Ride On All Roads (ROAR) was developed by youth leaders to address the lack of bike infrastructure and safe passageways for folks who depend on their bikes to get around. These rides spurred residents to conduct their own community-based research on some of the environmental justice issues they saw in their neighborhoods. That helped lead to the creation of our newest annual bike mobilization: The West Long Beach Bike Toxic Tour. This panel will discuss the history and narrative behind these formative movements in hopes of inspiring other community members to harness their power and create actions that center their stories.

Sometimes decision makers can't be convinced; they have to be replaced. This workshop is for everyone who is or wants to be involved in electoral politics, whether as a candidate or an activist supporting a candidate.

California's primary funding source for biking and walking has provided over $1 billion to more than 700 projects in its six years of existence. This panel will look forward to the program's potential to fund projects that serve as a junction for community needs and model active transportation projects. Are transformative projects more likely to increase walking and biking?

Over the last 25 years, the League of American Bicyclists’ Bicycle Friendly Community program has helped thousands of communities begin their journey to improve bicycling and benchmark themselves against other communities. America's public health crises of physical inactivity and traffic violence require multifaceted solutions. This presentation will focus on how community actions can create healthier places by improving bicycling through a flexible framework that recognizes the many paths to making bicycling safe, comfortable, and open to all.

Caltrans has just begun to develop an active transportation plan for each of its 12 districts. Each district's plan will identify active transportation improvements needed on, across, or parallel to the State Highway System, with an objective of connecting to local active transportation networks. Throughout the study process and as part of each plan, there will be an emphasis on social equity. The presentation will include an overview of the statewide process and district level experience with the public engagement process.

For Oakland's 2019 Bicycle Plan and San Jose's Bike Plan 2020, planners tossed out the old playbook on public involvement. Oakland officials identified five community organization partners and added them to the project consultant team, based on their geographic focus and deep knowledge and experience with transportation, housing, equity, and other social justice issues within these underserved areas of Oakland. San Jose planners used community partnerships, social media, and innovative strategies to reach their 1.1 million diverse residents. This workshop will discuss the hits and misses and lessons learned from these intentional efforts to engage communities whose voices have historically been overlooked.

Low-stress networks with protected bikeways and intersections will transform our communities, but it will be decades to build them, with current processes. Can't we do it faster? The first part of this two-part workshop series looks at how San Jose went from a week-long pop-up protected bikeway to a two-year quick-build network of protected bikeways and intersections - all using inexpensive materials. It also looks at the “Go Human” program of the Southern California Association of Governments, which has implemented 36 tactical urbanism projects as official advocacy for safer street infrastructure. Our third example is from San Diego's El Cajon Boulevard, a vision zero corridor which will soon get a pilot 3-mile bus lane where bikes are allowed. Learn from their successes and mistakes, as well as how a quick-build project led to a successful grant application to make the quick-build “paint and plastic” facilities permanent with hardscape improvements.

We'll hear stories from the Santa Barbara chapter of Cycling Without Age, a national network of bike organizations for older adults. What is the potential for e-bikes to expand the joy of bicycling to older adults? What's the latest on the role of bicycling in supporting health and vitality?

Community-led bike shops have historically served as neighborhood mobility hubs, providing resources and networks for marginalized groups without cars or with limited access to them. This panel will highlight the anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian global grassroots origins of these community institutions and how their missions have evolved to incorporate more local Black, Indigenous, People-of-Color (BIPOC) leadership, international perspectives, and more inclusivity for individuals of differing abilities. Panelists will also explore the future of community bike shops -- ensuring they are publicly controlled by and for locally marginalized residents -- despite a horizon of increasingly privatized mobility options catering to newer and wealthier residents.

In this session, we look at the political and technical tools behind two additional strategies cities have used to build whole bikeway networks quickly. First, we look at  New Orleans, Louisiana and Fremont, California, where leaders have decided to consider the bikeway network itself as the (single) bike project instead of the eventual result of scores of separate projects. Then, we look at San Francisco's landmark "Quick Build" policy that has resulted in protected bike lanes being constructed within weeks of the decision to do it.

Jim Dyer, Flickr

Equity is often tossed around these days as a buzzword that many advocacy organizations use to bolster their credibility, but many do not fully understand what equity means or do not grasp how to integrate it fully into their activities. Equity is more than just saying you represent a community; it is how you integrate that community into your activities and how your organization builds trust and relationships within those communities. Through real world examples, we will illustrate several campaigns that successfully integrate equity as a core tenet. We will work with attendees to reshape their own campaigns to better integrate equitable principles.

Tired of explaining to police officers CVC 21202? Attend this panel to see how this team developed a training for an audience of police officers that summarized bicycle and pedestrian crash data and recapped new and relevant laws. Hear from the officer hired to deliver the presentation and listen to efforts to expand the training for use throughout the State of California. The panel will also address strategies to help local teams coordinate with agencies, and how to build trust with departments while still acknowledging the potential challenges related to policing today.

California is facing an acute housing crisis.  We know that new housing next to transit can help meet the need for housing while reducing the need for driving, but it faces opposition from long term residents concerned about traffic and changing neighborhood character.  Complicating the situation, without proper planning new development along transit will displace low income transit riders and bicyclists and actually increase car use.  How do we balance all of these conflicting pressures in bicycle advocacy, and what should we do?

The conventions for engaging our audience have evolved drastically over the last decade with the rise of active transportation planning and social media. How can we communicate beyond the “bicyclist community” to win support for politically challenging projects? The goal of this panel is to create a dialogue about the successes and failures of different communication strategies. We'll examine the strategy that won the Mar Vista Great Streets Project and how communications have been handled in other communities.

In less than two years, scooters have accounted for more than 40 million trips in U.S. cities. Good news, or bad? The scooter boom, funded by billions of dollars of private capital, is both a threat to walking, biking, and equitable transportation in cities, and a potential boost to low-cost, car-free urban transportation that will strengthen the demand for safe streets in all our neighborhoods. What can we do as city leaders and advocates to leverage the potential of scooters for good? With San Jose’s deliberative and research-based approach as an example, this workshop will discuss the shared micromobility regulatory environment that protects people walking, avoids curbside clutter, sets firm requirements for data-sharing, and enables systems that improve mobility and quality of life.

Unprecedented levels of investment in a comprehensive cycling network has increased cycling into the city center by more than 60% since 2013, and resulted in some beautiful new bridges and bikeways. This presentation will provide details on the Lightpath and Nelson Street bikeway, Grafton Gully bikeway, Beach Road bikeway, Quay Street bikeway, Ian McKinnon bikeway and the planned Skypath bikeway across Auckland’s Harbor Bridge.

Since 2015, an entrepreneur, a photographer, two journalists and a high school student have teamed up to create Colombia's BiciActiva Radio. They broadcast live radio and podcasts on the topics of urban cycling, safety, infrastructure, and other mobility, and the intersections of all those diverse stakeholders. Frank Aguirre and his partners at the Urban Cycling Collective BCSicletos work to reclaim the streets in La Paz, Baja California Sur, México.  The moderator will be Chris Morfas, formerly Executive Director of CalBike, currently a volunteer for Councilmember Mafe Rojas and the mayoral campaign of Claudia López.

Bicycle tourism is a big business. When business leaders understand that, they develop a new incentive to make bicycling a safe and easy thing to do in their community. Plus, bike tourists with credit cards can be a huge economic boost to depressed rural communities. Hear from the experts in bike tourism about what you can do to take advantage of the bike tourist economy.

In 2014, LA Metro passed an award-winning First/Last Mile Strategic Plan. Since then, Metro has implemented the plan on its Blue Line. 

This workshop will discuss how to plan and implement improved access for transit stations in the context of new and emerging first/last mile mobility options. Learn how transit agencies, bike share companies, local governments, and advocacy groups work together to provide quality walk and bike infrastructure to connect with transit. Hear how first/last mile goes beyond infrastructure to provide new mobility options like bikeshare and scooters to connect communities to transit and to each other. 

For over 30 years, Normal Street in San Diego was supposed to be a community space by official designation. But only since 2012, when SANDAG began moving forward with its Bike Early Action Program, has there been serious planning. Now, with unprecedented collaboration among SANDAG, the City of San Diego, and local organizations, a community-driven plan to transform this space is in place.

In El Monte, ActiveSGV staff worked with community members, the Council for Watershed Health, Climate Resolve, and other nonprofits, to secure funding from the State Coastal Conservancy to transform Merced Avenue in the San Gabriel Valley into a 1.1-mile greenway. Currently at 60% design, the plan calls for a protected, sidewalk grade level multiple use trail that will capture stormwater, improve safety, and make it easier for people to be healthy. It's a model of coupling transportation and water funding to achieve a more climate-resilient community.

The Green New Deal aims to save our planet from climate catastrophe while elevating our quality of life, especially the most vulnerable among us. But in the proposed federal GND, bicycling does not warrant even a mention. What role can the bicycle play in averting climate disaster?

Women account for approximately one-fifth of everyday bicycle users in most of California. They are under-represented among people who bike for transportation, recreation, and sport. What can we do to make bicycling more accessible to women? This workshop will present some answers by the women who are in fact doing that!

Electric bicycles have changed the way we get around. They flatten hills, shorten distances, and make hard trips easy. E-bikes make bicycling a viable option for people with children or other heavy loads, elderly folks, and those with certain disabilities. CalBike's campaigns to promote and support e-bikes have found success: e-bike share is now part of the Clean Mobility Options for Disadvantaged Communities program, and low-income residents are eligible to receive vouchers for e-bikes when they turn in their polluting cars. But straightforward purchase incentives, like the state gives for electric cars, are still not available. This workshop will review the latest in e-bike technology and the latest research that shows the benefits of e-bikes in reducing greenhouse gases and why state funds should support e-bikes even more than they support electric cars.

Nearly half of carbon emissions in California come from transportation, largely from on-road travel. While a transition to electric autos is helpful for the long term, even EV optimists project that by 2040 the great majority of vehicles on the road will still be burning gasoline. To avert the worst impacts of the climate crisis, we need big, bold action and a lot more funding now to build a clean transportation system of bike and transit networks that will be up and running in 10 years. Join us to brainstorm on state and local fundraising and organizing strategy to get from here to there. This will be a participatory session.

By replacing competition, politics, greed, and maps, with collaboration, art-making, and empathy, transportation community engagement becomes inclusive, equitable, and meaningful.  Place It! creates a safe space for visual and spatial thinkers, youth, women, non-native English speakers, and other underrepresented communities to express their mobility needs in new ways. By using storytelling, objects, and sensory experiences this method quickly builds consensus to find common values, and mobility solutions, using the participants' memories, needs, and aspirations. This hands-on session will teach participants this method and how to apply it to various transportation projects.

While the climate action goals of L.A’s Green New Deal and safety priorities of Vision Zero have foregrounded Los Angeles’s policy agenda of safe and sustainable transportation options, a vehicle-oriented status quo still seems to dominate many conversations. In the face of vast geography and to better serve diverse constituencies, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation needs more than a single, bike-centric approach to project development and network implementation. Hear from LADOT Staff across programs on the strategies bringing integrated bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure to life across Los Angeles. From neighborhood greenways to Safe Routes to Schools, what are our greatest opportunities and most effective tools, and where do they intersect? What does it take to build consensus for projects, and what’s getting in the ground?

Vouchers for e-bikes. Accountability to climate goals at the California Transportation Commission. Automated speed enforcement. Changing the rules that prohibit lowering speed limits. Clarifying a bike rider's right to use a full lane. Requiring only a yield at “stop” signs. These are some of the ideas that CalBike could work on in 2020. This session will give you an inside look into how CalBike sets its priorities on an annual basis, and a chance to influence them.

For the past two decades, the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, established in 1998, has been working to make Los Angeles County a safe, healthy, and equitable place to ride a bike through advocacy, education, and outreach. LACBC has shared leadership in supporting the formation of numerous active transportation organizations, active street events like CicLAvia, the 2010 Bike Master Plan, the launch of Vizion Zero in 2015 and the passage of Measure M 2017. In this session, LACBC will start the conversation by sharing the results of Which way LACBC? a Community Input Forum recently hosted to learn and affirm what the community wants for the future of a multimodal Los Angeles.

In this session we’ll dig deeper into specific campaign possibilities, based on the results of the conversation in the prior session.

Through DIY or rasquache interventions based on memory, need, and aspirations, many Latinos transform streets into spaces for pedestrians and community interaction. To imagine and create interventions that support social cohesion and creativity, they use resources at hand plus the visual and spatial landscape around them. The session will highlight how we read, understood, and listened to the stories behind these interventions to develop South Colton’s Livable Corridor Plan: Strategies for Community Resilience and Upliftment.