March 2024 - CalBike

E-Bike Incentive Project Work Group: Project Implementation

March 29, 2024/by Laura McCamy

On March 14, 2024, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) held a public work group to discuss the current status of the E-Bike Incentive Project and get feedback on two possible implementation schedules.

Status and launch window for statewide e-bike incentives

CARB reported that the soft launch is underway at the moment and going well. Incentives for the soft launch, which is meant to test the systems for administering the program, are only available to applicants identified by selected community based organizations (CBOs); no applications are open to the public yet. They expect to distribute about 100 vouchers through the soft launch.

The launch is planned for the spring of this year. We’ve heard that before, but based on the work group and other discussions with CARB and the project administrator, we believe it will happen soon. At the work group, CARB said the incentive availability timeline would be announced in April.

Currently, the program is working on expanding the list of eligible e-bikes and onboarding more CBOs to assist with outreach. Several speakers at the meeting expressed interest in their organization becoming a participating CBO.

Program clarifications from the Q & A section of the meeting included:

Eligibility for the program, which is limited to people with income at or below 300% of the federal poverty level, will be determined by your last year’s tax return.
Each person can only get one voucher, but there’s no limit by household as long as applicants are over 18.
The California vouchers are stackable with local e-bike incentive programs. For example, if you got a $1,000 voucher through the California program and a $500 incentive from your local utility, you could apply both toward the purchase of one bike, giving you $1,500 toward your purchase. Some local organizations reported that they are designing their programs to coincide with the statewide launch, so recipients can stack vouchers.

The most exciting piece of new information at the work group was the confirmation that a total of $31 million will be available for the E-Bike Incentive Project in 2024. That’s the original $10 million allocation from the legislature, plus $3 million CARB added, plus $18 million CARB put in its current budget as part of its clean transportation programs. That should be enough to fund around 15,000 incentives. It’s still not enough to meet the likely demand, but it’s considerably more than the original budget.

Voucher distribution: one window or three?

The purpose of the work group was to get feedback on how best to offer the vouchers. CARB floated two plans: make all funds available on the launch date or roll out the vouchers in three stages, one in each of the remaining quarters of 2024.

An advantage of a phased rollout would be allowing more time for the populations this program wants to reach to find out about the incentives. Additionally, people who have a hard time accessing a computer or filling out paperwork would get more opportunities to apply. And the administrator and CARB would have more time to adjust the program between each application window.

The discussion got sidetracked into e-bike battery safety and whether the program should require eligible bikes to have batteries that meet UL or EU standards for lithium battery safety, so only a couple of speakers touched on the rollout options, and it’s not clear what CARB might choose. The agency is giving battery safety further consideration.

CalBike favors a phased rollout for voucher distribution. This has been found to increase equity in other programs, most notably the very successful Denver e-bike program.

For more on the statewide e-bike program and other e-bike incentives, visit our campaign page.

Watch a recording of the E-Bike Incentives Project Work Group

California Bicycle Summit Includes Global Perspectives

March 29, 2024/by Kendra Ramsey

CalBike’s work centers on changing policies in Sacramento. The upcoming California Bicycle Summit will bring together diverse perspectives from across our state, and we’ll also engage with advocates from around the world. The Summit, which will be held in San Diego on April 18-19, 2024, includes speakers from the Netherlands, Finland, Mexico, and Colombia, including a bilingual session in Spanish and English.

Cross-border bicycle diplomacy

San Diego is closer to Mexico than most parts of California, and the city is inextricably linked with Tijuana, just across the border. The 4:00 pm session on Thursday, April 18 — Bi-National Active Transportation Coordination in the San Diego and Tijuana Region — will be led by SANDAG regional planner Madai Parra, in collaboration with the City of Tijuana Mobility Commission (led by Tomas Perez Vargas) and Alianza por la Mobilidad Activa A.C. (led by Elizabeth Hensley and Daniel Gomez Patino). The panel will highlight active transportation efforts in each jurisdiction and the years of collaboration to plan a potential bi-national bicycle border crossing program with U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

On Friday, April 19, at 10:30 am, a bilingual Spanish-English panel will address the power of storytelling to shape our transportation future. CalBike alum and current executive director of Transform Jenn Guitart will be joined by Charis Pérez of Latino Health Access and Lorena Romero Fontecha from BiciActivo Radio. Fontecha is also an independent bike advocate from Bogotá, Colombia. This session will examine how cultural stories about biking, walking, and other forms of transportation affect our ideas about how we get around.

The view from Europe

The Netherlands has a well-deserved reputation as a leader in adopting bicycling for everyday transportation. In a 10:30 am session on Thursday, April 18, we’ll hear from a representative from the Netherlands’ Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management, the agency responsible for transportation and infrastructure in the Netherlands. The session will discuss active transportation as an integral part of transportation policy and feature representatives from industry to talk about what employers can do to incentivize bike commuting.

On Friday, April 19, at 9:30 a.m., the Summit will host a session on edge lane roads, a shared road treatment popular in the UK that is making inroads in the U.S. At 2:30 p.m., you can attend a session on Helsinki’s bicycle infrastructure, including bicycle superhighways, and the return on investment that the city has realized.

Representatives from the Dutch Cycling Embassy and the Finnish Cycling Embassy will be on their respective panels. How cool is that?

Have you reserved your spot at the California Bicycle Summit? The 2022 event sold out, and a limited number of walk-up tickets will be available. Buy your ticket now to be at the center of discussions of the hottest topics in active transportation.

Truck Side Guards: A Low-Cost Hack That Would Save Lives and Money

March 26, 2024/by Jared Sanchez

CalBike is sponsoring the Safe Vehicles Save Lives Bill, SB 961. Senator Scott Wiener’s bill will mandate two safety measures: speed limiters on passenger vehicles and side guards on freight trucks. But a provision for truck side guards, a low-cost safety measure that would save hundreds of lives every year, may get dropped.

What happens during a truck collision

Most semi-truck trips successfully move goods from one place to another. But, when something goes wrong, and a vulnerable road user or a passenger vehicle collides with a big truck, the results are often catastrophic. Cars that collide with the side or rear of a semi, which usually has a clearance of about 4 feet, can slide under the truck, shearing off the roof of the car and brutalizing the humans within.

When a person biking or walking gets knocked down in a collision with a semi-truck, they may be crushed by the rear wheels of the vehicle, turning an injury crash into a fatality. In 2020, 22% of all fatal crashes in the U.S. were single-vehicle collisions involving large trucks.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety ran crash tests showing how truck side guards can protect people in a car during a crash.

If you still have any doubts about the human toll of our failure to require guards to prevent underride crashes, the Institute for Safer Trucking’s memorial page has stories of fatalities that could have been prevented by rear or side guards.

A $1,000 fix

Prices for tractor-trailers start at around $70,000 and can be more than $150,000. The cost to install side guards: $1,000 to $3,000 per trailer. More than half the major truck manufacturers offer the option to include side guards when ordering a trailer. And that’s not even a true accounting of the cost because side guards can have aerodynamic benefits that save thousands of dollars in diesel fuel, more than returning the investment in the first year.

In addition, side guards can prevent snow and ice buildup. The EU has required side guards since 1994, and its trucking industry hasn’t suffered from the lower clearance.

Yet, despite a yearslong campaign for a federal requirement for truck side guards and an ongoing campaign by families of people killed in underride crashes, this simple, cost-effective regulation remains elusive due to industry opposition.

We call on the members of the Senate Transportation Committee to stand up for the lives of people biking, walking, and driving passenger cars, and pass the Safe Vehicles Save Lives Bill with the truck side guards provision intact.

Measure HLA Wins in Huge Victory for Los Angeles Safe Streets

March 18, 2024/by Laura McCamy

The best bike plan on paper is worth nothing unless it’s implemented. Los Angeles has put in only 5% of the bike improvements in the plan it adopted in 2015. “Since 2019, when I started Streets for All, we have been asking, pleading, and demanding that the city adhere to its bike plan,” Streets for All founder Michael Schneider told CalBike.

So Streets for All turned that frustration into action, which culminated in putting Measure HLA on the ballot. The measure will require LA to add improvements for people biking and walking when it repaves a street.

Victory for HLA wasn’t a given, especially in a large city like Los Angeles. Streets for All raised $1 million to get enough signatures to qualify for the ballot and another $3 million in the campaign to pass it in the March vote. Streets for All is going to make its template for winning this measure public, so groups in other cities can pass similar measures. The Complete Streets Bill, SB 960, which CalBike and our allies, including Streets for All, are campaigning for this year, would require similar changes on Caltrans-controlled roadways.

Schneider has written a detailed and informative account of everything Streets for All did to win this campaign on Medium.

The result was a resounding victory for Complete Streets and active transportation in LA, as the measure passed by a wide margin with about two-thirds of the vote. “It’s so heartwarming. I don’t feel alone anymore,” Schneider said. “It’s kind of corny, but I feel endeared to my fellow citizens, who aren’t as car-brained as everyone assumed they would be.”

When asked if he thinks this vote represents a sea change in how Angelenos and their elected leaders view mobility in their city, Schneider noted that it remained to be seen whether people will support changes to street configurations in their neighborhoods as opposed to the city in general.

But, he noted, “In the places where these kinds of measures have been put to a vote, they are always really popular.” The loud voice at the community meeting complaining about a new bikeway doesn’t represent the majority view.

And while LA isn’t about to become a biking utopia, Schneider notes that neighboring cities like Santa Monica and Culver City are showing that it’s possible to create bikeable, walkable neighborhoods in the LA region. “I think what this vote shows is when people go to more walkable, bikeable areas, they really like it,” he said.

Schneider hopes the success of HLA inspires advocates in other cities. Someone on Nextdoor — the place he went to eavesdrop on the opposition — expressed a concern that HLA would be “contagious.” “We hope it becomes contagious,” he said.

Bike champions will be on the ballot in November

Electing bike-friendly leaders in local and state government is one of the best ways to ensure more victories like HLA. Five of the eight Assembly and Senate candidates CalBike endorsed will make it to the runoff, and a sixth is currently in second place by a small margin, which is a huge win for bike champions in Sacramento.

In California’s nonpartisan primary, the two candidates with the top vote tallies advance to the November ballot, regardless of party affiliation. Two of CalBike’s endorsed candidates didn’t get enough votes to make the top two for the November ballot: Jed Leano in Assembly District (AD) 41 and Javier Hernandez in AD 53.

In AD 58, Clarissa Cervantes is in second place, less than 100 votes ahead of the third-place candidate. Second place hasn’t been called in that race.

We’re happy to report that the six other candidates we endorsed are either leading their districts or comfortably in second place and headed for the November ballot.

AD 50: Robert Garcia

AD 52: Jessica Caloza

AD 57: Sade Elhawary

AD 79: Colin Parent

SD 25: Sasha Rénee Pérez

Thank you to everyone who biked the vote!

San Diego Bicycle Summit Will Include Sessions on Wheels and on Foot

March 15, 2024/by Kevin Claxton

Bike session photo by Evan Dudley.

When the California Bicycle Summit comes to San Diego on April 18-19, it will include sessions that take participants outside the venue and onto the streets to view some of the improvements the city has made for people biking and walking. Mobile sessions are a chance to experience infrastructure and culture in this diverse and evolving city.

For those arriving on Wednesday, the San Diego County Bicycle Coalition will lead a walk from the venue to its offices for a brief welcome reception alongside CalBike and local partners Bike SD and Circulate SD. Along the approximately two-mile route, participants will learn about downtown’s active transportation infrastructure, local attractions, and restaurants of note. If you can’t attend on Wednesday afternoon, this mobile session will repeat on Friday, April 19.

On Thursday, attendees can choose between two mobile sessions to view San Diego bikeways. Riders of all ages and abilities are welcome at both sessions. The shorter route is flat, and the longer route includes a slight grade. Both bike sessions will highlight one of the region’s most transformative projects, SANDAG’s Pershing Bikeway in Balboa Park. Both sessions will be led by project staff involved in planning and building the infrastructure on the route, and staff from Eco-Counter.

In addition to a repeat of Wednesday’s walking session, Friday includes a mobile session highlighting historic Chicano Park in Barrio Logan and a ride on the Bayshore Bikeway. Participants will learn about the history of Chicano Park and the struggles of the neighborhood, which have often centered around discriminatory transportation and infrastructure policies.

A small fleet of approximately 20 electric bikes will be provided for use at the mobile sessions by our sponsor Rad Power Bikes. Pre-registration for mobile sessions will not be offered, and loaner bikes will be available on a first-come, first-served basis. Participants may also bring their own bikes, or you can rent a bike for the day from Unlimited Biking. Use code CALBIKE24 for a 20% discount.

If you haven’t registered for the California Bicycle Summit yet, get your ticket today to reserve your spot at California’s essential bicycle conference.

Hundreds Attend CalBike Complete Streets Campaign Launch with Senator Wiener

March 13, 2024/by Jared Sanchez

CalBike’s Complete Streets Campaign launch webinar showed strong support for Complete Streets, with 300 people in attendance. Panelists at Complete Streets on Caltrans Corridors touched on what Senator Scott Wiener’s Complete Streets Bill, SB 960, does, why it’s important, and what people can do to support its passage.

What the 2024 Complete Streets Bill does

Senator Wiener recounted how, when Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed his previous Complete Streets Bill in 2019, the governor said he wanted to give new leadership at Caltrans a chance to implement the agency’s own policies. Senator Wiener said it’s clear now that not enough has changed, and we need legislation to force Caltrans to take the safety of people biking and walking seriously.

Jeanie Ward-Waller, a former Caltrans deputy director and a consultant with CalBike, noted that Caltrans has identified $15 billion in needed improvements in bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure on state-controlled roadways. However, the agency only has plans to invest $3 billion in active transportation over the next 10 years and has programmed only $280 million in the next three years. In a state that spends $20 billion on transportation annually, there’s no excuse to allocate so little to active transportation.

Laura Tolkoff from SPUR outlined a provision of the 2024 Complete Streets Bill that’s a revised addition to Complete Streets legislation: a focus on public transit. SB 960 would require Caltrans to add elements such as bus priority lanes on highways, bus boarding islands, and seating at bus stops when it repaves a state route served by transit.

The Complete Streets Bill also removes barriers to adding safe infrastructure where local roads intersect with state routes. Caltrans’ reluctance to upgrade intersections has created danger zones that communities have been powerless to remedy. This is yet another reason we urgently need to pass SB 960.

The fight over El Camino Real

Bringing statewide policy down to the local level, Sandhya Laddha from the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition presented her group’s ongoing struggle to add bikeways on a 41-mile stretch of El Camino Real that connects San Francisco and San Jose. Caltrans has plans to repave half of this stretch in the next five years, but getting safe bikeways included on this critical route has been an uphill battle.

SVBC’s advocacy has won support from local communities and government officials for better bike infrastructure. She said Caltrans is the biggest barrier, calling it a “black hole.”

Laddha envisions an Open Streets event along all 41 miles of El Camino that would show the potential of the roadway, which serves as a main street in 19 cities and towns, to be a vibrant community corridor.

Watch the Complete Streets on Caltrans Corridors Webinar

What you can do to pass the Complete Streets Bill

Attendees were engaged, and the question-and-answer session was lively. One of the most often asked questions was, “What can we do?” Speakers encouraged attendees to contact members of the Senate Transportation Committee, which will hold its first hearing on the Complete Streets Bill on April 9.

If you’d be willing to come to Sacramento on April 9 or take other action to support the Complete Streets Bill, please give us your contact information using the form below.

Slowing Cars to Save Lives

March 5, 2024/by Jared Sanchez

This post was originally published March 5, 2024. It was updated to add an Assembly Transportation Committee vote.

CalBike is a sponsor of Senator Scott Wiener’s Safe Streets package, which includes the Complete Streets Bill (SB 960) and the Safe Vehicles Save Lives Bill, SB 961, a bill requiring side guards on semi trucks and speed governors on passenger cars. Both provisions of the Safe Vehicles Save Lives Bill are commonsense safety measures that will significantly reduce the risks of death and injury for people outside of cars.

The measure goes up for a vote in the Assembly Transportation Committee on Juen 17, 2024. Please email your assemblymember and ask for their support.

How do speed governors work?

Anyone who has ridden an e-bike or electric scooter has experience with speed-limiting technology. E-bikes stop providing an electric boost at either 20 mph or 28 mph, depending on the class, and most e-scooters have a top speed of 15 mph.

Speed governors on cars are slightly more complex because cars will travel at varying speeds on freeways and local streets, but that problem is easily solved (see below). The technology is known as intelligent speed assist, or ISA.

There are two types of ISA: active and passive. Passive ISA provides feedback to drivers via auditory or physical feedback, making it annoying but not impossible to exceed the posted speed limit. Active ISA stops a vehicle from accelerating at a specific limit above the posted speed limit. AB 961 would require active ISA on passenger cars sold in California starting in 2027, limiting drivers to no more than 10 mph above the speed limit.

How does a car know the speed limit?

By now, you should realize your car is basically a giant computer on wheels that knows everything about you, from your favorite Sirius station to the fight you had with your spouse over the speakers last week to the coffee you spilled taking that left turn. The same GPS data that lets the map software on your phone or in your car tell you the speed limit can communicate with speed-limiting software to keep you from driving too fast.

Fast and deadly California streets

Speed is a killer on our streets. Excessive speed is a factor in at least one-third of road fatalities, and it’s a particularly lethal factor in collisions where a car driver hits someone walking or biking. The chance of a pedestrian being killed when hit by a car more than doubles if the driver is traveling at 20 mph vs. 30 mph, as described in Streetsblog. Seniors are particularly vulnerable to dying from the impact of a motor vehicle.

speed kills chart smart growth america — Chart created by Smart Growth America

Yet many urban streets in California have speed limits of 35 mph, and many drivers travel above posted speed limits. Speed governors are only part of the solution. We need lower speed limits, particularly in areas with dense bicycle and pedestrian traffic. And we need infrastructure improvements — such as narrower lanes, speed humps, and chicanes — that force drivers to slow down.

Still, speed governors that prevent the worst excesses of drivers are a technology that’s available now and will start saving lives as soon as they’re deployed. The provisions in the Safe Vehicles Save Lives Bill are critical to making California roadways safer for everyone.

Long history of resistance to automotive safety

An automaker first introduced seatbelts in 1949, but they didn’t become mandatory in new cars until 1968. Despite decades of evidence that seatbelts reduce injuries and fatalities for people inside cars, you can still find whispers about seatbelts causing injuries (wrong) and restricting, I guess, an American’s god-given freedom to fly through a windshield on impact.

Similarly, airbags were invented in the 1950s but weren’t required for U.S. cars until 1998. Modern cars have all sorts of safety features, including blind spot detection and cameras for parking assistance, that we now take for granted.

Yet the idea of speed governors that would require drivers to — gasp! — follow the law has many people clutching their pearls. The San Francisco Standard came out against Wiener’s bill within hours of the press conference announcing it, and Fox host Laura Ingraham is convinced that breaking speeding laws is a constitutional right.

Insistence on behaving in ways that are clearly harmful and refusing commonsense safety measures is uniquely American. In Germany, drivers follow traffic laws just because. In Australia, speed cameras guarantee a ticket, so drivers simply don’t speed. And the EU is mandating passive ISA in all new cars starting this July.

Driving fast on California streets might feel like survival when everyone else is speeding, even if you don’t want to. If you’ve driven on the freeway, you’ve probably had times when everyone passed you because you were the only one poking along at 75 in a 65 mph zone. Speed governors could change that.

Will speed governors really slow down California drivers?

Even if the Save Vehicles Save Lives Bill passes, only a few vehicles will have speed governors at first, and it will take years before older cars age out and speed-limited driving becomes the norm. Of course, some people will figure out how to disable speed governors, and the market for older cars that can go fast might heat up.

But speed limiters will have an impact even if only a fraction of the vehicles on the road have them because everyone else driving will be stuck behind them. We might even change our culture around driving to one of following the rules and valuing safety over speed (we can dream).

Even if speed governors don’t pass this legislative session, they are coming. Autonomous vehicles observe all the rules of the road, including the posted speed limit; as more of them circulate on our streets, they will slow other drivers. Washington, D.C., and New York City are piloting speed-limiting technologies on municipal vehicles, a test that will show the impacts on other drivers.

CalBike strongly supports the Safe Vehicles Save Lives Bill because shaving a few minutes off the time it takes to get to the store isn’t worth someone’s life. We hope you’ll join us in speaking up for this vital measure.

California Bicycle Summit Plenary to Highlight San Diego’s Bike Cultures

March 4, 2024/by Laura McCamy

The 2024 California Bicycle Summit will be held in San Diego, which is home to a diverse array of home-grown bicycle groups, each with its own flavor. On the second day of the Summit, Friday, April 19, Chloé Lauer, Executive Director of the San Diego County Bicycle Coalition, will moderate a lunchtime plenary session bringing together representatives from several San Diego bike groups to talk about what makes the city’s cycling culture vibrant and unique.

CalBike spoke with one of the people from that panel, Vic Tello, who founded the ride group Nice N Easy two years ago, combining his love of biking and art to organize group rides. All the artwork in this post is by Tello.

Art + bikes = culture

Tello’s day job is electrical planning for General Dynamics, but he’s also been a competitive endurance athlete for over 20 years, and art is another hobby. “I have a thing for bicycle art,” he said.

About eight years ago, Tello started sharing his bike art on Instagram and got a positive response. “Art is a very powerful tool for communication,” he said. “Art is used for propaganda, flyers, advertising.” So, when he wanted to create a cycling club, he used his art as a way to catch people’s interest and bring attention to what he was doing.

“There’s many different bicycle tribes,” Tello says, listing road, mountain, BMX, and commuters. Each has its own culture, but they share more commonalities than differences. “I like to capture in the art how similar we are,” he said. “The art can relate to all bicycle tribes.”

Infrastructure facilitates bike culture

“San Diego has been putting millions of dollars into bike infrastructure,” Tello said, and that is what gave him the confidence to start Nice N Easy. Since 2010, the San Diego region has added nearly 400 miles of bikeways.

Nice N Easy meets for monthly rides that Tello says are accessible for all levels of cycling ability, including complete beginner. The rides often include stops for coffee or beer, and a recent outing gave riders a chance to experience San Diego’s Velodrome, yet another facet of local bicycle culture.

All the bike cultures at the California Bicycle Summit

The plenary will include several other groups, including the Awarewolves, and an exhibit of bike art. It’s one of over 30 sessions at the Summit, which will also include bike tours and social events. Many different bike cultures will be represented, from passionate advocates to dedicated urban planners. We hope you can join us. Register today.