CalBike’s Best and Worst of 2024
This was a year of ups and downs, of big wins for safer streets and big setbacks for funding to build safer streets. Like almost every year, 2024 was a time of contradictions and mixed messages for bicycle advocates in California and beyond. So it’s time to celebrate the good and make fun of the bad. Here’s CalBike’s rundown of the best and worst of 2024.
Best evidence that persistence pays off: SB 960, the Complete Streets Law
Three bills. Eight years of campaigning. And, in 2024 — Complete Streets success! We applaud Senator Scott Wiener for standing behind and reintroducing his legislation to require Caltrans to build infrastructure for people walking, biking, and taking transit on state-controlled roadways. CalBike stuck with it, too, tirelessly campaigning for Caltrans to live up to its own policies around Complete Streets.
CalBike’s Andrew Wright brings us a festive holiday song to celebrate this win (sung to the tune of Auld Lang Syne):
Verse 1:
Should safer streets be just a dream,
And never see the day?
Not anymore — Complete Streets Bill
Has paved a brighter way!
Chorus:
For safer roads and paths we cheer,
For biking, walking fine,
Let’s raise a toast, the fight is won,
This victory is thine!
Verse 2:
Guv’nor’s pen has sealed the deal,
Complete Streets law is here.
A step toward safety for us all,
Let’s celebrate this year!
Honorable mention: the Transportation Accountability Act, AB 2086
Assemblymember Pilar Schiavo’s Transportation Accountability Act, AB 2086, which CalBike joined other advocates in supporting, will be an excellent adjunct to the Complete Streets law. The bill mandates greater transparency and reporting from Caltrans about where it spends California transportation dollars and will allow us to better advocate for shifting the budget toward infrastructure that encourages active transportation.
Worst missed chance to make our streets even safer: the demise of SB 961, the Safer Vehicles Save Lives Bill
Advocates weren’t asking that car and truck drivers stop killing people, just that they kill fewer people. But even that was too much for California lawmakers. After all, carnage on our streets is part of the American way of life — am I right? First, the legislature killed the provision of the bill that would have mandated truck underride guards, an inexpensive safety feature for semi-trucks that would have saved hundreds of lives every year. Then the governor vetoed the final version of the bill, which required car manufacturers to install intelligent speed assist in some faraway future year. ISA warns drivers when they exceed the speed limit by 10 mph or more, and it’s already required in the EU. But we can’t have nice things, apparently.
Best act of transportation transparency: the Incomplete Streets Report
CalBike started requesting Caltrans project records, which aren’t available to the public, in 2023. The CalBike team spent much of 2024 reviewing and analyzing the data, culminating in Incomplete Streets: Aligning Practice with Promise in Caltrans Projects. The report, which was previewed in Streetsblog California over the summer, showed the inconsistent and inadequate treatment of biking and walking infrastructure in Caltrans projects and helped pass the Complete Streets Bill. Let’s hope it sparks a new era of building streets for everyone at Caltrans, starting in 2025!
Worst way to announce the best news: E-Bike Incentive Project launch
The long-awaited statewide E-Bike Incentive Project accepted its first set of applications in December, preparing to give away 1,500 incentives out of a projected total of 15,000 currently available through the program. This is terrific news, and we hope more application windows will follow starting in early 2025. After more than two years of refining the program and the passing of many promised launch dates, the California Air Resources Board announced the first application window less than three weeks before the date, which sent everyone scrambling to get the word out or get ready to apply a week before Christmas, but why not? We didn’t have anything else to do right now. We’re thrilled the program has started the process of handing out vouchers, and we look forward to more application windows in 2025.
Best 2024 election news: New bike champions in the California legislature
Six of nine candidates CalBike endorsed for district elections won and three lost, two of them by the narrowest of margins. We’re looking forward to working with five new bike champions in the Assembly and one in the Senate this session, as well as the many returning active transportation supporters. We hope the other excellent candidates come back to run again in the near future.
Best California bike champion heading to the national stage: Laura Friedman
In the Assembly, Laura Friedman was a steadfast voice for active transportation and safer streets, sponsoring visionary legislation for 15-minute cities (which hasn’t passed — yet) and omnibus changes to the California Vehicle Code to make the streets safer for people on bikes (the OmniBike Bill, which passed in 2022). Friedman successfully ran to fill Adam Schiff’s congressional seat. We’re glad to have such a strong bicycle advocate in the U.S. Congress.
Worst way to save a fraction of California’s state budget: Defund the Active Transportation Program
It was a tough budget year in 2024, the second year of budget shortfalls. That left the governor and legislators with some hard decisions about where they could make cuts. For the second year in a row, Governor Gavin Newsom proposed cutting the Active Transportation Program, this time to zero. The ATP, which gives grants to local governments for projects that make biking and walking safer, is one of the smaller programs in California’s transportation budget. Every year, it’s more oversubscribed as the demand for Complete Streets grows. The legislature restored $200 million of the total $600 million that should have gone to the program, which meant only 13 out of dozens of worthy projects got funding in the most recent cycle. It was a small savings for the California budget but a big loss for safe streets.
Best reporting on the worst news for active transportation: Melanie Curry and Streetsblog California
Streetsblog California and the USA, LA, and SF Streetsblogs bring us indispensable reporting about the latest developments for biking, walking, public transportation, high-speed rail, urbanism, and much more every day. But we have to call out Streetsblog California’s editor, Melanie Curry, for fearlessly wading through the weeds to shed light on the arcane minutiae of the CTC and other administrative bodies. These agencies rely on their work being too dense and complex for the public to understand to operate with impunity out of public view; Curry’s reporting digs into the details to make critical information comprehensible and help hold state agencies accountable to the public.
Worst local bikeway decisions: tie — Richmond Bridge and Culver City bike lane removals
Adding a bikeway to a local street or bridge creates a valuable connection and a joyful ride or commute. Taking away an existing bikeway is a movement in the wrong direction — we aren’t going to beat climate change by driving like it’s the 1950s.
Proving they think bicycles are toys and Serious People drive cars, local politicians are pushing to remove the popular Richmond/San Rafael Bridge path, which provides a connection between Richmond and San Rafael for people biking and walking, replacing it with a car breakdown lane on weekdays and opening the bikeway only on weekends.
Culver City removed protected, already-built bike lanes, forcing people on bikes to share a lane with buses. As a result, the city will have to return $435 million in grant money that funded the original construction of the lanes.
Looking for a way to harm the climate while also taking a bite out of city budgets and stealing joy? Look no further than these two regressive projects. Way to not go, Culver City and Richmond/San Rafael Bridge.
Most fun while keeping bikeways clear of debris: Bicycle-powered street sweeper
The Napa County Bicycle Coalition got creative in its effort to keep Caltrans from killing a protected bikeway over street sweeping challenges. The advocacy group fundraised, bought a bicycle-pulled street sweeper, and adopted that section of roadway. If there’s a better way to have fun while cleaning, we haven’t heard of it.
Most dangerous marketing ploy: Labeling electric motorcycles as e-bikes and selling them to kids
CalBike has been decrying the hysteria over e-bikes for the past year, calling out cities that declared “e-bike” emergencies after people in cars hit and killed e-bike riders. But there is another issue fueling anxiety about e-bikes: illegal electric motorcycles marketed as e-bikes and sold to unlicensed and often underage riders.
To skirt the stricter rules for electric motorcycles and capitalize on the popularity of e-bikes, some manufacturers and retailers are marketing e-motorcycles that go much faster than allowable speeds for e-bikes under California law as e-bikes. The proliferation of these illegal e-motorcycles on our streets and bike paths fuels anti-e-bike sentiment, leading to discrimination against people riding legitimate e-bikes and discouraging people from riding bikes. We hope the industry and California regulators take action toward honest labeling of these illegal e-motorcycles.
Most compelling race: Which will be completed first, the Sagrada Familia or pedestrian-friendly crosswalks on Beach Boulevard in Orange County?
Construction began on architect Antoni Gaudi’s sprawling Sagrada Familia church in Barcelona in 1882 — and it’s still not finished. We’re still waiting for Caltrans to make Beach Boulevard, which starts at the Pacific Ocean and is a major thoroughfare through Orange County, a street that serves all users. Paris rebuilt Notre Dame in less than six years. We hope we don’t have to wait another 60 for Caltrans to reimagine Beach Boulevard.
Best click-bait title to break into the mainstream: Killed by a Traffic Engineer by Wes Marshall
Want to get the attention of traffic engineers and active transportation supporters alike? Call your book Killed by a Traffic Engineer. Wes Marshall’s tome is more than the best-titled transportation book of the year; it’s a fantastic read that makes a compelling case for radically changing the way we plan and manage our roadways.
