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California’s Big Bike Year: 2022 in Review

December 14, 2022/by Kevin Claxton

What can we say about 2022? We didn’t get everything we wanted, but thanks to advocacy from CalBike and our supporters and allies, it was a fantastic year for biking and walking in California. Here’s a short stroll down victory lane.

More money for biking and walking

California shows its values where it spends its money. Today, active transportation projects represent just a tiny fraction of the state’s transportation spending, but in 2022, that fraction got a little less tiny.

A diverse constituency advocated for $2 billion for bikes in the budget passed in 2022, and unfortunately, we came up short of that ambitious goal. However, we did secure the most funding ever for active transportation projects: $1.1 billion, a more than fourfold increase from prior years.

As communities across California scramble to fund projects to create Complete Streets and increase safety for people biking and walking, this extra money is crucial. It meant there was $1.6 billion available for the most recent funding round (Cycle 6) of the Active Transportation Program. As Streetsblog reported, this led to many more projects receiving funding and in a few years, we’ll see more protected bikeways and intersections as a result.

Of course, it’s still not enough. Every cycle, the ATP receives more excellent proposals than it can fund and has to turn away a higher number of worthy projects. Cities and towns understand that safe streets for all modes are essential for creating livable, sustainable communities. It’s time for the state to understand that too, and devote more money to bikeways and less to freeways.

Big wins for biking and walking

Our legislative recap provides in-depth coverage of all the bills that passed in 2022, so we won’t go into all the detail. Let’s just look at the effect of a few of those bills:

The OmniBike Bill changes the vehicle code to make people on bikes safer both from collisions with motor vehicles and from police harassment.
The Freedom to Walk Act prevents police from issuing jaywalking tickets unless the person was endangering themselves or others. That will eliminate unnecessary and often biased ticketing that impacts disadvantaged communities the most.
The Plan for the Future Bill gives cities and counties a deadline to update their general plans to make biking and walking safer — and provides funding to implement those plans rather than letting them gather dust.
Legislation on pedestrian crossings will bring Leading Pedestrian Intervals to Caltrans-controlled streets. LPIs give pedestrians (and people on bikes) a head start of 3 to 7 seconds before cars get a green light, reducing collisions and near misses.

The successes of 2022 give us excellent momentum heading into 2023, and we’re working on an even bigger and more ambitious agenda for next year.

Bike champions elected

Eight of the 11 candidates CalBike endorsed this year won election or reelection. Every bike champion elected to the state legislature means one more vote for bike-friendly legislation. Our big legislative wins in 2022 reflect the power of those votes. A big shoutout to all of you who biked the vote this year to help bring more progressive leaders to the California legislature.

Coming soon: Statewide e-bike rebates

We won funding for a statewide Electric Bicycle Incentives Program in 2021, and the program won’t launch until 2023, but CalBike has been hard at work on e-bike incentives this year. We’ve provided input to CARB on the details of the program, gathered and disseminated information to keep people up to date on the latest, and shared details about how to access other bicycle purchase programs. Stay tuned for more exciting developments in the new year.

To support CalBike’s vision for sustainable, healthy communities and to power our work in 2023, make a gift of any amount today.

What CalBike Accomplished: 2021 by the Numbers

December 8, 2021/by Kevin Claxton

For bicycling at the state level in California, 2021 was a mixed year. However, at CalBike, with the help of our dedicated and fabulous members and supporters (we’re looking at you!), we accomplished a lot.

We won $10M in e-bike subsidies, so more Californians will get the chance to adopt this clean, green, form of transportation. We finished five bike plans that will make Fresno, Bakersfield, and Merced more bike-friendly, as part of the High-Speed Rail project. And we drafted five dramatic proposals to promote bicycle tourism by creating safe bike routes in five more Central California counties. And CalBike contributed to advocacy that is almost certain to lead to a change to Caltrans street design regulations that will allow vehicle lanes as narrow as 10’.

We broadened our coalition, adding new partners. In 2021, CalBike worked on campaigns alongside human rights, civil rights, social justice, immigrant rights, racial justice, environmental justice, women’s rights and health, economic justice, and housing justice & homeless advocacy organizations.

With help from our donors, we continued to promote quick-build design to transform our streets at speed. We distributed 300 copies of the quick-build brochure that we created with our partners at Alta Planning + Design to local planners and public works professionals, and we continue to work to get information about quick-build techniques into the hands of planners and decision-makers.

In 2021, CalBike members and supporters sent 9,375 emails urging their elected representatives to take action to support better bicycling in California. You added 7,142 signatures to petitions demanding bicycle-friendly reforms. And we supported three bicycle-friendly bills that became law in 2021, allowing lower speed limits, advancing Slow Streets, supporting the Great Redwood Bike Trail.

Year in Review: CalBike’s 2020 Accomplishments

November 17, 2020/by Kevin Claxton

The pandemic that has upended all of our lives also transformed CalBike’s 2020 agenda. The bills we sponsored in the legislature were postponed, but the broad bike boom led to many other opportunities. In 2020, the bicycling movement is stronger than ever. Diverse groups of people have discovered or rediscovered the value of biking as safe and desperately needed recreation, as well as essential, independent, transportation. Our 2020 accomplishments include providing resources for new riders and for cities to create safer spaces to bike and walk.

CalBike was able to pivot quickly, thanks to strong support from our donors. Working from our separate homes, with surprisingly effective collaboration, your CalBike team had a busy and effective year. Here is a (partial) list of what CalBike has been able to accomplish.

Four fast and effective actions to support the opening of California’s streets to biking and walking

When California went into shelter-in-place, we took steps to support people staying healthy by keeping active.

We worked with the California Department of Public Health to clarify the initial stay-at-home orders to declare that bike shops are an essential business, necessary for people who rely on them to get to their essential jobs.
CalBike quickly created a set of resources for people to bike safely during COVID. For many, we were the go-to group for questions like, “Is it safe to ride in groups? Can I still use bike-share? I haven’t ridden in ages; what do I need to know to be safe?”
When communities began creating Slow Streets to expand space for socially-distanced exercise, CalBike created a guide to best practices.
In collaboration with Alta Planning + Design, we created a Quick-Build Guide to enable communities to create more room for biking and walking.

Victories in a curtailed legislative session

Most of the bills CalBike was sponsoring had to be postponed until 2021, as the legislature cut short their session due to the coronavirus. But we remained vigilant and engaged. And we were able to chalk up two important wins with help from our allies and from our supporters, whose calls and emails made a huge difference.

With help from our allies, we defeated a provision in a bill that would have made it impossible for shared bike and scooter companies to operate in California.
We passed a commonsense bike planning reform bill, SB 288. The bill provides a CEQA exemption for bike plans, as well as transit expansions. This is a welcome reform that will make it much easier, cheaper, and quicker, to design and build people-first infrastructure.

Supporting a local funding measure

CalBike engaged heavily with local partners in the Bay Area to support a transportation-oriented sales tax that would have raised billions for biking. We supported the calls for enough funding to build complete networks to connect disadvantaged, car-free, and transit-dependent communities to transit and other destinations, as well as comprehensive, equitable, and affordable shared mobility. This measure was shelved once the pandemic hit.

Building support for community bike shops

Every neighborhood needs a bike shop, but many lack the economic clout to attract a typical for-profit business. Community bike shops fill the gap, providing free or low-cost services in underserved neighborhoods. During the pandemic, many essential workers turned to biking as a safer way to get to work than taking the bus. But volunteer-run, nonprofit bike shops were hit hard by coronavirus restrictions at just the moment they were needed most. CalBike stepped up to help.

We reached out to community bike shops to find out what kinds of support they needed and we held a webinar to provide information, share resources, and cross-pollinate ideas. CalBike continues to look for new ways to lift up community bike shops.

A major victory for Complete Streets at Caltrans

In 2020, we turned the governor’s disappointing veto of our 2019 Complete Streets Bill into genuine progress at Caltrans. Their new chief directed an extra $100 million toward Complete Streets so that, when Caltrans does routine road repair, it has funds set aside to make streets safer for biking and walking.

The new Caltrans chief Toks Omishakin directed his staff to pull $100 million from its proposed budget for roadway repairs. The order, made after the draft budget had already been presented to the Transportation Commission for approval, affected a small amount of money but represented a huge admission by Caltrans that previously planned projects had missed opportunities to make the roads safer for walking and biking.
CalBike reached out to its local partners to ensure they were aware of the last-minute opportunity to improve Caltrans projects, in response to the agency’s request of its district offices to review all projects to find good candidates for biking and walking improvements.
CalBike is working closely with Caltrans leadership so that in the next roadway repair budget in 2022, the agency will include biking and walking infrastructure from the beginning. We’ll keep advocating so that instead of climate-destroying freeways, Caltrans will build the climate-friendly infrastructure California needs!

Projects to improve biking in California’s interior

CalBike and its member groups have exciting projects in the works for better biking in the heart of our state.

Construction is underway on the Shasta Bike Depot, a project of Shasta Living Streets. When it’s finished next year, it will cap a program that connects more than 200 miles of bike trails with downtown Redding.
CalBike is working with Tuolumne, Calaveras, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, and Alpine counties to promote bicycle tourism as an engine for economic growth and an incentive to create safer streets for visitors and residents alike.
Our Central Valley Bikeways Project team is creating a blueprint for bike access to High-Speed Rail stations in Merced, Fresno, and Bakersfield. Once the plan is implemented, it will mean better bike connections for all residents of the region, plus an influx of bicycle tourism dollars.

A proposal for traffic enforcement reform

Social justice is central to CalBike’s mission. We can’t have safe streets unless they are safe for everyone. Like you, we were moved by the outpouring of support for Black Lives Matter and the movement for police reform. We drafted a six-point proposal for reforming the way California enforces traffic laws on state roads. We believe these policies will make streets more equitable and safer for all users. In 2021, CalBike will begin lobbying, alongside our allies, to implement traffic policing reforms.

Bike the Vote

CalBike endorsed 11 bike-friendly candidates who were in tough races in the November election. We are happy to report that six of our allies at the federal, state, and local levels will be representing us next year. Thank you all for biking the vote!

Looking forward to 2021

At CalBike, we are proud of what we were able to accomplish in 2020 and we are looking forward to an even better year in 2021. We will be holding an online event for CalBike members to unveil our ambitious plans for 2021 on December 3. 2020. Join or renew to become a member and support CalBike’s important work to build healthy California communities through biking.