Healthy Climate and Communities Archives

Quick-Build Street Design: What It Is and Why We Need It

May 28, 2020/by Kevin Claxton

Our process for building transportation infrastructure is slow and expensive, even for bike projects. A simple protected bike lane will commonly require five years from approval to construction. Quick-build street design projects are an exception. They get bikeable and walkable infrastructure projects built fast and affordably. Quick-build is more vital than ever since the COVID-19 pandemic. California cities and towns need to reallocate street space quickly to allow businesses to reopen safely, protect workers, and meet the rising demand for safe biking and walking.

CalBike has made quick-build street design a major priority in 2020. To kick off this campaign, we are working on a toolkit that cities can use to guide them through the quick-build process.

Here’s what you need to know about quick-build street design, plus what CalBike is doing to bring quick-build street design to more California streets.

What is quick-build?

The normal timeline for projects that add Complete Streets elements or otherwise change streets to make them safer for bike riders and pedestrians can stretch for years and years. From conception, to inclusion in a community plan, project planning, community engagement, grant application, grant award, additional engagement and project amendment, grant expenditure (often many years after the award), and finally project construction, a project can easily take more than ten years.

Some projects, such as a new bike bridge, have big price tags and require longer timelines. But smaller projects, such as adding a bulb-out to reduce the width of a pedestrian crossing or adding a protected bike lane, don’t have to be costly or time-consuming.

The first part of quick-build street design is to use low-cost measures. Staffers or contractors can create pedestrian bulb-outs or a new bike lane with paint and bollards. Simple signs or heavy planters serve as traffic diverters. Most quick-build projects can be constructed in mere days or weeks. They can go from conception to reality within months. The measures are also temporary, designed to be removed or changed. Quick-build street design is literally not set in stone (or concrete), so elements can be changed in response to on-the-ground feedback.

That feedback to the actual temporary design becomes the public input process for the eventual project, if the public supports making it permanent. It is usually much better than traditional planning processes, where stakeholders are asked to imagine how it will feel to use a new street alignment based on renderings and PowerPoint presentations. It’s not surprising, under those circumstances, that many community members are resistant to implementing Complete Streets designs that will change how they navigate their environment.

Quick-build projects extend the public comment period beyond implementation. Unlike asphalt and concrete infrastructure, quick-build street designs can be easily adjusted by adding a planter box, moving bollards, or restriping a lane.

While planners design and implement quick-build projects using “temporary” materials, many end up becoming permanent. In some cases, planners add upgrades that started as quick-build to future repaving projects. It turns out, however, that the hardscape infrastructure that has been the standard for traffic engineers for decades is not always necessary. Quick-build improvements like colored paint, soft-hit bollards, or planter boxes can safely delineate projects for years.

Examples of quick-build street design

Bicycle advocates have long used the refrain, “It’s only paint” to promote quick-build projects. Paint is cheap to install and easy to undo. The secret is that, if communities get to live with new quick-build projects, they like them.

Perhaps the most famous examples of successful quick-build projects in the US are New York City’s move to pedestrianize portions of its busiest squares. These projects, which divert traffic on some of the busiest streets in the most populous city in the US, rely mainly on paint and planter boxes to create boundaries where bikes can ride through on separated paths and pedestrians can escape crowded sidewalks. These plazas include outdoor seating that provides a welcome respite for weary tourists and locals in search of fresh air. They were an instant hit.

Quick-build has arrived in California. When a pedestrian was killed by a car driver in Oakland in 2017, the city was able to quickly improve the street design with bollards and paint. After adding bike lanes and brightly-colored pedestrian refuges, OakDOT reported a small decrease in speeding and a more than 80% increase in car drivers yielding to pedestrians.

Go Human Open Streets & Safety Pop Up Events from SCAG on Vimeo.

The Southern California Association of Governments used tactical urbanism (another term for quick-build) in conjunction with its Go Human safe streets campaign. The project installed temporary bike lanes, bulb-outs and other active transportation features in cities around the region. This project used quick-build as a way to get better community feedback on potential safety improvements. The tactical urbanism approach also built engagement and support. The project made street design fun by hosting Open Streets and other events.

Amid the current pandemic, the need to respond quickly to changing circumstances is greater than ever. Many California cities have created Slow Streets to provide safe space for physically distanced outdoor recreation. Often, the only infrastructure needed is signs and portable barricades.

As California moves out of its current stay at home phase of COVID-19 response, communities will need to move quickly to adapt to the new realities of living with an ongoing pandemic. We can’t wait three to five years to plan and fund new bikeways and wider sidewalks. In addition, city and county budgets have been decimated by the crisis. Planners will need to do more with less. Quick-build is the perfect tool to help local governments deal with the changes brought by the coronavirus.

Pros and cons of building it fast

Facebook’s motto of “Move fast and break things” shouldn’t be applied to urban planning. Quick-build comes in for some justified criticism. The speedy planning and implementation process has both benefits and challenges when it comes to community engagement. Here are two of the biggest issues around community engagement.

Pro: An end-run around knee-jerk NIMBYism

If you’ve ever been to a public meeting about a streetscape project, you have heard the NIMBYs speak. They fear that the bike lane you’re advocating for is designed to drive them out of their cars. They worry that it will take them longer to drive to the store. Or they may be anxious that their neighborhood will be overrun by “those people.”

It makes sense that people fear change, particularly people who are invested in the car-centric status quo. Quick-build does an end-run around this fear. It lets planners put “temporary” improvements in place on a trial basis. With designs in place, planners and users get to see what works on the ground, rather than in theory. Residents often find that traffic nightmares don’t materialize and the safety benefits are nicer than they expected. The hard-core NIMBYs may be difficult to win over. However, the support of community members who like the change once it’s in place can help overcome objections and keep quick-build improvements in place.

Con: Limited time for community engagement

There is a downside to the limited public engagement that is a feature of quick-build projects. The short timeline rarely permits the kind of outreach needed for a truly inclusive planning process. However, planners can and should foster an inclusive evaluation process. Community engagement after installation should include people from marginalized and disadvantaged communities. The process has to address the transportation needs of people who are often shut out of planning processes.

Inclusive design takes work. The quick-build process doesn’t absolve planners from the obligation to reach out to communities whose voices are less often heard in the planning process. However, quick-build projects often respond to majority desires for safer walking and biking space. The process is less likely to allow those needs to be shouted down by a few loud voices.

CalBike’s own quick-build project

Here at CalBike, we have a quick-build project of our own. We are working with Alta Planning + Design to create a quick-build toolkit. The toolkit will give municipal planners the resources they need to use quick-build street design for their urgent projects. It will give community advocates the tools they need to win commitments from local officials to make our streets safer, quickly. It will give elected officials the encouragement and rationale for not waiting for the next round of grants. Instead, they can meet their public’s demand for safer streets right away.

Our Quick-Build Toolkit project is itself on a fast track. We expect to have it ready for distribution sometime this summer.

Finding more funding for quick-build street design

In addition to our toolkit encouraging quick-build projects, CalBike is working to increase the state commitment to this low-cost and accessible way of making our streets safer. We are working with regional agencies to help them find funding for local governments to implement quick-build projects.

We support the California Transportation Commission’s decision to set aside $7 million from the next round of ATP projects for urgent quick-build projects. The Commission delayed the next ATP round due to COVID-19 impacts, but it promises an expedited review for any project applying for the $7 million in quick-build project funding. Applications for these projects are due soon. We are also advocating for quick-build infrastructure money in federal stimulus packages.

At CalBike, we want everyone who is able to get to choose to bike to work. We want safe space for children to explore their neighborhoods on foot, scooter, bike, or skateboard. Our commitment to finding practical, workable ways to build the safe and equitable streets that California needs is stronger than ever. We believe that quick-build is one of the best tools for achieving this goal. That’s why we’re building the toolkit. It is why we plan to put the toolkit in the hands of every public works and planning department staffer in California. At the same time, we will be working with state agencies to remove any barriers to quick-build projects that might keep cities from adopting this important tool.

You can help by supporting our quick-build campaign.

Assembly Transportation Committee Supports E-bikes for Mobility Option

July 3, 2019/by Kevin Claxton

On Monday, July 1, the E-Bikes for Mobility Bill (SB 400 – Umberg) passed in the Assembly Transportation Committee. The vote was 14-0. This bill expands the definition of “mobility options” in the Clean Vehicles for All program to include bikesharing and electric bicycle purchases.

Currently the Clean Vehicles for All program provides vouchers for trading in your old polluting car for low income residents. The vouchers are only good for electric, hybrid, and plug-in cars and “mobility options” like car-sharing memberships and transit passes.

The addition of bikeshare and e-bikes for mobility in the voucher program will provide an important incentive for Californians to switch from car to bike travel. E-bikes enable more people to ride a bicycle for longer distances, even with physical limitations, difficult terrain, and heavy cargo. This is an important step forward for healthy communities.

By passing the E-bikes for Mobility Bill, California’s Assembly Transportation Committee has taken a very important step in reducing our state’s GHG emissions. A study in Portland found that just a 15% increase in e-bike mode share results in an 11% decrease in CO2 emissions, even when using the dirtiest electricity generation profile in the USA. Another study found that as many as 50% of trips by electric bicycle would have been car trips, if the rider hadn’t had access to a pedal-assist bike.

The next step for the E-Bikes for Mobility Bill is to move through the Assembly Appropriations Committee. CalBike is committed to getting this important bill signed into law this year.

Where We Live and How We Get There; Legislation Linking Transportation and Housing Taking Shape

March 28, 2019/by Kevin Claxton

Los Angeles Announced as 2019 California Bicycle Summit Location; Request for Proposals, Early Bird Tickets Now Open

March 28, 2019/by Kevin Claxton

Although it’s only April, it’s already clear that conversations around bikes and biking are more connected than ever to intersecting issues like transportation justice, climate change, bicycle infrastructure, shared mobility, and the connections between transportation policy and California’s housing crisis, and continue to shape policy, activism, and innovation. As the California Bicycle Coalition celebrates our 25th year, we couldn’t be more excited to bring activists, educators, advocates, elected officials, and industry leaders together to talk about these intersections for 3 days and nights of workshops, rides, plenaries, and more at the 2019 California Bicycle Summit in Los Angeles.

Early-bird ticket sales are now open, and the deadline to apply for the steep discounts we’re working with our sponsors to offer is Friday, May 31st-just around the corner! CalBike wants everyone to be able to come to the 2019 California Bicycle Summit; we’ve set aside the largest number of tickets and transportation and housing stipends ever, and we’re committed to financing as many applications as we can. Apply for a scholarship here.

Our steering committee is developing an amazing set of speakers, but our advocate, organizer, academic, and industry friends and their breadth of perspective and expertise are what makes the California Bicycle Summit the state’s biggest and most engaging ‘bikes and beyond’ event; our Request for Proposals for workshops, rides, demonstrations, or presentations is open, and we can’t wait to hear from you; submit proposals here or reach out to Communications or Info for more details. We need help spreading the word! If you know an individual, organization, coalition, or leader with a great project, tool, story, or innovative idea California needs to know about, please share our Request for Proposals page to help make this year’s summit the best ever.

Governor Newsom can finally change the CTC

January 12, 2019/by Kevin Claxton

CalBike and allies give the new Governor a hard-hitting reality check about the California Transportation Commission he’s inheriting, and make some recommendations for appointments that would change the direction of the agency that controls billions of dollars in annual spending.

California Transportation Commission Appointments 2019

Clean Air, Transportation Regulators Meet for Second Time; Report Spells Out Need for Action on Climate Change

December 12, 2018/by Kevin Claxton

For just the second time, the California Air Resources Board (ARB) and the California Transportation Commission (CTC) held a joint session to discuss potential alignment in transportation decision-making and investments. While CalBike and our partners who work closely with these powerful agencies remain hopeful, we’re concerned that December’s meeting saw abundant discussion…and meager alignment.

Central to this 2nd joint meeting’s agenda was the Air Resources Board’s newly-released jarring and unambiguous report in response to Senate Bill 150, analyzing why our state is failing to reduce greenhouse gases from California’s transportation system. How did these two agencies respond to the report’s message? The ARB, with the authority to enforce policy changes to achieve that reduction in car trips, was mostly quiet. The CTC, with the power of the purse when it comes to transportation investments, was mostly defensive. The California Bicycle Coalition helped win and continue to support one of the reforms mandating these meetings, just as we’ll continue our efforts to engage, attend, and report on future meetings, because we understand the impact day-to-day advocacy can offer our state’s climate and communities.

Although reforms like the one that mandated this joint meeting are critically needed, attendance was light, and two of our state’s most important agencies essentially told an audience mainly comprised of transportation bureaucrats and a small party of advocates that joint action was complex, and little could be done about it.

We disagree, and we also remain hopeful.

The current membership of those two agencies may be unwilling to push back against the political and economic interest groups that maintain California’s climate-destroying status quo, but the winds of change are strengthening. Both agencies have taken some important steps – both individually and working in junction. But as the report bleakly lays out, these initial efforts have been unsuccessful in meeting California’s greenhouse gas reduction goals.

What steps exactly has the state taken thus far? One of the report’s key findings is clear: “the overall ratio of dollars planned to be spent on roads versus on infrastructure for other modes in the largest regions of California has shown remarkably little shift”. In other words, the agencies may be making some progress in implementing robust California Climate Investments (CCI) or making a billion dollars of active transportation investments in the past five years, but these are minor solutions to a massive and urgent problem that demands significant action.

As the ARB’s damning report also spells out, goals and mandates for 2030 and beyond “will not be met without significant changes to how communities and transportation systems are planned, funded, and built.”

“We know both agencies have dedicated and hard-working staff who are effectively bettering the environment, beginning to redress a transportation system that was designed to foster environmental catastrophe and social exclusion. The recently released SB 350 report describing the potential coordinated actions they can take to ensure our most vulnerable populations have access to good and clean mobility opportunities is a great example.

“But they’ve simply refused to take the joint action needed to make the transformative change that the report makes clear is necessary to meet our climate change goals and reduce vast mobility inequities,” said Jared Sanchez, CalBike’s Senior Policy Advocate.

Refusing to take joint action in light of recent trends is essentially a statement of defeat and powerlessness, something our state’s implementing agencies are hardly known for. Approving billions of dollars of investments in our transportation system every year is hardly a feeble responsibility. As we have documented in the past, both the ARB and CTC have a long way to go, and it’s not the number of actions that they take but the quality of those actions that actually redress the systemic threats of deadly pollution, climate devastation, and entrenched mobility inequity. Sanchez also noted that the excuse heard several times at the joint meeting – that taking action to reduce the number of miles traveled in vehicles will hurt the economy – is based on the oft-repeated talking point that our transportation system is our state’s ‘engine for economic growth. This is not only a morally bankrupt argument, but one that rests on notions of outdated economic principles. Research has shown that inequity is, in fact, bad for economic growth.

CalBike is dedicated to ensuring that public attention on this issue does not dissipate and that the Legislature, leading officials, and most importantly incoming Governor Newsom make it clear that they take this report seriously. Our state cannot afford to lapse into a paralysis of indecision and wait for the next dire report to scare us before drifting once again into apathy and inaction.

We challenge the notion that the ARB and CTC can do little of substance. They have wide-ranging authority that has too often been used to support the bottom line of private industry in the name of economic progress – whether it’s the freight and goods movement, oil and natural gas, automobile, or the always-alluring emergent technology industries. While the needs of the privileged are catered to, it’s already been shown both agencies are clearly failing to meet the basic needs of the most marginalized communities in California.

Will this most recent SB 150 report impress upon both agencies the critical need to act now? Our regulators are well aware of the data suggesting that “more and accelerated action is critical for public health, equity, economic, and climate success” within our transportation sector. The report, and this second meeting, highlight the many ways that mobility shapes climate change and inequality in our state. The enduring actions and inactions shape the daily lives of not just the Californians today, but those of generations to come. CalBike will continue to advocate for California’s transportation policies to better serve all Californians, and we’ll update you as the state’s Air Resources Board and Transportation Commission continue their invaluable first steps at collaboration.

Lead the Way, California: A Transportation Platform to Lead Us Forward

December 9, 2018/by Kevin Claxton

California has new leaders, and our communities deserve plans, principles, and priorities that will move our state forward instead of holding us back. To help support Governor-elect Newsom and his administration in truly leading the nation and the world in sustainable and equitable transportation policy, CalBike joins almost 50 organizations in releasing our comprehensive platform.

This transportation platform offers concrete proposals for the next governor to act to meet our ambitious state climate, air quality, housing, health, and equity goals. The platform takes an ‘intersectional’ approach that attempts to break down the usual operation of our state silos in meeting goals. CalBike is leading the way ensuring governmental action is carried out in more coordinated ways that challenge the true structural obstacles that cannot be solved piecemeal ways.

The platform lays out concrete steps in five priority policy areas:

E-Bikes, E-Bike Share Included in Latest Round of Air Resources Board Clean Mobility Options Funding

November 30, 2018/by Kevin Claxton

In late October the California Air Resources Board (ARB) approved its 2018-19 Funding Plan for Clean Transportation Incentives. This round continues to support transportation equity projects, including funds for much-needed projects that include bicycle and electric bicycle sharing. CalBike has been advocating for this from the beginning, and the Air Resources Board was clearly listening. […]

Inaugural Joint Air Resources Board and Transportation Commission a Hopeful Start

July 25, 2018/by Zac

If we had to sum up the first-ever Joint Air Resources Board (ARB) and California Transportation Commission (CTC) meeting in a word, we’d go with “hopeful“. CalBike and more than a dozen of our allies and partners wouldn’t have missed this important inaugural joint meeting brought about by CalBike-supported Assembly Bill 179, introduced by Assemblymember Sabrina Cervantes (D-Corona), part of a series of efforts to reform the powerful California Transportation Commission, an executive body with far-reaching impact.

The public comments from CalBike’s policy team and our fellow advocates made clear that reducing Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) and Greenhouse Gases (GHGs), improving air quality, increasing public accountability, and achieving a more just transportation system are critical priorities for our diverse communities.

Two publicly available summaries have been developed since then from Streetsblog and California Association of Councils of Government (CALCOG). The two summaries have a different take of the meeting, but both encapsulate it well within their own perspectives. What the summaries – and public comments at the meeting – do make clear is that there is tremendous interest in public stakeholders being more involved in coordination between the two agencies. Attendees at the joint meeting were clear: the ability of the public to provide oversight, accountability, and engagement with any joint actions is absolutely imperative.

It was also clear from the 4-hour meeting that Air Resources Board staff and board-members were already well versed in the state’s sustainable transportation goals. This makes sense, because the ARB’s chief role is to regulate toxic air and the agency acknowledges that the transportation sector is the leading state emitter. On the other hand and contrary to common sense, the California Transportation Commission, which is primarily charged with allocating billions of transportation investments, was clearly out of touch with decreasing VMT and GHGs, and with improving California’s toxic air and lack of social equity. As the two major agencies continue to develop closer relationships, and closer coordination, we hope substantial progress can be made in meeting California’s need for cleaner air, more transportation options, and, ultimately, redress and resolution of the inequities directly caused or influenced by California’s transportation investments. To get our state on the right track, both agencies have to be on the same page.

Timing, as always, has been critical in driving change. Just last week, the ARB released new data showing that the state has hit its 2020 GHG goals ahead of schedule. Superficially, this is great news. At the same time, however, the data also showed that the transportation sector did not substantially play into these achievements. Meeting our 2030 and 2050 greenhouse gas reduction goals is impossible without completely reconstructing our transportation system.

This is where we all have the tremendous opportunity for joint action of the ARB and CTC, and it must be immediate, substantial, and comprehensively coordinated. Stay tuned in the coming weeks and months as CalBike, and our partners, continue to challenge the authorities entrusted to defend our environment and our families to uphold California’s ambitious GHG targets. But, just as importantly, the air quality, equity, and mobility regulations, strategies, and policies that meet the actual needs of ordinary residents. We will be offering specific and detailed recommendations on ways to get there. The next joint meeting is December 4th in Los Angeles, and we are hoping that many others can be involved in this momentous, and hopeful, collaboration ahead.

New Environmental Justice Report Finds California Transportation Commission Far Behind Equity Goals

July 6, 2018/by Zac

Last week the California Environmental Justice Alliance (CEJA) held a briefing to discuss their second annual Environmental Justice Agency Assessment. The report lays out principles for the inclusion of environmental justice in policy and program implementation for state agencies, including the California Transportation Commission (CTC), an agency CalBike watches closely and which is extremely important this year given the agency’s increased role in making transportation investments from last year’s landmark transportation funding package Senate Bill 1, the Road Repair and Accountability Act of 2017.

CEJA’s assessment shows disappointing progress by the CTC in making transportation investments more equitably. Specifically, it shows that its investments sustain the inequalities burdening low-income communities of color across the state who face massive and interconnected systems of polluting highways, dangerous roadways, growing port complexes, threatening rail distribution centers, and sprawling warehouse districts. Vulnerable Californians located in close proximity to transportation infrastructure like this are exposed to dangerously high levels of nitrogen oxide, particulate matter, and ozone. Predictably, they suffer more disease and shorter life expectancy as a result.

The particularly insidious problem is that once we build transportation infrastructure it impacts generations to come as all subsequent development patterns have to connect with them. The CTC has not historically critically assessed the impact of its funding on California’s disadvantaged communities, and its rush to spend the new gas tax money in advance of the proposed gas tax repeal on the ballot this November has not allowed for a critical evaluation of how that money maintains inequities.

The rush in spending money is intended to show the voters that they are getting value for their gas tax money. “Brought to you by SB 1” signs are apparent all over California. But for low-income communities burdened by transportation investments, expedited, uncritical spending is not helpful. These communities and the organizations representing them, led in part by CalBike, did not support SB 1 in the first place due to its failure to protect disadvantaged communities.

Considering that the gas tax is considered a regressive tax by low-income Californians, the CTC has a challenge in convincing the populations burdened by SB 1 infrastructure projects to vote to keep the tax. The new report by CEJA shows they have a long way to go.

An important first step for the CTC is the corridor studies they have just begun. Freight corridors can be transformed with investments to protect adjacent neighborhoods such as the electrification of all truck traffic in special lanes, the construction of better active transportation infrastructure, and better enforcement of existing pollution controls. If the CTC expects voters to support the gas tax in November, they would be wise to show early results from these corridor studies.

As a state, we must actively make space for and include environmental justice communities in all of our policy decisions. Especially when we decide to increase taxes and new funds, there must be space for our most vulnerable residents to be considered important stakeholders as well as opportunities for actual meaningful partnership. Anything else would be a failure to deliver on the promise of a California that is safe and healthy for everyone.