lane | 1,880 |
| Buffered Lane | 152 |
| Cycle Track | 10 |
| Multi-Use Path | 139 |
| Route | 863 |
| Separated Lane | 15 |
| Shoulder | 10 |
| Total | 3,069 |
27% of all San Antonio active bike facilities are in Districts 1 & 5 but neither have any multi-use paths. District 5 has more bike lanes than District 1 but does not have any buffered lanes, cycle tracks, or separated lanes. In total, Districts 1 & 5 have nearly 58 miles of city bike facilities between them. Bike route miles make up 46% of total bike facility miles in District 1 and bike lanes are 72% of District 5’s bike facilities. If Districts 1 & 5 have the most city-recognized bicycle facilities and nowhere near the highest populations, why do they also have the highest bicyclist crash rates in the city?
Well, a possible answer could be that the bike facilities offered by San Antonio are inadequate. Below is a sample of some Google Maps screenshots of various bike facilities in Districts 1 & 5. Here we have multiple instances of cars being allowed to park in bike lanes, an unprotected striped bike lane on a street that allows for 30mph speed limits and includes a sign saying that bikes can use the full lane (no thanks), a bike “sharrow” underneath a freeway, an unprotected cycle track, and apparently bike routes all over San Pedro Park.
Here’s what San Antonio calls a “buffered bike lane” on Josephine Tobin Drive to Cincinnati Avenue. I’m not sure why it’s called “buffered” as the only thing I can see being buffered here are parked cars. An actual buffered lane would probably see the cars and bike lane swapped so bicyclists are closer to the curb.
What’s not pictured, and is most definitely an improvement on all of the above, is a new protected bike lane that runs down Buena Vista St in District 5! We need more of those! Unfortunately, as of writing, the protected bike lane that would run down Avenue B near the Pearl and the San Antonio Museum of Art is still not open, despite a supposed opening date around March 2023.
The above screenshots are just a very minuscule sample of all the bike facilities available in San Antonio. Some are better than others, but I’d venture to say that a small few are truly safe for cyclists.
San Antonio has made extensive improvements to the greenway creek trail system, however. I’ve ridden on the Alazan and San Pedro creek trails and while there are some definite improvements that could make the trails even better (more shade, benches, more trail access from streets/bridges), they are very enjoyable to walk and ride.
Many people might say: “But San Antonio is just not a biking city. Nobody bikes”. And while I disagree that nobody in San Antonio rides a bike, it’s hard to argue that San Antonio makes it incredibly easy for people to ride a bike safely and for accomplishing daily errands. San Antonio’s bike score rating from walkscore.com was mentioned at the top but People for Bikes, a bicycling advocacy group, gives San Antonio an even rougher score of 21 in their 2022 City Ratings. And in their updated 2023 city ratings, San Antonio now has a 13 city rating!
Bike commuting data from the Census Bureau doesn’t paint a great picture, either. San Antonians commuting by bicycle peaked at 0.26% of all commuters in 2014 according to ACS 5-Year survey data. Since then, bike commuting has held relatively steady around 0.2% of all commuters. The overwhelming majority of San Antonio residents commute alone in their private vehicle. I know that not everyone who rides a bike in San Antonio uses it to commute. I haven’t come across any decent data on recreational riding in San Antonio, but I may check out Strava’s developer tools in the future for this. I also haven’t been able to find ridership data for San Antonio’s bike-share BCycle, which I believe is privately owned and not a program of the city’s Transportation Department, like Divvy bikes in Chicago.
It’s encouraging that San Antonio’s Transportation Department is currently in the process of revamping the city’s 2011 Bike Master Plan. I’m not sure how much of the 2011 plan was actually implemented, but San Antonio does not have much of a bike network. It’s more like bits and pieces of mediocre and unsafe bike infrastructure dropped over the city for political leaders to point to and say that they are doing something for bicyclists. A proper bicycle network in San Antonio will make it cycling safe for people to accomplish daily tasks, like going to HEB or getting to work, or going to see friends and have dinner and drinks.
I didn’t get too much into demographic trends, crashes happening at intersections, types of vehicles involved in pedestrian/cyclist crashes, or year-over-year trends, which I’ll do in future posts about the data as it continues to get updated. I anticipate June’s crash data being available from CRIS sometime after July 4th, which is when I’ll update my dashboard and do some more analysis.
I know it’s really hot in San Antonio, right now. But, as much as you can, try to ride a bike the next time you decide to go out to eat. Or ride transit. Choosing to walk, bike, or take public transit may not be the most convenient personal decision, but it can help your neighbors, neighborhood, and other residents. Getting in your car for a 3-5 mile trip only contributes to pollution and traffic congestion, contributes to worse air quality and higher temperatures, and creates high stress from trying to navigate without drawing the ire of other drivers. Participating in active and public transportation can help reduce your impact on our city and make it healthier for everyone.
Leave a Reply