Bike Advocacy Day report

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.

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.

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.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.

1. 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.”
2. 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.
3. The definition of “Active Transportation Program” should be broadened to include encouragement and enforcement programs, not just educational programs.
4. 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,