Lighting Up the Night Gives Bike Lights to San Francisco Riders

Each year, SFBC teams up with the San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency (SFMTA) for Light Up the Night, a program that installs lights free of charge on bicycles that don’t have them.

In San Francisco, CA, 86 percent of bicyclists continue riding throughout the winter. “We are lucky to have pretty mild weather all year long,” noted San Francisco Bicycle Coalition’s (SFBC) Kristin Smith. The biggest hazard faced by Bay Area riders is reduced visibility due to shorter days and San Francisco’s famous fog.

Each year, SFBC teams up with the San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency (SFMTA) for Light Up the Night, a program that installs lights free of charge on bicycles that don’t have them. The program, which starts in November and runs through December, has given away over 8,000 lights since its inception in 1999. “We see a ton of people using the lights we give out,” said Ben Jose of SFMTA’s Livable Streets Subdivision.

A similar program in New York City, sponsored by the NYC DOT, has distributed 6,000 sets of lights since its inception in 2008.

2 Comments

John
February 28, 2014
With streetlights as above then actually bike lights really shouldn’t be needed. You’d expect a motorist to be able to see a pedestrian in the road wouldn’t you?
Personally I think bikes should be sold with permanently engaged dynamo lighting – it’s now so good and so easy that there is really no downside (outside of serious racing, and even then only in the race itself)
David Feldman
January 11, 2014
Too bad that so many cyclists are too cheap, stupid, and irresponsible to light up without a giveaway.
I’ve been riding at night for 40+ years. Today’s lights are sooooo much better than what we used to have and still relatively inexpensive. Ain’t no light system that’s as spendy as ER care.