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CalBike Launches Virtual Summit Session Series

January 31, 2025/by Kendra Ramsey

Every two years, CalBike hosts the California Bicycle Summit, bringing together advocates, planners, agency staffers, and members of the bicycle community to share insights and dream up a future full of bicycles. In February, we will launch a series of free virtual sessions to bring our community together for thought-provoking and insightful discussions year-round.

First virtual summit session announced for February 20, 2025

The first virtual summit session is “Creative Approaches to Funding Active Transportation Infrastructure.” The new administration in Washington makes it likely that federal funding for active transportation projects will decrease. But local governments and bicycle advocates can still find creative ways to fund infrastructure, planning, and education projects.

Register for Creative Approaches to Funding Active Transportation Infrastructure

The session will also address alternatives for funding active transportation infrastructure beyond the Active Transportation Program (ATP), which routinely has far more applications than it can fund.

Our initial webinar will feature programs managed by the Strategic Growth Council, the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG), the California Air Resources Board, and the California Transportation Commission (CTC).

Presenters:

Brianne Logasa and Marc Caswell, California Strategic Growth Council
Joey Juhasz-Lukomski, Shared Use Mobility Center
Laurie Waters, California Transportation Commission
Mary McGuirk Lizarraga or Omar Atayee, San Diego Association of Governments

We hope you can join us.

What: California Bicycle Summit Virtual Session
When: Thursday, February 20, 2025, 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Where: On Zoom
Cost: Free, but registration is required

CalBike Joins Amicus Brief in Safe Streets Accountability Case

January 28, 2025/by Kendra Ramsey

On January 3, CalBike joined with Bike East Bay and the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition to file an amicus brief with the California Supreme Court in the case of Whitehead vs. City of Oakland. We rarely get involved in legal cases, but this case, in which lower courts used flawed logic to immunize the City of Oakland for the inadequate road maintenance that led to the crash, sets a dangerous precedent.

Fundamentally, lower court and appellate judges have categorized bike riders as “recreational” street users who venture onto public streets at their own risk. This position reduces bicycles to toys or exercise equipment and seriously endangers the safety of people riding bikes on California’s public roads, whether for exercise, transportation, or a mix of both.

The crux of the lawsuit

In 2017, Ty Whitehead was on a training ride for the AIDS Lifecycle in the Oakland Hills when his bike hit a pothole. Whitehead was thrown from the bike and seriously injured, and he sued the City of Oakland. This crash is another in a long string of bicyclist injuries and fatalities caused by Oakland’s poorly maintained roads.

But, unlike in most cases, the city has contested Whitehead’s lawsuit rather than settling. Oakland won in the trial court and on appeal, and the case could set a very bad precedent when it comes to holding cities responsible for maintaining safe roadways.

Whitehead had signed a liability waiver as part of his participation in AIDS Lifecycle. Oakland argued that, since he was on a Lifecycle training ride at the time of the crash, it couldn’t be held liable, even though the city wasn’t a party to the agreement Whitehead had signed.

The legal principles are complex, but it boils down to a city refusing to take responsibility for a crash in an area with a reported pothole because the rider signed a liability waiver with a third party. This is a dangerous precedent since long-distance ride participants aren’t the only bike riders who sign liability waivers. For example, bike-share user agreements often include waivers. Does that mean that if a rider wipes out because of a known but unremediated road hazard on a bike-share bike, the city isn’t liable for their injuries resulting from poor road maintenance?

Oakland’s bad faith

A few years ago, Oakland conducted a study aimed at understanding the underlying causes behind the high number of lawsuits for bicyclist injuries and how to reduce those costs. It discovered, not surprisingly, that poor pavement conditions were at fault in more than half of these lawsuits.

Oakland’s Department of Transportation is probably, like its counterparts in most California cities, underfunded and overburdened. The city has made big strides in providing protective infrastructure for people biking and walking in recent years and shown that it can move fast at times, like when it installed a quick-build upgrade to a crosswalk a few months after a pedestrian was hit and killed.

But Oakland didn’t respond to the information about the role of bad pavement and especially potholes in bike crash injuries by increasing the budget for road repair and prioritizing bike routes. Instead, it blamed the victim, painting bike riders as risk-taking daredevils. This is exactly the wrong messaging if you want more people to switch from driving to riding a bike. “Get on a bike — but also, you might die, so take your chances” isn’t a winning message.

Here’s how the bike coalition brief, drafted by Shaana A. Rahman of Rahman Law, summarized the city’s response to the data on bike-related lawsuits:

“The Oakland DOT summarized five strategies, not to properly maintain its bikeways per se, but rather to ‘manage and reduce’ their litigation exposure. One strategy included communicating to the public ‘the inherent risks (and benefits) of bicycling, particularly in the Oakland Hills, and the structural deficit in funding for paving.’ This communication strategy included the City identifying bicycling as an ‘inherently risky activity’ and sending the message that bicyclists should expect Oakland’s streets to have uneven roadway surfaces.”

Bike riders were singled out for this treatment, as the brief notes:

“The City supported its messaging that bicycling is a purported ‘inherently risky activity’ with its data showing that bicycle claims and lawsuits are costly. The data, of course, can also be interpreted to mean the City streets are dangerous thereby causing injuries to cyclists. Notably, the City’s data also shows that 50% of all claims and lawsuits against it in the same period were related to pedestrian incidents, versus just 6% of bicycle incidents. The Memorandum does not similarly conclude that the act of walking is inherently risky.”

Yes, Oakland used the concept that bike riding is inherently dangerous to support its arguments:

“While the City of Oakland does not assert immunity pursuant to §831.7, its argument rests heavily on the concept that the type of cycling Mr. Whitehead engaged in was dangerous. For

instance, the City asserts Mr. Whitehead ‘knew that cycling was dangerous and that one of those dangers was the risk of being injured by a pothole’ and that ‘[l]ong-distance cycling is a known dangerous activity.’ (ABM 40.) The City further asserts that ‘cycling on city streets is an inherently dangerous activity.’

“While encountering a pothole while riding a bicycle may indeed be a danger to cyclists, so too would be the risk of being struck by an inattentive driver. These so-called dangers or risks

can be borne by someone cycling to work or riding with friends to train for a long-distance ride. They can also be borne by pedestrians, and children on Big Wheels.”

The City’s argument is part of a long history of painting people on bikes as careless, reckless quasi-criminals who deserve any injuries they get while riding. It’s a dangerous assumption that leads drivers to see bike riders as less human and drive more recklessly around them. The California judicial system shouldn’t support this flawed and harmful way of thinking about people on bikes.

If you get hurt while having fun, it doesn’t count

Even worse, the City of Oakland’s arguments and the rulings by the court trivialize the act of riding a bike. From the brief:

“Simply put, riding a bicycle should be treated no differently than driving a car as driving a car can also be recreational. Were Plaintiff driving a car instead of riding a bike, there is no question that the City could not escape liability by asserting the Plaintiff was just “driving recreationally.”

Can you imagine a defendant arguing that it isn’t liable for injuries sustained in a car crash because the victim was driving around for pleasure? No, neither can we.

Whitehead vs. City of Oakland crucial to protecting the rights of bike riders

We need more people to ride bikes, walk, and take public transit. The way to encourage this is to make our streets safer for people who aren’t in a motor vehicle. The rulings in this lawsuit have essentially sent the message that people operate bikes at their own risk, regardless of a city failing to address reported road hazards.

If the California Supreme Court upholds the rulings of the lower courts in this case, it could have a chilling effect on bicycle mode shift in California.

From the brief:

“If exculpatory clauses [in waivers] like the one at issue are valid and enforceable as to bicyclists like Mr. Whitehead, they will be valid and enforceable as to the casual commute rider, or high school student riding to school on a rental bike. Nothing in the Act suggests the Legislature intended public entities to avoid responsibility for maintaining its public roads for bicyclists. Upholding the Court of Appeal ruling will do just that.”

Oakland has a gold rating on the League of American Bicyclists Bicycle Friendly Communities list. Its unfriendly response to the ongoing issue of bike riders injured on its poorly maintained streets makes us wonder if that ranking is deserved.

Read the amicus brief.

Diverse Coalition of Advocacy Groups Urges California to Speed Up Emissions Reductions

January 23, 2025/by Jared Sanchez

A coalition of 61 local, statewide, and national organizations, including CalBike, has sent a letter to Caltrans and the California Transportation Commission (CTC), asking them to move with greater urgency to meet California’s transportation-related climate goals. Under SB 375, which became law in 2008, state and regional planning agencies must pursue sustainable communities strategies, which coordinate land use and transportation planning, and include infill housing and access to public transit and active transportation. With the start of a new federal administration that’s actively hostile to climate change mitigation measures and green transportation, it’s incumbent on California to pick up the slack and move more aggressively toward our climate goals.

After the letter was written, the new administration stripped California of its ability to mandate a transition to EVs. Without that, the urgency to give Californians alternatives to driving is greater than ever.

California continues to invest in freeways instead of bikeways

California’s transportation budget continues to invest heavily in projects that increase traffic and congestion and drive us deeper into a climate hole that’s decimating our state. The Active Transportation Program (ATP), the only dedicated fund for biking, walking, and transit infrastructure, receives a small fraction of the funding dedicated to highway expansion.

The ATP has been the target of repeated attempts to claw back funds while money to build new freeways remained untouched. The program has to turn away more projects than it funds in each two-year cycle.

The ATP isn’t the only source for active transportation funding, but as CalBike’s Incomplete Streets investigation showed, Caltrans has often shortchanged bikeways and sidewalks, claiming there wasn’t enough funding to build them into maintenance projects on state-controlled streets.

With the passage of the Complete Streets Law in 2024, we hope to see more robust investment in making California’s state routes welcoming and safe for people using all modes of transportation. Planners and engineers assume that because most people drive, most people want to get around by car, but the truth is that there is pent-up demand for active transportation. Research shows that building safe bikeways leads to more bicycle traffic, and cities like Copenhagen and Paris show what’s possible.

California must act now

It’s hard to know how big a disaster must be to convince Americans, even Californians, that climate change is an imminent threat requiring immediate action. Perhaps the horror and devastation of the LA fires will be a tipping point. But our human inclination is to return to life as usual. Humans distrust change and often instinctively oppose it.

So we need our elected officials to lead the way. We need serious, major investments in active transportation and public transit. We need climate-conscious planning from statewide and regional agencies.

The signers of the letter include environmental, health, and housing advocacy groups, as well as biking and walking coalitions, and more. This intersectional group is a strong coalition to stand up for reducing driving, removing freeways, and giving urban and rural residents safe, clean, convenient transportation options.

Read the letter.

Accelerate Transpo Emissions Reduction 20250121 Download

What Is the Best Way to Prioritize the Safety of Vulnerable Road Users?

January 22, 2025/by Jared Sanchez

In recent years, the number of pedestrians and bicyclists killed and seriously injured on roadways in California has steadily increased. The U.S. is now an outlier among developed nations in the rate of road deaths, and California has the highest total number of pedestrian deaths.

Vulnerable road users (VRUs) are people on our roads and sidewalks who don’t have the protection of a vehicle’s cage to keep them safe. This includes people walking, biking, riding scooters and skateboards, using mobility aids, and traveling by horseback.

As long as we prioritize the desires of car and truck drivers at the expense of others in our transportation systems, people walking and biking will continue to be disproportionately injured and killed on our shared roads. Here are some policy changes that could help make our streets safer for everyone.

Varied paths to VRU safety

There are lots of ways to make our streets safer for people outside of motor vehicles. Infrastructure is at the top of the list, but changing our streets scan be costly and time-consuming. While a project moves slowly through the planning process, more people die. CalBike is working on a quick build bill this year that we hope will result in more Complete Streets, faster and at a lower cost.

Slowing speeds is another option, since vehicle speed is one of the main factors impacting the severity of VRU injuries in a crash. We have supported legislation to reduce speeds and better enforce existing speed limits.

Another way to protect VRUs is to recognize and define the vulnerable road user in our state statute, as many other states have already done.

What is a vulnerable road user law?

In 2007, Oregon became the first state to pass a vulnerable road user law, and at least 12 states — Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington — have since adopted similar laws. More states are also adding anti-harassment laws that penalize actions such as throwing objects at bicyclists and pedestrians from a moving vehicle.

VRU laws increase the penalties for drivers in a collision that results in the death or serious injury of someone outside a vehicle. They recognize the special care that people operating dangerous machines on shared streets should exercise toward those not encased in steel and moved by a powerful motor. The League of American Bicyclists has drafted model language for such laws.

The increase in VRU collisions prompted the U.S. Congress to mandate, through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), that all states complete a VRU Safety Assessment as part of their Strategic Highway Safety Plan (SHSP). California’s assessment is very helpful in laying the groundwork for policy action to support VRUs.

Vulnerable road user laws and anti-harassment ordinances boost incentives for motorists to practice safe roadway behavior and deter unsafe behaviors around people walking and biking. They also increase opportunities for vulnerable road users to seek legal recourse after a crash. But do they work to prevent negligent driving that leads to collisions?

How effective are VRU ordinances?

In the last decade, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Sunnyvale, Sebastopol, and Santa Rosa have all adopted anti-harassment ordinances, which protect people on bicycles from “intentional threats, assaults, or harassment by motorists.”

The majority of vulnerable road user laws and anti-harassment ordinances provide increased fines and civil liability in cases where a person walking or biking is injured or killed because of negligent or intentional motorist behavior. Under most vulnerable road user laws or anti-harassment ordinances, bicyclists can bring a lawsuit against a vehicle driver in civil court — which has a lesser burden of proof than criminal court — making it easier for bicyclists to get compensated for their injuries and damages.

It’s not clear if VRU laws have the intended effect of reducing crashes and improving the safety of people walking, biking, etc. We couldn’t find studies comparing before and after crash statistics in jurisdictions that have enacted increased penalties, perhaps because the trend is relatively recent. But a recent Washington Post article about a Virginia VRU law showed that it had rarely been used.

CalBike has campaigned to decriminalize things such as jaywalking, where enforcement tends to be disproportionately aimed at people who are low-income, unhoused, or BIPOC. There’s a danger that VRU laws could be applied with the same biases, disproportionately penalizing Black and Latino drivers.

In addition, fear of stiffer penalties could increase the number of hit-and-run crashes. This is already a problem — a AAA research brief states: “The number of hit-and-run fatalities has been increasing at an average rate of 7.2% per year since 2009. A large part of this increase has been in fatal crashes involving non-vehicle occupants, mostly pedestrians.” The chance of survival for a vulnerable road user hit by a car goes down the longer they wait before getting medical attention, so more hit-and-runs leads to more preventable fatalities.

But there’s one more issue to consider with VRU laws.

Driving a car shouldn’t be a license to kill

When you read about collisions, drivers are often praised for exercising basic human decency and not fleeing the scene after they crash into a human being or an object. Police often make excuses for driver negligence, except in the most extreme cases where there is an intent to harm, and often fail to charge drivers with any crime.

This puts motor vehicles in a special category. In fact, the California Penal Code recognizes three types of manslaughter: voluntary, involuntary, and vehicular. In describing vehicular manslaughter, the code states: “This section shall not be construed as making any homicide in the driving of a vehicle punishable that is not a proximate result of the commission of an unlawful act, not amounting to a felony, or of the commission of a lawful act which might produce death, in an unlawful manner.”

You can’t be punished for murdering someone with your car unless you are committing an unlawful act. While drivers break traffic laws all the time by running lights, failing to stop at stop signs, and exceeding the speed limit, these crimes may be hard to prove.

One of the research papers we found is titled If You Want to Get Away With Murder, Use Your Car, and it’s true. We hold people operating heavy machines capable of traveling at high speeds to lower standards than anyone doing anything else. So a sense of justice could lean toward equalizing the penalties and removing the special classifications for vehicular manslaughter.

The definition of involuntary manslaughter in the California penal code is causing a death while committing a misdemeanor or “in the commission of a lawful act which might produce death.” A person can be charged with involuntary manslaughter if they are acting “without due caution and circumspection.” In other words, if you aren’t breaking the law in any other way but you accidentally kill someone, you may be charged with involuntary manslaughter. If you’re working on your roof, let a 2 x 4 fall into the street, and it hits your neighbor and kills them, you could be charged with involuntary manslaughter. You didn’t mean to do it, but you are responsible.

There’s a third category of manslaughter in the California code: vehicular. If you aren’t otherwise breaking the law in your car and you accidentally kill someone, you cannot be charged with vehicular manslaughter. For example, if someone is driving the speed limit in a truck with a grille so tall they don’t see a child in the crosswalk and run the child over, they are not guilty of vehicular manslaughter and are unlikely to be otherwise held to account.

Drivers are allowed to hit pedestrians they don’t see with impunity. It’s a legal position that normalizes the thousands of deaths on U.S. roads every year, letting drivers off with a small fine for failures of attention that cause life-changing injuries or death.

Would increased liability lead to more responsible driver behavior? It’s unclear. We certainly need to prioritize street designs that reduce speed and provide safer infrastructure for people walking and riding bikes. The question is how we reduce the carnage on our streets until we are able to make those changes.

California’s Transportation Budget Must Prioritize Green Transportation

January 10, 2025/by Jared Sanchez

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Jared Sanchez, jared@calbike.org, (714)262-0921

CalBike: California’s Transportation Budget Must Prioritize Green Transportation

Sacramento — CalBike applauds Governor Gavin Newsom for leaving funding intact for the Active Transportation Program (ATP) in his proposed budget, after two years of steep cuts. The ATP is the state’s only dedicated funding source for infrastructure that supports biking, walking, and public transit.

However, the governor’s budget doesn’t go far enough and preserves backward-facing investments that bake in decades of warmer temperatures and climate catastrophes. To have a realistic chance of mitigating the multiple disasters California faces due to climate chaos, we must stop investing in old ways of moving goods and people and reimagine our transportation systems.

The last budget cut two-thirds of the ATP budget, giving the California Transportation Commission(CTC) only enough funding to approve the top 13 projects out of dozens of worthy applications for grants. This budget should restore the $400 million taken from the ATP, allowing CTC to greenlight more green transportation infrastructure projects.

But that isn’t enough. The ATP is chronically underfunded, slowing the pace of California’s transition to a state that prioritizes safe passage for people using low- and no-carbon transportation options. CalBike is asking the legislature to double ATP funding going forward.

“The Active Transportation Program represents a tiny fraction of California’s transportation expenditures, yet it delivers powerful benefits for climate change mitigation,” says Jared Sanchez, CalBike’s policy director. “You can build a bike lane, upgrade a sidewalk, or add a bus-only lane for a fraction of the cost to build and maintain highway lanes. California should be investing much more in infrastructure like bicycle highways and connected biking and walking networks to make our communities healthier and safer from the ravages of climate disasters.”

State highway money (perhaps $1B) continues to build climate-killing roadways that increase traffic, fail to mitigate congestion, and work in opposition to the state’s climate goals. We must begin to shift our transportation spending to carbon-neutral options if we are to have any hope of stopping or reversing climate change.

New Studies Show No Downsides for Bicycle Safety Stop

January 9, 2025/by Jared Sanchez

Since Idaho passed its “Idaho stop” law in 1982, people on bikes have been treating stop signs as yields without any negative effects on traffic safety. As more states continue to pass similar laws, studies showing the benefits of the bike stop-as-yield, or Bicycle Safety Stop, accumulate. The latest is a pair of studies demonstrating that drivers and bike riders can easily and safely navigate intersections where the people on bikes treat stop signs as yields and that perception of the safety stop is positive or neutral, even among the car driving population.

Simulated stop-as-yield

The first study, headed by researchers from Oregon State University, placed participants in a simulator that had bike riders and car drivers navigating intersections where people on bikes were allowed to treat stop signs as yields. The study found no unsafe behavior from the bike riders and no difficulties in sharing the road from those operating motor vehicles. The study concluded that stop-as-yield laws would work better if states included information about them in driver handbooks — something even Idaho does not do. The authors recommend more education and outreach so road users in all modes understand stop-as-yield for bike riders.

Of course, many people in cars also roll through stop signs when there are no other vehicles present; this is a common and logical behavior for all road users, though it carries different risks for people operating 2-ton machines. For bike riders, stop-as-yield is essential for efficient riding because it conserves the momentum lost when starting after coming to a complete stop. The first study also found that bike rider speed through intersections was higher, on average, when using the rolling stop, which can augment safety. This confirms other studies, such as one showing that conflicts between bike riders and car drivers at intersections went down 23% after the introduction of a stop-as-yield law in Delaware.

Bike riders roll for safety

The second study is a literature review by researchers from Gonzaga University in Washington State, the University of Idaho, and Oregon State University — all states with stop-as-yield laws. The research looked at surveys of public opinions as well as expert input on intersection safety.

One data point that jumps out is an Idaho survey of road users in all modes about why they broke traffic rules. Among bike riders, 95.9% reported breaking a traffic law, but 97.9% of pedestrians and 99.97% of drivers said they did the same. The most common reason for flouting the law among drivers (85%) and pedestrians (71%) was saving time. However, people on bikes most commonly skirted traffic regulations for their own safety (71%). This data highlights the inaccuracy of perceptions among an unfriendly segment of the driving public that bike riders are lawbreaking road anarchists.

Again, this study finds a need for better public education so people driving and biking can share the road safely.

What happened to the California Bicycle Safety Stop?

CalBike has been heavily involved in campaigning for laws to legalize bicycle stop-as-yield over the past several years, and we haven’t given up on this important advancement in bicycle safety. Unfortunately, it looks unlikely that we’ll find a champion for this bill in the legislature this year. The current panic about e-bike safety (spurred by the proliferation of electric motorcycles illegally sold as e-bikes) makes the bicycle safety stop much less likely to garner attention and support. And we may need to wait for a new governor, since Gavin Newsom has vetoed a Bicycle Safety Stop Bill in the past and seems unlikely to approve one in the future.

CalBike has heard from advocates in Nevada who are working on a bill to legalize stop-as-yield this year, and we wish them luck. The more states that adopt this sensible regulation, the greater the evidence becomes that it improves street safety rather than impairing it. We hope California will join its neighbors in enacting this legislation in the near future.

CalBike Insider: Statewide Bike/Walk Advisory Committee Weighs in on Complete Streets

January 9, 2025/by Kendra Ramsey

CalBike does a lot of high-profile advocacy, winning big improvements for active transportation such as the Complete Streets Law and the Daylighting Law. But we also spend a lot of time deep in the weeds, sitting on state advisory boards and committees that shape agency policies and the ways that new laws are implemented. Sometimes we’re helping develop the process for a new law we helped pass; in other cases, our administrative work influences policies for biking and walking separate from the legislative process.

Our agency work is never glamorous and can be frustrating at times because of the slow pace of change. But it’s as essential to moving California’s transportation future toward biking, walking, and transit as our legislative work. Here’s a look behind the curtain at a recent meeting of the California Walk and Bike Technical Advisory Committee (CWBTAC).

What is a technical advisory committee?

The CWBTAC is an advisory body to Caltrans, and includes representatives from statewide advocacy groups like CalBike, representatives from city and county governments and transit agencies, metropolitan planning organizations, consultants, and other state agencies. Membership is open periodically by application and includes geographic, topic area, and sector goals. Quarterly meetings are closed to the public.

CalBike has been a member of the CWBTAC since it was formed in 2018 and was on the California Bicycle Advisory Committee, which the CWBTAC replaced, before that. We communicate regularly with Caltrans administrators during committee meetings such as this and in one-on-one meetings. Representing the concerns and needs of the bicycling community to Caltrans officials has been one of CalBike’s core functions since our founding 30 years ago.

Caltrans workshops implementation of new Complete Streets law

The most recent CWBTAC meeting convened shortly before Thanksgiving, and the main topic on the agenda was Caltrans’ implementation of the recently passed Complete Streets Law, SB 960.

Caltrans presented an overview of the process to ensure the infrastructure needs of people who get around by biking, walking, or taking transit are considered as the agency plans new maintenance projects and outlined the types of public engagement that occur at each stage of the project development process. The meeting then went into breakout groups, during which time participants shared ideas on how Caltrans should implement the Complete Streets law (SB 960). CalBike shared ideas on outreach to bring voices from disadvantaged communities into the discussion and how to create a process that doesn’t allow the desires of car drivers to overrule the interests of vulnerable road users.

Advisory bodies like the CWBTAC provide an opportunity for direct engagement and conversation with Caltrans and other agency staff. These meetings are an opportunity for CalBike to share the bicyclist’s perspective with not only Caltrans but also the local, regional, and statewide agencies and stakeholders that participate.

We will continue to work on Complete Streets implementation, both in large discussion settings and smaller meetings with Caltrans staffers, in the year ahead. The legislative session is barely getting started, but CalBike is already hard at work to make state roadways safer for everyone.

CalBike’s Best and Worst of 2024

December 23, 2024/by CalBike Staff

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.

California’s E-Bike Incentives Are Finally Here

December 16, 2024/by Kendra Ramsey

This post was originally published 12/11/24 and updated 12/16/24.

The California Air Resources Board announced that its much-delayed E-Bike Incentive Project would open for applications on Wednesday, December 18, 2024, at 6:00 pm PT. CARB won’t release all $31 million in vouchers on that date; it still plans to do a phased program, releasing a limited number of vouchers every few months. In the initial window, it will distribute 1,500 vouchers using about 10% of the program funding.

See the bottom of this post for links to informative videos about how to apply.

E-bike incentive program basics

The California vouchers are $1,750 and may be used to purchase an eligible e-bike from an approved retailer. The voucher can go toward the purchase of a bike, including sales tax, as well as accessories such as a helmet or panniers to go with the bike.

All the e-bike models in the program have safety-certified batteries. People who are awarded vouchers will have 45 days to choose an e-bike and make a purchase. The incentive is point-of-sale and will act as a discount applied to your purchase from an approved retailer. If you need additional time, you can get a one-time, 45-day extension to use your voucher.

You can buy an e-bike online through this program. However, the cost to return a bike purchased online is not covered by the voucher, and the shipping can be expensive. If you’re able to go in person to test-ride bikes, the program administrator recommends doing that. Finding the right fit is crucial when buying any bike, including an e-bike.

Only eligible California residents will receive vouchers

To qualify for an incentive, you must be over 18 and a California resident. You must also meet income requirements, and you’ll need documentation to verify your age, residency, and income. Participants in certain assistance programs are automatically income-eligible. Find out what you need to prove your eligibility.

The program is open only to people who earn 300% of the federal poverty level or less. People with income at or below 225% of the federal poverty level or who live in a disadvantaged community will qualify for an additional $250, for a total incentive of $2,000. You don’t need to know if you meet these additional criteria; the program administrator will verify your qualification for the additional incentive when it reviews your application, and the voucher will state the total incentive.

Many people will not get vouchers on December 18

If e-bike incentive programs in other states are any indication, demand for the vouchers will be very high. CalBike has an e-bike interest list of more than 20,000 people. As many as 10 million Californians are income-qualified for this program. There are only 1,500 vouchers available in this round. The math means that many people are likely to be disappointed.

At 6:00 p.m. on December 18, the application portal will open. At that time, people will be placed in a waiting room to be let in to apply, to prevent the site from crashing. You will be let in in the order you get onto the site. The program will only accept 1,500 applicants. You can’t pre-register to get in more quickly.

Unfortunately, we can’t offer any tips to improve your chances of being one of the lucky ones to make it through the traffic jam and complete an application. But remember that this is just the first of several application windows. CARB plans to give out around 15,000 incentives in total with the money already budgeted for this program. You’ll have another chance in 2025.

Helpful videos on the e-bike incentive application process

The program administrator has created a video to walk you through the application process.

If you still have questions about the application process, CalBike hosted a webinar on December 16, 2024 to go over the process and answer many questions from applicants.

CalBike’s Agenda for 2025

December 11, 2024/by Kendra Ramsey

On December 3, around 100 advocates and supporters joined CalBike on Zoom for a recap of a momentous 2024, a celebration of 30 years of bike advocacy, and a look forward to CalBike’s 2025 agenda. In breakout sessions, participants shared more ideas and enthusiasm for some of CalBike’s top priorities, including bicycle highways and shared streets legislation. You can view the whole webinar at the bottom of this post.

CalBike’s 2025 priorities

We outlined CalBike’s 2025 priorities, which will build on successes from 2024, most notably passing the Complete Streets Bill, SB 960. We are looking for partners in Sacramento to move our legislative agenda forward and working with staffers and agency stakeholders to move our budget priorities forward and implement the Complete Streets Law.

Here are some of the key elements of CalBike’s 2025 agenda.

Bicycle highways

We plan to recommend a pilot program establishing networks of bicycle highways that are numbered and signed. The goal is to test the concept in two major metropolitan regions. The bike highways would serve trips of five miles or more, and support higher speed travel of up to 25 miles per hour. The highways would connect to other regional routes, creating links between communities and making biking an even more convenient and safe way to get around.

Shared Streets

The Open Streets and Slow Streets movements gained momentum during the pandemic. Demand for safe spaces where people of all ages can comfortably play, ride a bike, roll, and walk continues to grow, building on ideas such as School Streets.

Shared Streets would create a new roadway classification where vulnerable road users would have the right of way at all locations, not just at intersections and crosswalks. Popular in Europe, Shared Streets are slow-speed facilities that truly prioritize travel by bike and foot. They are safe and vibrant spaces built around people-powered movement.

Quick-build pilot

A perfect companion to Shared Streets is a Bikeway Quick-Build Pilot Program. The program would expedite the development and implementation of safe, protected bikeways on the state highway system, much of which runs through our towns and cities. It would also give planners and road users the opportunity to live with safer streets and iterate the design process, leading to robust community support for building more permanent facilities.

CalBike’s concept would require Caltrans to develop guidelines for implementing bikeway quick-build projects, which would be both faster and less expensive to build than hardscape changes. Quick-build would be a catalyst for the development of facilities to improve safety for people on bikes, who continue to be injured and killed on unsafe roadways while long-term planning is done.

Bike Omnibus

In 2022, Assemblymember Laura Friedman’s OmniBike Bill made several significant changes to the California Vehicle Code as it applied to biking and walking. The commonsense changes in that bill make our streets more bike-friendly, and we’d like to run another bill to build in more change to the code for people who get around by bike.

The bill would:

Clarify hand signaling: Bicyclists would not be required to provide a signal if “circumstances require that both hands be used to safely control or operate the bicycle.”
Pedestrian Hybrid Beacon: this would clarify that a person riding a bicycle would have the rights and responsibilities of a pedestrian at a PHB or HAWK beacon but shall yield to pedestrians upon and along a crosswalk.
More daylighting: Prohibit extra-tall vehicles from parking for an additional specified distance from a marked or unmarked crosswalk to improve visibility for vulnerable road users at the crossing.

The Bicycle Safety Stop

We continue to seek the introduction and passage of this commonsense regulation, which allows people on bikes to treat stop signs as yields. Similar laws have existed for more than 40 years in other states with no adverse outcomes, and the Safety Stop helps bike riders and car drivers share the road more and makes bike riding safer. Whether or not we’re able to run a bill in 2025, CalBike will keep campaigning for this law.

A new bikeway classification

Many California cities have created bike boulevards — traffic-calmed streets where people on bikes are safe to take the lane. Currently, bike boulevards are classified as a subset of Class III bikeways, on which people in cars and people on bikes share a lane. However, bike boulevards are distinct from Class III bikeways, many of which consist of sharrows on high-speed routes. It’s time to create a separate classification for these low-volume streets, many of which have diverters to prevent non-local car traffic and prioritize bicycle through traffic. Bike boulevards would become Class 5 bikeways.

E-Bike Policy

E-bike safety is a hot topic and we are having ongoing conversations with our local partners and legislators alike on issues surrounding e-bikes. There were several pilot bills in different parts of the state in 2024, as well as local ordinances cracking down on e-bikes. Some key topics include clarification of illegal electric motorcycles, which may be marketed as e-bikes but have significant differences including not having operable pedals, operating at much higher speeds, and/or being able to be modified or switched between modes to go faster than the top speed allowed for e-bikes. We recently crafted a coalition letter on the topic and will keep working to ensure that e-bikes continue to be a safe and viable form of transportation in California.

We are also talking with legislators about more money for active transportation infrastructure in next year’s budget and working with Caltrans to ensure it fully implements the new Complete Streets law. CalBike had a big year in 2024 and we’ll continue to push for a California full of bikes in 2025.

Watch the Agenda Reveal, including a look back at CalBike’s 30-year history of bicycle advocacy.