Tag: CalBike

CalBike’s Agenda for 2025

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A number of organizations have come out with agenda’s for next year, and I’ll cover a few of those in several posts. First, CalBike. I participated in CalBike’s agenda reveal on December 3, and it was disappointing. Mostly videos of talking heads about the past, not much about the future. The breakout I participated in was dominated by a single person who wanted to talk about specific locations and wouldn’t let anyone get a word in edgewise about policy. But CalBike now has a page dedicated to CalBike’s Agenda for 2025, which is clearly presented. CalBike has organized support statewide for progressive legislation which encourages bicycling and makes it safer, and has supported legislation for walkers as well. There isn’t an active statewide organization for walking, unfortunately.

The agenda lists:

  • bicycle highways
  • shared streets
  • quick-build pilot
  • bike omnibus #2
  • bicycle safety stop
  • new bike boulevard classification
  • e-bike policy

Though e-bikes modified to be (illegal) motorcycles is not a big problem in Sacramento area, yet, it is in other places. San Francisco, where I am right now, is full of deliveristas on bikes that have pedals and chains, but top out about 40 mph. In the Lake Tahoe region, it is rich high school students. I’d like to see legislation to clearly define what is and is not an e-bike, and make sure high speed devices are banned from bike lanes and bike facilities. It is already illegal (AB 1774 Dixon, 2024) to modify an e-bike for higher speeds, or to sell devices which bypass design speed, but of course enforcement is uncertain.

The bicycle safety stop should be a no-brainer, except of course that Newsom and CHP probably don’t have brains. Treating stop signs as yield signs, slowing and yielding when necessary, is what almost all bicyclists already do, and there is nothing unsafe about it. Research has indicated that the rate of full and complete stops at stop signs is nearly the same for bicyclists and drivers, but when bicyclists stop, then are in danger of getting hit from behind by drivers not stopping, and the energy to get started again is significant, not just a press of the gas pedal.

Shared street standards are a good idea. Many locations have implemented shared streets, with different designs. As a new idea to be experimented with, wide variation was OK, but enough is known about designs now to create a standard. Some cities have continually lessened the protection and messaging on shared streets (or removed them completely, in the case of Sacramento), and standards would help prevent this erosion. I think shared streets should be more common that ‘regular’ streets. Shared streets are where people live, regular streets are where people drive.

I’m not sure whether state-recognized quick-build designs would help much. Cities are already doing these projects, and the best thing Caltrans could do is get out of the way.

photo of Sacramento 26th St slow & active street, since terminated
Sacramento 26th St slow & active street, since terminated

CalBike series on Caltrans complete streets failure

Dan Allison1 Comment

CalBike has published the first two of a series of reports on the failure of Caltrans to follow their own complete streets policy when designing and building streets which are also state highways. It is telling that the first of the series is on the failure of Caltrans District 3, which includes Sacramento county, to actually provide complete streets – Incomplete Streets Part 1: How Caltrans Shortchanges Pedestrians. District 3 is perhaps the worst of the Caltrans districts, which operate as independent (or rogue) agencies and regularly subvert Caltrans policy and direction from headquarters. Though they have a lot of competition for the title of worst.

“District 3 is perhaps best known as the district pushing through the Yolo Causeway highway expansion project. The project, which has been approved despite internal and external opposition, led to the firing of Caltrans Deputy Director Jeanie Ward-Waller after she blew the whistle on improper use of funds for freeway widening and insufficient environmental review.”

I encourage you to read these first two, and to follow CalBike investigative reporting. Caltrans must be held to account, as otherwise they will continue to design projects that kill and injure walkers and bicyclists, will continue to resist fixing the design mistakes they have made in the past, and will continue to commit fraud on the people of California by lying about what they are doing with your tax money.

CalBike People-First Mobility Budget

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I had mentioned CalBike’s initial response to the governor’s budget, in the a modest proposal to fix the budget deficit post, referring to Stop Fueling Climate Change: Coalition Challenges Governor to Shift Transportation Spending. CalBike now has a more specific proposal, which they are calling the 2024 People-First Mobility Budget for California. This is part of CalBike’s Invest/Divest program. You can sign a petition on both the program and the budget pages, and I encourage you to do so. I did, and I also contributed to the program.

The CalBike People-First Mobility Budget shifts significant funds from the standard Caltrans budget, which is focused on build more, but don’t maintain what we have, to a state of good repair. The typical Caltrans budget, which the governor’s proposed budget continues, is what has gotten us into our horrible transportation mess. Time for a new paradigm! Thank you, CalBike.

CalBike People-First Mobility Budget graphic

I, of course, would go further. I’d spend 100% of Federal Trust Fund and the California State Highway Account (SHA) on VMT reduction, and I’d fund Active Transportation Program at $1B. I completely support the 50% to historically marginalized areas. These are the places that have been intentionally isolated, divided, and polluted by our current highway system. Nevertheless, I recognize the CalBike proposal as a very practical one, and hope that legislators will integrate all these ideas into the state budget.

CalBike Invest/Divest logo

A conference done right

Dan Allison1 Comment

I attended the Transportation Equity Summit in Sacramento today. Unfortunately work obligations will prevent me from attending the advocacy day tomorrow. I’d like to comment on the conference.

Though short, the conference was GREAT. In the lunch-time plenary session, three good speakers laid out some basics, but plenty of time was reserved for questions from the moderator and the audience. This was followed by a half hour networking session (with coffee and cookies), then three breakout sessions, then another networking break with tea and cookies, and two final breakout sessions. In the two breakouts I attended, at least one-third of the time was devoted to questions from the participants. In the evening there was a social function at the hostel, with a brief but very interesting presentation, three short awards, and much more networking over beer and wine.

This is the way a conference should be done. Too many conferences in Sacramento over the last few years, on transportation and livability topics, seemed to intentionally exclude participation. The speakers filled up all the available time, there was no planned time for networking, and the overall feeling was that the experts were telling the rest of us what we needed to know (the sage on the stage), though ironically there was far greater expertise in the audience than on the stage. It is my hope that we never need suffer another one of those authoritarian conferences in Sacramento, and that the Transportation Equity Summit sets a bar that all others must now reach. If you have the opportunity to participate in future transportation related conferences in Sacramento (or anywhere), I hope that you will ask very tough questions about the program format before you sign up, and if the conference is clearly not going as advertised, stand up and object strenuously, and in fact make sure the conference doesn’t proceed until it is fixed. Obviously I have strong feelings about this. I’ve been burned by the lies of conference organizers, and will not ever trust many of them again.

Thank you to Transform and California Bicycle Coalition, their leaders, and Katie for a great conference, done professionally, and inclusively, and with humanity.