Just as we are making progress in our campaign to ensure the state always takes bike and pedestrian safety into account in transportation funding, Proposition 6 threatens to tear it all apart. If it passes, Prop 6 will cancel $5.2 billion in funding for transportation projects—thousands of them already underway—desperately needed to repair roads in communities across California. Thanks to our advocacy last year when the funding was approved, the new funds are mostly for good stuff: essential and overdue road safety and maintenance projects, a doubling of the state’s main funding source for public transit, and $100 million in new money for biking and walking projects. Thanks to this funding, the 2018 state transportation budget put a greater proportion of funding into transit, walking, and biking than any previous state transportation budget.

More than 6,500 projects would come to a halt if Prop 6 passes. Many of these projects are in disadvantaged communities that simply will not see other funding if this funding is canceled. Our crumbling roads will become even more decrepit, not only making it more dangerous to ride a bike but driving up maintenance costs for motorists.

Worse, if Prop 6 passes, it could doom our chances to win a “Complete Streets Mandate.” We will have a hard time convincing lawmakers that all repaving projects must  include high quality biking and walking facilities if there’s hardly any money to repave the roads to begin with.

Prop 6 is literally deadly. It threatens thousands of jobs, your public transit system, your safety when you walk and bike, our environment, and our progress toward transportation equity. Please join the California Bicycle Coalition, the many local bicycle advocacy organizations that have taken a position, and hundreds of other organizations across the state in saying no to Prop 6—and take a minute today to donate to CalBike to help power this campaign and protect the future of transportation.