January 2022 - CalBike

How CalBike Quietly Pulls the Levers of Power in Sacramento

January 26, 2022/by Kevin Claxton

Each year, CalBike sponsors legislation to make our streets safer and help more Californians choose active transportation. The bills sponsored by state Senators and Assemblymembers are the focus of significant discussion and advocacy, and we ask our supporters to email their representatives and the governor to build support.

Legislative initiatives are essential for advancing the cause, and we will certainly ask you to send emails in support of active transportation and safety legislation this year. But legislation is the tip of the iceberg for CalBike’s advocacy. The work we do out of the spotlight and without a lot of fanfare often has the biggest impact. We meet with officials at Caltrans and other agencies to change regulations and help craft new programs to support biking. We advocate for more funding for active transportation. This effort has led to a doubling of the Active Transportation Program budget and, this year, we might see that figure triple (though perhaps a temporary increase).

In 2022, CalBike plans to pursue several exciting initiatives to increase funding and access for people on bikes. Here’s a preview.

But first, some facts about advocating for change in California

California is one of only 10 states with full-time legislatures. Our state is the most populous of the 50 states, and our economy would be the fifth-largest in the world if we were a country, ranking just above the UK. All of which is to say that doing advocacy in Sacramento is more like pulling the levers of a national government than a state legislature.

CalBike is California’s only statewide nonprofit bicycle advocacy organization, and we are the little engine that could. With a handful of full-time and part-time staffers and help from our members and supporters, we stand for the interests of people who bike to make active transportation a safe choice for all Californians.

Each year, we build on our accomplishments to increase momentum for bicycling, and we expect 2022 to be a big year for progress toward a safer, more joyful, and more equitable California.

The enormous impact of the budget for better biking

Funding for biking and walking infrastructure is crucial to creating safe neighborhoods where active transportation is an easy choice. You may have experienced this when your community was able to build a new bike route or protected bikeway thanks to state funds.

Each funding cycle, the ATP receives hundreds of project proposals. There were so many excellent projects in the latest round that the funding ran out before all of the higher-scoring proposals were funded. CalBike advocated for more funding to build those shovel-ready projects in the 2021/22 budget. Although $500 million was approved initially, the money was pulled back because of a budget impasse between the governor and the legislature.

But budget discussions are back on, and CalBike is now advocating for $2 billion for bikes. So far, the governor’s budget proposal includes an additional $600 million: $500 million for the ATP, on top of about $230 in regular funding, plus $100 million dedicated to active transportation improvements in the Highway Safety Improvement Program.

We’re not giving up on the additional $1.4 billion we want for walking and biking in this year’s budget. CalBike has proposed $500 million for 15-minute neighborhoods, as promised by the governor in his veto statement for AB 1147. We’d also like to see funding for connected bikeway networks and separated bicycle highways.

If California is serious about mitigating climate change, its budget priorities need to reflect that. CalBike is working hard to move the needle on active transportation funding.

Creating an equitable e-bike affordability program

In 2021, with help from our supporters and allies, CalBike won $10 million in funding for an e-bike affordability program. Electric bikes open bicycling as everyday transportation to a broader group of people, but the steep price tag can be a barrier. The program, which will start in July 2022, will offer vouchers to low-income Californians to help them purchase e-bikes. CalBike is working with CARB, which will administer the program the ensure that the model is equitable and accessible. We hope for a successful launch to demonstrate that e-bike subsidies are just as popular as electric vehicle rebates so that the program will get ongoing funding.

Advocating for a better way to use safety funding

In addition to pushing for more money for biking, CalBike also works with agencies to better use the funding they already have.

For example, the California Office of Traffic Safety gives money to local police departments to support Vision Zero. Unfortunately, police departments often use that money to target and ticket people who ride bikes. CalBike is working with OTS to revise its policies, so Vision Zero funding goes to projects that genuinely make streets safer for people biking and walking, rather than harassing bicyclists.

We are also working with HSIP to define the safety elements of highway projects more clearly.

Continuing to push toward decriminalization of commonsense biking and walking

The governor vetoed CalBike’s bills to legalize the bicycle safety stop and end penalties for safe street crossings, but our campaigns for those bills built a groundswell of support for decriminalization. We’ll be building on that momentum in 2022 (and beyond) and continue to work with our allies on critical issues of traffic safety and police overenforcement. We hope to have more to share with you about those efforts later this year.

Working toward bike-share equity

Bike and scooter sharing systems are a terrific solution for last-mile (and often longer) transit and filling gaps in our public transportation systems. However, the costs for some private systems have become unaffordable for many users due to price hikes. And, if cities concentrate micromobility options in wealthier neighborhoods, they miss out on an excellent opportunity to increase transit equity.

CalBike will work toward equity in micromobility in 2022 by advocating for public transit agencies to add bike-share to their offerings, allowing passengers to use transfers and pay fares comparable to other forms of transit. We are also working with a researcher from UC Davis on a study of equity in micromobility. We think that will help move California toward more equitable and sustainable bike and scooter sharing.

A planning change that will make biking more practical

One critical thing to make biking a practical transportation choice is a secure place to park your bike. CalBike is working with other advocates and the California Department of Community Services and Development to develop guidelines for new housing that will require new apartment buildings to include bike parking.

We might not ask you to sign a petition or send an email about these initiatives but look for updates on these vital advocacy projects that could have big effects in communities across California.

Bringing advocates and decision-makers together at the California Bicycle Summit

Every two years, CalBike hosts the California Bicycle Summit. The event brings together people who care about better biking from around the state to share ideas, network, learn, and have a little fun, too. We’ll have 32 breakout sessions, plus bike rides, a bicycle movie festival, and more. The Summit will be held in beautiful Uptown Oakland on April 6-9, 2022. Registration is open. We hope to see you there!

Announcing the Theme of the 2022 California Bicycle Summit: CONNECTING

January 26, 2022/by Kevin Claxton

On April 6-9, 2022, we hope you will join us in Oakland to strengthen and grow the movement for sustainable transportation. The California Bicycle Summit, held every two years, always feels like a momentous occasion, but gathering in person after the past two years is even more compelling. The theme for this year’s Summit is CONNECTING.

We didn’t pick the theme just because we are thrilled to get together with all of you (though we are!). CONNECTING is about many different types of connections:

Creating connected neighborhoods where people of all ages can get to school, to work, or to the store without being forced to get in a car
Connecting to our bodies through the joyful movement of riding a bike
Connecting to the planet and creating a transportation system that aligns with the needs of Earth’s natural systems
Connecting the varied issues that we must address together: racism, lack of housing, and streets that are unsafe for many reasons, to name just a few
Connecting across communities and cultures to better understand and support each other
Connecting to create equitable communities where the joy of bicycling is an easy choice

The 2022 California Bicycle Summit is a can’t-miss event for people who care about biking

Speakers at the 2022 California Bicycle Summit will include community activists, California decision-makers, bicycle advocates, industry leaders, and planners designing the next generation of safer streets. They will present 32 exciting breakout sessions on a wide range of topics, including:

The promise and reality of Caltrans shift to support active transportation
Success stories of intersectional bike advocacy
Access to biking for people with disabilities
Two design symposia where engineers and planners will share cutting edge street designs
Accounts from the leaders of ride-outs, the grassroots biking events spreading across the country
The importance of community bike shops: how to make them excellent, how to support them
Black and POC-rooted solutions for mobility and empowerment
The still-growing impact of e-bikes
The intersections of active transportation with housing policy and climate action
Reports from Finland, Latin America, and across California about how to improve bicycle mode share
And much more

The event will also host fun and informational bike rides and social events:

Tours of infrastructure in the East Bay and San Francisco, including visiting the state’s only edge lane road
Visits to outstanding community bike shops
Recreational rides on the Bay Area’s beautiful backroads
A chance to join the famous and fabulous East Bay Bike Party, a rolling celebration of biking, music, and dancing that takes place every second Friday
A movie night featuring California’s best bike-themed short films

We’re delighted to bring the Summit to beautiful Uptown Oakland. Plenary sessions will be in the gorgeous 1926 art deco California Ballroom; breakout sessions will be held at the OakStop, a top-notch locally- and Black-owned event center. Telegraph Avenue in front of the venue will be closed to cars and open for socializing during the Summit.

Oakland, home of the Original Scraper Bike Team, enjoys a vibrant, diverse culture where powerful bike advocates collaborate with bike-friendly leadership in city government. We are proud to showcase The Town’s active and creative bike scene and fabulous art and architecture.

We invite anyone passionate about bicycling to join us—whether you’re a bike advocate, city official, planner, or a CalBike member who simply cares about making the world healthier, more just, and more sustainable and wants to learn more. See you in April!

CalBike’s Best and Worst of 2021

January 14, 2022/by Kevin Claxton

A completely unscientific look at the best and worst of California biking in 2021.

Let’s be honest: the competition for the worst in 2021 was fierce. We started the year with such high hopes. It had to be better than 2020, right? Nope. But there were many bright spots for biking in California, even in a crazy year like 2021. And, anyway, 2022 is bound to be a better year. Right? Right???

A bikeway grows in California

Whether fueled by the conversion of pandemic Slow Streets into permanent civic spaces or the fruit of many years of advocacy and local pressure, 2021 had a bumper crop of new bikeways. Here are some of the best, plus a couple of instances where planners let cars roll over their better judgment.

Best quick-build demo that should become permanent: Glendora Ave Complete Streets Demo

Glendora Quick-Build crosswalk compressed

For most infrastructure projects, $46,000 would barely make a dent in the budget. But the city of Glendora and the San Gabriel Council of Governments used that amount to install quick-build improvements, including crosswalk striping and planters to create a buffer for separated bike lanes. Glendora plans to expand the project and make it permanent to improve access to a planned rail line extension, but the quick-build demo is helping people bike more safely right now. More of this, please. Read more in Streetsblog LA.

Best Slow Street that became permanent, thanks to quick-build: Doyle Street, Emeryville

Emeryville took advantage of pandemic Slow Streets and the availability of quick-build funding to exclude or restrict traffic on several blocks of Doyle Street. Quick-build allowed the city to quickly make changes to create a joyful, safe space, connecting playgrounds and an off-road bike path, where kids can zoom around on bikes and scooters and neighbors walk and ride. And they got design help from Mr. Barricade.

Best examples of persistence paying dividends—a 2-way tie!

Orange Avenue Family Bikeway

The Orange Avenue Family Bikeway is a grassroots project in an environmental justice community that will implement the San Diego region’s first Bike Boulevard network with traffic diverters. SANDAG leadership halted the project in 2016 to get a freeway-centric funding measure approved, but fortunately, it was saved by community leaders in 2017, approved in 2019, and fast-tracked in 2021.

Chula Vista bike lanes — *Photo from Randy Torres-Van Vleck*

Bike lanes on Broadway Avenue in Chula Vista

At four miles long in each direction, the bike lane on Broadway in Chula Vista is the longest continuous bike lane ever installed as a single project on a commercial corridor in San Diego County. It took more than eight years to get this project approved and completed. Shout out to City Heights Community Development Corporation for keeping the pressure on for Orange Avenue and Broadway.

Worst abuse of political power to cancel bike infrastructure: North Spring Street Bridge bike lanes, Los Angeles

North Spring Street Bridge Joe Linton photo — *Photo by Joe Linton, StreetsblogLA*

Los Angeles City Council Members wield a lot of power, including, apparently, the ability to kill safety projects they don’t like. The villain in this story is Gil Cedillo, whose jurisdiction includes the mostly complete North Spring Street Bridge widening. The project should have included bike lanes, but those lanes were delayed, and it now appears that Cedillo has unilaterally canceled them. That change in project scope could affect the validity of the project’s CEQA review and force Los Angeles to return some of the funding that paid for it. Thanks to terrific advocacy from Streets for All and excellent reporting from Streetsblog LA shining a spotlight on Cedillo’s attempt to undermine safe streets.

Best Slow Street that should continue after the pandemic: JFK Drive, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco

Car-free JFK SFBC — *Photo from San Francisco Bicycle Coalition*

Many of the Slow Streets programs created in 2020 continue as our pandemic life slogs on, but one of the best pandemic Open Streets is on the endangered list: JFK Drive, which cuts through the heart of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. The road had been closed to cars on weekends (a result of years of advocacy from the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition) and, thanks to pressure from advocates, the city made it car-free 24/7 during the pandemic. Since then, 36% more people have accessed the park, and there have been no accidents or injuries—a Vision Zero success. More than 70% of respondents supported keeping the roadway car-free in a city survey, and the San Francisco Chronicle Editorial Board came out in favor. Still, with powerful interests at museums in the park opposed, the future of this fantastic amenity is far from certain.

Worst concession to impatient car drivers: Great Highway, San Francisco

Great Highway SFBC — *Photo from San Francisco Bicycle Coalition*

While San Francisco has preserved car-free JFK Drive (so far), the city bowed to drivers who couldn’t tolerate the inconvenience of taking a longer route and allowed car traffic back on the Great Highway along Ocean Beach, despite fierce resistance from biking and walking advocates. The road remains car-free on weekends, and the New York Times recently named it one of its 52 Places for a Changed World. The theme of the annual travel feature is climate adaptation this year, and the Times described the Great Highway as “pointing the way for post-pandemic urbanism.” We hope San Francisco will think better of its decision to trade a locus of recreation, car-free transportation, and joy for the convenience of the people who are literally driving climate change.

The best and worst of everything else

Worst attempt to thwart progress on bikeways through an electoral recall: Nithya Raman

Unfortunately, there was a lot to choose from with a wave of recalls initiated against elected officials in California. The only one that got enough signatures to make it to the voters was the unsuccessful attempt to topple Gavin Newsom from the governor’s seat. But we’d like to highlight the recall attempt against Los Angeles City Council Member Nithya Raman. CalBike heartily endorsed Raman, a transportation justice champion and bike-friendly leader. Her leadership promised to shake things up in the second-largest city in the U.S., so of course, she faced a campaign for her recall. Fortunately, the recall bid crashed and burned shortly after Newsom defeated his recall in September, showing the strong popular support for politicians who support bold changes in traffic safety as part of a progressive package.

Best investigation of biased policing against bicyclists: LA Times investigation of bike stops by sheriff’s deputies

The Los Angeles Times deserves major kudos for its in-depth look at data on bicycle stops and arrests by the Los Angeles Sheriff’s department. The Times analysis showed that police disproportionately stopped Latinos and targeted cyclists in poorer neighborhoods. Riders were stopped for minor infractions, largely as a pretext to search them for guns and drugs, but only a tiny percentage of stops turned up illegal items. The investigation has had results: the LA County Board of Supervisors is looking at decriminalizing minor bicycle infractions as a way to end biased policing. The Time’s reporting is another reminder that local newspapers are vital to our communities. Make a New Year’s resolution to subscribe to yours.

Best national conversation about safety: the national discussion of the insanity of jaywalking laws

jaywalking Legalize Safe Street Crossings

The governor’s veto of the Freedom to Walk Act wasn’t a complete defeat for the cause. The campaign run by CalBike and our allies at California Walks and Los Angeles Walks, plus stellar efforts by Assemblymember Phil Ting, amplified and advanced a national conversation about the underhanded origins of jaywalking laws, which were designed to make city streets safe for cars, not people. Today, these laws are often used as a pretext for over-policing Black and brown people. The anticipated repeal of jaywalking laws even made it into one of the limericks on NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me quiz show. The movement to reform how we police the use of our streets is just getting started, and the campaign to repeal this jaywalking law made great advances in the national conversation toward that goal.

Worst Charlie Brown kicking a football moment for active transportation: transportation budget delay

The e-bike affordability program shouldn’t have been the only positive budget development for biking in Sacramento in 2021. Faced with a historic budget surplus, legislators and the governor were poised to allocate an additional $500 million to the Active Transportation Program. This funding would have allowed about 80 excellent, shovel-ready bike and pedestrian projects to get the green light. But then, like Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown, the promised ATP funding was snatched away when the governor and the legislature couldn’t agree on High-Speed Rail funding, which was to be part of the same funding package. However, the parties have resumed negotiations, and CalBike is asking for $2 billion for bikes. We’re counting on you, 2022, to give Charlie Brown the chance to finally kick the football out of the park and build more bikeways!

Best funding win to fight climate change: California’s e-bike subsidy program

Sacramento did come through for better biking in the budget, with $10 million for electric bicycle affordability. The program, which launches in July 2022, will offer vouchers to help people buy e-bikes. E-bikes make biking accessible to a broader range of people, and the voucher program will make e-bikes affordable for more Californians. We applaud the governor and legislature for funding this vital program (and a little pat on the back for ourselves, too, for advocacy that helped get it passed).

Best foot forward on regional planning: Hasan Ikhrata and SANDAG

The San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) has not historically been known for bike-friendly planning. But, with support from the association’s political leadership, Executive Director Hasan Ikhrata has been staking out a different path. In the face of possible funding shortfalls, Ikhrata committed to complete the regional bike plan’s Early Action Program, which includes the projects identified as a high priority. And SANDAG’s latest regional transportation plan represents a significant departure from past planning in the area. It has more emphasis on public transit and adopts the 10 Transit Lifelines developed by San Diego Transportation Equity Working Group. If implemented, the plan might even bring the region into compliance with its state-mandated greenhouse gas reduction goals.

Worst way to prove that traffic jams are a safety measure: bike/ped crashes went up despite traffic going down during the pandemic

In 2021, the data came in: while most of us holed up in our houses in 2020, the smaller number of cars on the roadways managed to kill more pedestrians than the year before. Remember this the next time a traffic engineer or planner tries to justify a road widening by saying it will make it safer. Driving went up in 2021 but traffic was still 22% below pre-pandemic levels. And, while the final crash data for 2021 isn’t in, it’s likely that car crash fatalities for people outside cars will be high once again.

Worst global pandemic that Will. Not. Go. Away!

You know the answer to this one. Mask up, get boosted, stay safe, and let’s hope for better days in 2022!

Did we miss one of your best or worst? Tweet your 2021 California bicycle advocacy hits and misses @calbike.

CalBike response to Governor Newsom’s Proposed Budget