More walkers, runners, and bikers than cars

California still has a car-heavy culture, even in the Bay Area (where someone is always more environmentally conscious than you). In the past when I’ve gone running on the weekends, drivers outnumber walkers, runners, and bikers by an order of magnitude. Actually, it’s more like two orders of magnitude.

With the current shelter-in-place order, however, that’s changed. Now you only see the occasional car on residential streets, and as the weather has gotten nicer (we got a batch of cold, rainy weather just in time for the shelter-in-place order, and it’s only now starting to clear) more and more people have been spending time outdoors (most are good, if not downright paranoid, about maintaining 6+’ of distance). Today when running I think the ratio of people I encountered flipped the other way: an order of magnitude more walkers, runners, and bikers than cars (I’d be tempted to say it might have been close to two orders of magnitude, but I briefly pass over 85 and there were still a fair number of cars on the freeway). Even after a couple of weeks of sheltering in place it still feels weird to see so many people going places without driving.