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Senator Liu pulls helmet mandate

April 10, 2015/by Zac

Today, Senator Carol Liu pulled the helmet mandate from her bill.

Helmet mandates don’t make streets safer. They discourage people from riding, and they are enforced inequitably. Your California Bicycle Coalition asked her to pull the bill, and thousands of people from across California chimed in on our petition. Senator Liu heard nearly unanimous opposition from organized bicycling advocates, and she listened.

Riding a bicycle is safe. Especially the kind of day-to-day, non-sporty bicycling that we’re seeing more and more of in California. In fact, bicycling has gotten 40{850a63fa8a72bae4d6bfa3f1eda9f619cddace10f9053ede128e2914f9ca5a15} safer in the last decade alone. We’re on the right track.

With this threat behind us, the California Bicycle Coalition turns its full attention to our most important campaign, and to overcoming a more formidable enemy: those who would deny more funding for better bikeways. If together we win the campaign for an increase in the Active Transportation Program, more California communities will have the funding to build networks of protected bike lanes and safe quiet streets and paths.

National Bike Summit 2015 Report

March 10, 2015/by Zac

With Republicans in charge as Congress considers the next six years of federal transportation funding, this year’s National Bike Summit and Women’s Forum took on a new urgency. From Tuesday to Thursday last week, approximately 50 delegates from California met to share best practices in bicycle advocacy, emphasizing the importance of equity and inclusion, and meet with Representatives and Senators to highlight the importance of federal support of bicycling in our communities. And we are on the verge of a hugely important win.

In previous years, Summit meetings had a decidedly partisan feel, with Republicans generally opposed to federal support bicycling and Democrats generally in support. This year, with one party in charge, the Summit presented the huge opportunity to overcome the partisan divide in bicycle politics. There’s no reason Republicans shouldn’t support more bicycling, and in fact, Republican mayors usually do. California delegates delivered letters from mayors across the country, and made the case that bicycling is good for our economy, good for health, and that local (smaller) governments should have as much control as possible over transportation spending. These in-person meetings were convincing, we hope, as surveys indicate that such meetings are the most effective ways to get your point across to a Congressional representative.

If the current Congress can be convinced that bicycling is key to our national interests, we will have overcome the partisan divide that has hindered the improvement of bicycling in communities throughout the country.

The stakes are high, because a faction in Congress wants to set us back 25 years when federal transportation dollars were restricted to the highways. President George Bush overturned that rule in 1991 when he signed the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act to allow federal money to be spent where states thought it was needed most, not necessarily only on highways. California needs the flexibility that current transportation bills provide because we will use that flexibility to fund transit, pedestrian and bicycling improvements. That debate will continue for months and we will keep you informed

The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition was one of two California organizations taking home awards from the “Oscars” of bicycle advocacy. Here, its former and new executive directors Leah Shahum and Noah Budnick celebrate winning “Advocacy Organization of the Year” award. Another California winner was Bike East Bay who took home the “Best Campaign of the Year” award for their victory on Measure BB, a sales tax that will generate a half billion dollars for bicycling in Alameda County.

Representing one of the most populous counties in the country, Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition Policy Director Eric Bruins scheduled more meetings than any other delegate. Here he poses with executive director Tamika Butler outside Representative Sanchez’s office.

SF in line to lead the state with Vision Zero campaign

December 20, 2014/by Zac

Last year, the 21 people killed while walking or biking in San Francisco represented the highest count since 2007, as noted a statement from the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition and Walk San Francisco. In response, the SF Bicycle Coalition, WalkSF, and over twenty community groups are calling on the Board of Supervisors, the SFMTA and Mayor Ed Lee to follow New York’s lead adopt one of the most progressive road traffic safety projects in the world: Vision Zero.

The Vision Zero initiative started in Sweden in 1997 (yes, we’re 17 years behind). Its basic premise? No loss of life is acceptable.

The Swedish Vision Zero is based on four principles:

Ethics: Human life and health are paramount and take priority over mobility and other objectives of the road traffic system
Responsibility: providers and regulators of the road traffic system share responsibility with users;
Safety: road traffic systems should take account of human fallibility and minimize both the opportunities for errors and the harm done when they occur; and
Mechanisms for change: providers and regulators must do their utmost to guarantee the safety of all citizens; they must cooperate with road users; and all three must be ready to change to achieve safety.”

Specifically, Walk SF and the SF Bicycle Coalition are demanding the following:

Fix the known dangerous locations where people are being injured on our streets — the majority of which are in the South of Market and Tenderloin neighborhoods — by empowering a Strategic Street Action Team to deliver on-the-ground improvements quickly;
Ensure full and fair enforcement of traffic laws, with a focus on the most problematic dangerous behaviors and locations;
Invest in training and education programs for all road users, with a focus on frequent drivers, who spend the most hours on the road and are involved in a disproportionate number of fatalities and serious collisions.

San Francisco’s “Street Action Team” is expected to redesign streets for slower speeds, which is one of the most effective ways to save lives, but one tool not available to them is lower speed limits. Portland, whose traffic safety record is exemplary, added an abundance of 15 and 20 mph zones. California law makes these changes impossible. The only place where speeds can be that low is in some school zone and alleys. Enforcement by speed camera, the most efficient method of enforcing the law, is not an option.

Attempts to change speed limit laws have met regular resistance in Sacramento but CalBike is committed to building the coalition that will enable local leaders to implement these crucial aspects of a Vision Zero campaign. An essential part of that will be a coalition of cities calling for the freedom to lower their speed limits and create livable cities. We join with the SF Bicycle Coalition in calling on Mayor Lee to take action for safer streets beyond a public relations campaign to “be nice, look twice,” which has rubbed some folks the wrong way.

We encourage every city in California to join the Vision Zero movement. We encourage every Californian to demand livable streets for our elderly, our children, the daily commuters. We deserve more from our Departments of Transportation. Now is the time when the movement to have livable communities, where not a single death is tolerable, will reform our communities. Make your voice heard. Join your local advocacy group, vote for bikes, join public demonstrations, and help your community thrive.

Stop caring about auto congestion in environmental analysis, says OPR

November 10, 2014/by Zac

A new law changes a perverse aspect of the California Environmental Quality Act that required local agencies to consider delays to motor vehicles worse for the environment than negative impacts on bicycle safety. The Governor’s Office of Planning & Research is writing new guidelines to comply with the law, eliminating “automobile level of service” as a measurement of a project’s environmental impact. Pushback from some local agency leaders more concerned with congestion than safety threatens to weaken the proposal, so OPR needs to hear from you.

Last year, the Governor signed SB 743 by Darryl Steinberg to eliminate the use of “automobile level of service” (LOS) as a measurement of a project’s environmental impact for purposes of compliance with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). The old guidelines for compliance required an agency to measure the seconds of delay that motor vehicles experience at an intersection, and declare a project to have a significant (and bad) impact on the environment if it increased that delay beyond a certain thresshold. The rule was widely panned, as it penalized a bike project that removed a traffic lane for a bike lane, while giving a project that removed a bike lane for a traffic lane a free pass, in the name of environmental protection.

SB 743 required the Governor’s Office of Planning & Research (OPR) to develop new guidelines that did not use LOS or any measure of congestion as an indication of environmental impact. OPR’s proposed new guidelines replace LOS with a measurement of the increase in vehicle miles traveled caused by a project. Whereas project proponents used to mitigate for increases in congestion by widening roadways or elminating bike lanes, now they will be required to mitigate for increases in vehicle miles traveled by improving conditions for biking, walking, and taking transit.

It’s a sensible change to environmental law that implements the intent of CEQA’s original drafters more than 40 years ago. Requirements to maintain a certain so-called “level of service” for automobile traffic may still be imposed by a local agency, and some state congestion management laws still require local agencies to reduce automobile congestion, so this change isn’t the last one that’s needed. You can learn as much as you’d ever want to know in this 2-hour webinar.

Pushback from agencies more concerned about traffic flow than economic vitality and safety is growing. They need to hear from you. The comment period is open through November 21, 2014. By clicking on this link you can download a letter and mail it to the OPR to tell them how much you support their current direction.

Advice to Council submitted

October 31, 2014/by Zac

The California Bicycle Coalition has submitted two letters to the Strategic Growth Council with feedback on their proposed guidelines for administering the $130 million “Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities” grant program. The program is intended to support measures that reduce greenhouse gas emissions by reducing vehicle miles traveled and could play an important role in funding the infrastructure improvements we need to enable more bicycling throughout California.

One of our letters was submitted in coalition with other active transportation organizations. That letter is posted here. The other letter was submitted by us to clarify and expand on some of the points in the first letter. That letter is posted here, and included below:

October 31, 2014

Ken Alex, Chair
Strategic Growth Council
Sacramento, CA 95814

Re: California Bicycle Coalition recommendations on the AHSC Program Guidelines

Dear Mr. Alex,

On behalf of our membership and affiliates’ membership of more than 30,000 bicycle advocates across California, we are writing to comment on the guidelines for the Affordable Housing & Sustainable Communities greenhouse gas reduction program. We are excited about this program. We know that making our communities less dependent on automobile transportation will have cascading effects leading to vastly more sustainable communities and healthier, happier Californians. We support Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) reduction as the primary greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction strategy for the AHSC Program.

We applaud the work of the SGC staff in getting us so far toward a great program. We appreciate the opportunity to provide this feedback on the program guidelines. We reaffirm the comments we made as part of the Coalition on Active Transportation Leadership (CATL) in its Oct 22 letter. We submit these comments as further clarification and refinement, especially with regard to the bicycle-related portions.

The following are suggestions for changes to the scoring criteria.

The first threshold requirement of ICP projects should not limit projects to those that increase transit use. An project that only increases walking and biking might help meet the goals of the AHSC program better than any other project but would be inelgible as the guildelines are currently drafted. Please change this threshold requirement.
Section 107 (e)(4) provides bonus points to projects that implement an element of a bicycle or pedestrian master plan. However, the AHSC will be stronger if projects are required to implement elements of such plans. Please refer to our comments in the CATL letter.
Section 107 (i) limits allowable parking to reasonable levels for most locations, but some locations in California impose even stronger limits. The AHSC guidelines should not provide bonus points to projects that provide parking in excess of the amount allowed in a jurisdiction, so this guideline should be revised to refer to the proposed limits or the maximum allowable parking according to local zoning, whichever is lower.
Section 107 (k) gives bonus points for bicycle features. This section should be reorganized in order to more effectively enable more bicycling.

- The single most important factor in the ability of people to bike is the degree to which their destinations are connected to each other via low-traffic-stress streets. The methodology to evaluate the degree of traffic stress is not complicated and widely available and could be employed to evaluate whether a project is located on a bicycle-friendly network of streets. Such a methodology is vastly superior to a simple measurement of miles of bike lanes and paths because a housing project or qualifying transit station could be surrounded by bike lanes but separated from them by dangerous high-traffic streets or intersections. We would be more than happy to meet with staff to help you devise an easy way of evaluating the bicycle-friendliness of a project and project area. This connectivity issue should be prioritized with the most points in the scoring matrix. Projects should get even more credit for contributing to improvements in connectivity.
- The next most important issue is bike parking. Housing projects should be required to provide secure, indoor, secure bike parking (protecting the bike and its components, such as provided by a bike cage accessed only by residents) at a ratio of 1 space per unit or in accordance with local regulations, whichever is higher. Transit stations should provide bike parking sufficient to meet demand, including a mix of racks and short-term lockers that protect the bike and its components.
- Permitting access to bikes on the transit vehicle should not be an acceptable alternative to secure bike parking as implied by subsection 107(k)1.(A).
- Providing points for the provision of a bike repair kiosk is a great, innovative idea. We would be happy to direct your staff to examples of very simple and affordable bike repair kiosks that provide self-service tools and pumps.
- Points for being in proximity of a bike sharing system should be minimal and limited to bike sharing programs that are accessible to low-income users.

The following are suggestions for changes to the definitions.

The “First Mile – Last Mile Strategy” definition should clarify the actual distance of trips in miles from a transit station that such a strategy is intended to serve. We support the definition of the Federal Transit Administration which has determined that the most appropriate planning radius for bike improvements is three miles, while for pedestrian improvements it’s a half-mile. Either the guidelines should refrain from using the jargon “first mile-last mile” and simply refer to bicycling and walking improvements a 3- and ½-mile radius of the transit station, or the definition of that straetgy should clarify that it’s really “First 3 Miles – Last 3 Miles” or “First ½-mile-Last ½-Mile.”
The definition of “complete streets” is too vague. Merely adding a striped bike lane to a high-speed arterial does not make that street a “completely bikeable” street from the point of view of most people. The definition of “complete street” ought to specify low-traffic stress bike routes and safe and comfortable pedestrian conditions.
The definition of “Active Transportation Program” should be broadened to include encouragement and enforcement programs, not just educational programs.
The list of economic co-benefits does not include the most important one for the purpose of the AHSC program: reduction in transportation costs due to reduced car use. Its example of reduced-cost transit passes neglects the reality that for many people transit is not a realistic option for their trips, but a bike could be. The list should be revised to add, “increased disposable income for families due to reduced automobile use.” Subsidies for bike purchases should be considered an eligible expense under the program.

Again, we are grateful for this opportunity to provide feedback on the AHSC guidelines. Please don’t hesitate to call me to follow up on any of these suggestions, or if you have questions about them.

Sincerely,

Dave Snyder

Executive Director

California Bicycle Coalition

New GHSA Report Gets It Wrong

October 29, 2014/by Zac

A recent report by the Governors Highway Safety Association attracted a great deal of attention, but the way they present the data is misleading. The report implies that riding a bike in California has gotten more dangerous in the past few years. In fact, bicycling is almost twice as safe in California as it was in 2010. And it’s getting safer.

The report highlights the increase in the total number of bicycle-related injuries and fatalities, noting that California has the most fatalities among the 50 states, with 138 fatal motor vehicle/bicycle collisions in 2012. The report fails to consider that these numbers are high because California is the most populous state, with more bicycle trips than any other state. In fact, he number of people riding bikes has nearly doubled since 2010. A review of the official numbers provided by the California Highway Patrol (including all bicycle injuries) in the context of the official transportation report provided by Caltrans, gives a very different picture of bicycle safety trends.

Trends from 2000 to 2012 in California (from our analysis of SWITRS data):
Bicycling is up 88{850a63fa8a72bae4d6bfa3f1eda9f619cddace10f9053ede128e2914f9ca5a15}.
The bicycle injury rate per trip is down 45{850a63fa8a72bae4d6bfa3f1eda9f619cddace10f9053ede128e2914f9ca5a15}.
The bicycle fatality rate per trip is down 39{850a63fa8a72bae4d6bfa3f1eda9f619cddace10f9053ede128e2914f9ca5a15}.

An LA Times article on the report didn’t catch any of these positive trends either. The report’s misinterpretation of the data can easily skew public perception of riding a bike as a risky activity.

First things first: riding a bike is not dangerous. The rate of bicycle accidents is on the decline throughout the United States, as emphasized in the strong reaction to the study from bicycling advocates around the country.

Once you dive into the details of the report, especially the calls to action, it starts to seem less anti-bike. “Roads were built to accommodate motor vehicles with little concern for pedestrians and bicyclists.”

The report’s intention seems to be to compel policy leaders to invest in better bike infrastructure and more encouragement of bicycling. They highlight some benefits of an increase in bicycle riding — health and environmental — but fail to recognize that more bikes on the road make our communities safer overall, or that the more people ride bicycles, the safer bike riding gets. It’s interesting to note that the economic benefits of biking, although highlighted in the sources they cite, have been completely ignored in the report.

Although the report’s call for more infrastructure is good, its specific prescriptions are outdated. Of course “cycle paths” (It’s unclear, but class I bikeways, we assume) are not always feasible because our communities have been built “to accommodate motor vehicles.” So building bikeways that give the same protection as off-street cycle paths built on existing roadways seems logical, right?

Here were the suggestions in the report:

Painted bike lanes are good, but often are not enough. Bicycle boulevards are pleasant, but often out of the way, and can have too many stop signs to be an efficient transportation route. Their last two suggestions, which would separate bicyclists from motor traffic at the intersections are good ones.

Personal safety is not the only reason to promote protected bike lanes, but they are essential to to make direct, efficient, welcoming bicycle infrastructure built for everyone ages 8-80. The report recognizes that protected bike lanes that are being implemented across the country both increase user safety and compel more people to ride a bike:

“Research indicates that bicyclists prefer separate street facilities over purely recreational paths (Nuworsoo & Cooper, 2013) and states are responding by attempting to improve on-road bike lane safety. For example, Illinois is piloting a barrier-protected bike lane. In Washington D.C., two innovative treatments have been instituted – a buffered center median bike lane and a two-way cycle track (Goodno et al., 2012). Both treatments, which involve dedicated road space with buffers between bicycles and motor vehicles, have increased bicycle use.”

This might be the first time that the GHSA has recognized that modern bikeways are imperative to get more people to ride bikes. California lawmakers know how important it is. Pledge your support today to win more protected bike lanes in your community at calbike.org.

10.29.14