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This month, the Mill Valley School District passed a new Safe Routes to School policy, initiated by the Marin County Bicycle Coalition (MCBC) that would encourage students in the district to walk, bike, or carpool to school each day. The policy gives support for safety education at school, as well as support for the Mill Valley Safe Routes to School Program.

The goal of the policy is to ensure that students in the district have access to safety education and support for walking and biking to school regardless of any changes in staff or elected officials. The foresighted advocates at MCBC recognized that, without that assurance in writing, progresses in programming could be walked back with a new superintendent or principal.

MCBC began the process by working with a city council member, a school board member, and the superintendent to draft the policy. They based their draft on the California School Board Association’s sample board policy and then adapted it to their specific needs. From there, they took the policy to the school board, where it passed unanimously.

Wendi Kallins, the program director for Safe Routes to School at the MCBC, credits the smooth passage of the new policy to the collaboration with school board members and the school district system. Now MCBC has a local example of how this policy (and the process to get there) can work — and take similar policies to other school districts.

“Don’t overreach but don’t compromise on your basic goal of institutionalizing Safe Routes to Schools,” Kallins says of crafting a similar policy for your community. “You might have to change the policy to say ‘may’ instead of ‘shall,’ but include the elements that are essential: education, encouragement, task force participation for engineering and enforcement, and evaluation.”

Click here to download the model policy from the Alliance Resource Library.

The California Bicycle Coalition (CBC), a recipient of a Fall 2010 Advocacy Advance Grant, completed its $30,000 “Leveraging the Bike Power of the Golden State” Start-up Grant proposal in December. The grant funds, which were matched three-fold, helped relaunch the organization, hire a second full-time staff, support key advocacy initiatives and explore membership models for a statewide organization in a state that has 15 professional-staffed bicycle advocacy groups.

CBC successfully advocated for a reform of the Caltrans California Traffic Controls Devices Committee – which controls what signs, signals, and stripes are allowed on California’s roads – to require two representatives of non-motorized transportation sit on the committee. This restructuring will help ensure that complete streets standards are upheld throughout the state.

Despite statewide outreach and advocacy for a three-foot passing bill that was passed through the legislature, the governor vetoed the bill this past fall. The California Bicycle Coalition plans to continue their Give Me 3 campaign and run the bill again this year to ensure that California drivers give bicyclists at least 3 feet of space when passing from behind. Additional ongoing CBC campaigns and projects include high-speed rail access for bikes, institutionalizing cycling education in California schools, and planning a social equity and bicycling summit in 2012.

In November, CBC organized the California Bike Summit in L.A. The summit brought together bike advocates from the nonprofit, public and private sectors to help set the statewide bicycling agenda for 2012 and beyond. The summit program also strengthened the capacity of participants through workshops devoted to sharing best practices, successes, and lessons learned.

California Bicycle Coalition joins more than two dozen other organizations that have used Advocacy Advance grant funding to spur development and carry out successful bicycle and pedestrian campaigns. Check back in coming weeks for information about this year’s funding cycle.

Thanks to the advocates at the Lake Tahoe Bicycle Coalition, a previously off-limits stream of cash will now flow to local bike paths.

The circuitous story starts in 2000, when the community passed a bond measure, taxing properties for recreation facility improvements. Part of Measure S was the allocation of $5,000 per mile, per year, for new bike path maintenance.

At the time, officials projected 25 miles of new bike paths would be built by 2008. But tough economic times put those plans on indefinite hold — and, by extension, put the money from Measure S in a jam.

Because of state budget problems, only 8 of the projected 25 miles of new bike paths had been built by 2010. And while the tax dollars for bike path maintenance were coming in — to the tune of $85,000 per year — Measure S language precluded that cash from being spent on paths built before 2000.

With those old bike paths in need of renovation and dollars for bicycle infrastructure tough to come by, the Lake Tahoe Bicycle Coalition (LTBC) had its eye on unleashing those locked-up funds. Luckily, an opportunity presented itself in 2010. “A year and a half ago, the Mayor came to me and said she wanted to revisit Measure S and find a way of amending it so that accumulating funds could be used,” Ty Polastri, the LTBC’s president, explains.

So the LTBC set out to uncover and understand the finer points and challenges of Measure S. Over the course of many months, Polsatri says, advocates met and listened to the intent of the Joint Powers Authority and even did their own research — preparing a bike path maintenance analysis. But the political nature of the potential ballot initiative, at first, made the Coalition cautious.

“We did not take a stand because we believed we couldn’t — so as not to put our 501c3 at jeopardy,” Polastri continues.

But that didn’t mean the LTBC sat on the sidelines, especially when it came time for public hearings on the new ballot measure this summer.

“We saw how [the language] was still confusing and not clear,” Polastri says. “We decided it was our position to do everything possible to make this process transparent and fight for specificity and clarity of language so the voters could understand the Measure and its implications. We began making suggestions on rewriting the language and still publicly remained neutral. We fought to protect the funds for new bike path maintenance and crafted a compromise that monies could go to old, pre-Measure-S bike paths for funding.”

Under the new Measure R, new and old bike paths would receive approximately $2.7 million over the term of the bond for renovation and maintenance — 43 percent more maintenance funding than under Measure S.

“At that point, we moved to be all in,” Polastri says. “We had to engage the rest of the community, particularly the bicycle community who still didn’t trust the Measure and the people behind it.  The LTBC had to take a strong stance to inform, educate, and promote that this measure was the last opportunity and the best one to get dollars for bike paths.”

Staying within the bounds of their 501c3 status — by spending no more than 20 percent of their annual budget on advertising for or against the initiative — the LTBC took a leadership role on Measure R. On November 8, it passed with an impressive 71 percent of the vote.

For Polastri, though, the funding isn’t the only win. The effort also boosted the visibility and credibility of the LTBC for future campaigns. “Now, other public agencies have contacted me to help them with other bike related issues of bike trails and highway safety,” Polastri says. “We’ve demonstrated our commitment and leadership to build strategic alliances and help move community to become more livable and sustainable.”

Read more and access a number of materials related to the Measure R campaign on the Lake Tahoe Bicycle Coalition website.

Like many advocacy organizations, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition is working to create a city where all residents — from ages 8 to 80 — feel safe and comfortable walking and biking for transportation and recreation. But, to make that inspiring concept a reality, SFBC knows they need more than crosswalks and bikeways. They need to expand their resources and redefine who they serve, too.

If you survey the streets, it’s not just individual riders pedaling to work. It’s moms with newborns and dads with toddlers two-wheeling to daycare and swinging by the grocery store. So SFBC is making sure the needs of the modern family fit seamlessly with the bicycling lifestyle.

With a large and growing membership, the SFBC recognized that: “Family biking is often a very different experience than biking on your own. Whether you biked a lot before becoming a parent, are just getting back to biking after years away, or want to teach your kids to bike, you very likely have questions about how to approach each stage of family biking.”

So Kit Hodge, along with some SFBC board members and advocates, have endeavored to answer those very questions. The first resource is a new online Family Biking Guide that tackles important topics like:

• Biking pregnant, including advice for each trimester and general tips like what type of bike to ride to accommodate your baby bump
• Biking with your baby or young toddler, including tips for before and after your baby can sit up and suggestions for overcoming legitimate fears for your baby’s safety
• Teaching your child to bike, including an outline of skills to teach to get your kid street ready

But the guide is just the first step. This week, SFBC is kicking off of a three-part family biking class. The free, 90-minute sessions include Biking Pregnant, Biking With Your Baby & Toddler, and Biking Your Child to School.

Kit says she hopes the guide and classes will be an inspiration to current cyclists who don’t want to give up riding because they have a family.

“I suspect that we’ve been losing some people to that transition, at least for a few years,” she says. “The initiative is also part of our overall messaging about 8-to-80 biking in San Francisco, and goes hand in hand with our communications focus on safe and respectful riding this Winter and Spring as we head to crucial votes on new, next generation bikeway projects and implementation.”

Interested in learning more about innovative bicycle safety and education courses like this? Click here for the Family Biking Guide — and stay tuned to our upcoming list of 2012 Mutual Aid Calls!

Imagine pedaling through dense stands of towering redwoods; cruising along a dramatic, rocky coastline; stopping next to lush vineyards and taking a sun-drenched ride over the Golden Gate Bridge.

It’s not a dream. It’s not a luxury vacation. It’s the Climate Ride — a 320-mile bicycle adventure that raised $300,000 for nonprofits like the Alliance for Biking & Walking.

Now in its fourth year, the Climate Ride was created by Geraldine Carter and Caeli Quinn as a means to leverage their decades of professional experience leading high-end bike trips to raise awareness and funds for climate protection. Since 2008, the ride has engaged hundreds of riders from across the nation who, instead of simply opening their wallets, raise money from friends and colleagues, which is directed to a number of nonprofit groups that work on renewable energy and active transportation issues.

As a participant in the 2011 California Climate Ride this month, I was impressed from the second I showed up in the parking lot to catch the shuttle from San Francisco up to the start of the ride in Fortuna. The riders were a diverse group — from restaurant owners to NRDC attorneys, people who work in greening the music business to a singer who had only ridden a bike 25 times before she got off the plane. But they sure had one thing in common: They were all fired up to pedal a stretch of the most scenic landscape in the U.S. and, along the way, talk shop about how, in our diverse capacities, we can build a more sustainable energy future.

First of all, even for someone who lived and traveled in California as a kid, I was constantly speechless at the incredible beauty of the route:

• The first day we rode through the redwoods, stopping for lunch among the thousand-year-old trees and writing postcards to President Obama under the canopy of the giants.
  
• On day two, we braved a driving rain, conquered the legendary Leggett Hill — a five-mile ascent — and were rewarded with views of the foggy, frothy waves of the Pacific.
  
• On the third day, the route snaked through eucalyptus trees as it hugged the coastline and more than two dozen Climate Riders completed the optional century ride — some tackling the mileage for the first time.
  
• By day four, a mere 50 miles seemed like child’s play, so many lingered amongst the vineyards, sipping the sweet stuff (at 10 a.m.!) at a sustainable winery and sampling oysters beach-side near the entrance to Point Reyes National Seashore.
  
• And on day five, the rain cleared just in time for us to glide over the Golden Gate Bridge with stunning views of the Bay and roll into San Francisco in our matching jersey’s, chanting Climate Ride all the way to city hall.

But the route was really just the sugar on top. The substance of the ride was also about networking and knowledge sharing. All along the way, as we stopped for snacks or relaxed over dinner, I got to know about the personal and professional efforts of countless climate and bicycle advocates. I rode down the Avenue of Giants with a gentleman who rode across the country on an electric-assist recumbent. I listened to an IT consultant talk about Richmond Spokes, a new community bike shop and education space, as we dodged cow patties on a steep ascent through a stretch of farmland. I took every opportunity I could to glean insight from the communications director for 350.org and the media team from Mighty Bytes in Chicago over breakfast and dinner.

Geraldine and crew made that resource sharing and relationship building even easier with evening sessions that allowed riders and supporters to share their work in a more formal setting. We got an insider look at the growth of 1% for the Planet; we got an author’s reading from Farmer Jane: Women Changing the Way We Eat, a book penned by one of the wonderful riders from Team Clif Bar; we even got an intimate concert from singer and ukulele player Victoria Vox, who played on even as a blustery storm blew her tent away out in the campground.

Yes, it rained. A lot. But that just made the enthusiasm, professionalism and — there’s just no other word for it — awesome-ness of the support crew all the more apparent. From Blake and Geraldine — the ride directors — to the van drivers, bike mechanics and other volunteers, we were showered (sorry, bad pun) with humor, joy and energy even when we awoke to soaked tents and gloomy forecasts. And they didn’t just keep us well-fed and wrenched up: When I tweaked my knee on day two, just about everyone on the crew kept checking in the rest of the week to make sure I was feeling strong and taking my Vitamin I (ibuprofen).

Best of all, this incredible experience will have a lasting impact, even beyond our collective memories and photo collections. The ride raised more than $300,000 for a variety of nonprofits, including the Alliance and member organizations like the East Bay Bicycle Coalition and Sonoma County Bicycle Coalition. A special THANK YOU to everyone who chose the Alliance as one of their beneficiaries — your dollars will help build the capacity of advocate leaders across North America. And, thank you, of course, to Geraldine, Caeli and Blake for putting together such an ingenious fundraising initiative and putting on such a phenomenal event.

Want to participate in the next Climate Ride? Registration is already open for the 2012 New York City to Washington, DC ride. Learn more here.

The Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition (SVBC) has partnered up with the City of Mountain View to offer a new resource to Spanish-speaking members of the community — a class about bicycle safety.

“We feel it is of critical importance to engage daily cyclists and encourage safe riding skills,” says SVBC Deputy Director Colin Heyne. “Many members of the Latin American immigrant community here ride a bike to work because they have no other choice.”

The City of Mountain View identified the need for the classes several months ago and approached SVBC for support. The classes will be taught by a certified instructor who will discuss riding in traffic safely and with confidence.

So far, the main challenge has been getting the word out to the Spanish speaking community. SVBC has engaged volunteers to pass out flyers, as Spanish speakers do not frequent the Coalition’s website.

“We hope that this first attempt at a class makes an impact, and that we can learn from the challenges we encounter to make it better next time,” Colin says.

A Spanish version of SVBC’s Share the Road Guidelines can be accessed in the Alliance’s Resource Library. Do you have Spanish-language resources you’d like to share? Email Tasia@PeoplePoweredMovement.org.

The Marin County Bicycle Coalition has plenty of street cred. Since its inception in 1998, the California advocates have compiled an impressive track record, including helping to increase weekday cycling trips in the region by more than 135 percent and reduce collisions by more than 34 percent.

Now MCBC is taking its advocacy off-road.

Yesterday, MCBC launched a new Mountain Bike Initiative that aims to “increase trail access for mountain bike riders in Marin County, encourage safe and civil behavior among all trail users, and promote trail stewardship.”

“As mountain biking popularity continues to rise,” the advocates explained in the program announcement, “MCBC is compelled by its growing membership base to devote its unique experience and resources in advocacy and education to achieving similar success off-road.”

Thanks to a new source of funding (and a fundraising campaign- donate here), MCBC will soon hire a part-time director who will work toward a host of program goals, like opening more trail opportunities for mountain bikers and creating more trails that serve as transportation.

“The organization will participate in trail planning processes alongside government agencies, land managers, environmental organizations and the public,” the MCBC noted in the announcement. “It will be deeply involved in activities encouraging all users to create a cooperative, respectful, friendly and safe environment on trails. With this program, MCBC looks forward to creating more positive change in Marin County.”

Read more on MCBC’s website.

By Brighid O’Keane

Pedestrian advocacy efforts led by Walk San Francisco resulted in a win this last week, when San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee announced a reduction in the city’s school zone speed limit to 15 miles per hour.

The previous school limit of 25 miles per hour was reduced by 10 mph this past week, leading to safer streets for children and pedestrians. Starting with Peabody Elementary in San Francisco’s western Richmond District, the change will be in affect at all – more than 200 – city schools this fall.

“These safe speed zones have been a major goal for Walk SF and its members,” Elizabeth Stampe, Walk San Francisco’s Executive Director, said in the group’s press release. “They will help create a more safe and sustainable city, helping kids get to school safely and calming traffic in neighborhoods throughout the City. This is a big step forward for everyone who walks in San Francisco.”

As the first city to adopt the 15 mph zones, San Francisco residents can thank the members of Walk SF for their effective campaigning toward calming traffic throughout the city for all pedestrians.

Read the full press release here.

Photo: Elizabeth Stampe speaks at the press event announcing the speed limit reduction. (Streetsblog San Francisco)

How can you enjoy the experience of a lifetime while supporting the Alliance? Sign up for the Climate Ride — the nation’s largest environmental cycling event and “green conference on wheels” this October 2-6 from Eureka to San Francisco.

Anyone who signs up for the ride gets to choose which organization they will raise money for — and you can choose the Alliance! Registrants can direct their fundraising toward multiple beneficiaries, too. That means, you can ride for, say, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, Transportation Alternatives or other great Alliance member organizations and still direct a portion of your dollars to support the Alliance.

Climate Ride is a 5-day, fully-supported bicycle ride from Fortuna to San Francisco under towering redwoods, through the Russian River Wine Country, and along the Pacific Coast Bicycle Route - one of the most scenic coastlines in the world. The ride also features nightly speakers who focus on bicycle advocacy, sustainability, and renewable energy.

The organizers have opened up the beneficiary choices so now you can choose to support the Alliance specifically with your fundraising dollars. If you select us as your beneficiary when you register, we will be the sole recipient of the funds you raise. Sign up for $75 (which includes a great jersey) and then raise at least $2,400 to participate in this all-inclusive 5-day bicycle tour.

Please visit our team link to sign up or make a donation: http://climateride.donordrive.com/participant/peoplepoweredmovement.

Just in time for the long weekend, we’ve uploaded a number of new videos to the Alliance Resource Library this week. But that’s not all…

• Before you press play and kick back with YouTube, make sure you delve into two important reports that came out this week:
  • Dangerous By Design 2011 was released by Transportation for America on Tuesday, casting the spotlight on the epidemic of preventable pedestrian deaths across the U.S.

  • The Advocacy Advance team released a new/updated report on “Getting a Fair Share for Safety from the Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP): Bicycle and Pedestrian Advocacy Case Studies,” examining the states that have successfully dedicated federal safety funds to reduce bicycle and pedestrian fatalities and crashes.

• As for the videos…

  • A beautiful two minutes of inspiration from our friends at Planet Bike

  • Four great, new PSAs from the just-launched Safe Streets Save Lives campaign in South Carolina

  • An impressive “Active and Green Transportation” video produced by high school students in Marin County, CA

  • A video from Transportation Alternatives, highlighting the work of Bronx residents — and students — in improving safety at a dangerous intersection

  • A video from the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition featuring three residents talking about their desire for bike lanes on 7th Street — in three different languages

  • A clip from “Beauty and the Bike” — a movie documenting an effort to get more girls riding in Darlington, UK (a resource that came up in our Mutual Aid Call on Bringing More Women into the Movement earlier this week!)

  • And, last but not least, some informative and humorous PSAs from the New York City Department of Transportation telling cyclists “Don’t be a Jerk” and obey traffic laws (don’t miss Commissioner Jannette Sadik-Khan calling John Leguizamo a jerk!)

Enjoy — and have a great long weekend!

By Jeff Miller, Alliance President/CEO

For more than six hours I soaked up as much as I could: the sun, the views, the smiles, the sheer beauty of seeing hundreds of thousands connecting with their neighbors and city in a wonderfully unique and natural way. Los Angeles is known to most of us for its tangle of congested highways and smog from the millions of cars. But yesterday, during CicLAvia,I saw an amazing city of cyclists!

Estimates put the crowd at 200,000-500,000 people and I think every demographic was represented among the masses. Sure, there were plenty of folks wearing lycra on expensive bikes — Lance Armstrong included — but they were out numbered by the hipsters on their fixies, sporting tattoos and U locks hanging from belts. Really the largest numbers were everyday people, wearing normal clothes on a wide range of bikes. There were small kids on scooters or riding bikes with training wheels; young boys and girls on BMX bikes, parents with toddlers in seats and trailers; couples on tandems (and a few tandems ridden solo with signs offer the seat up for a small fee or smile); teenagers riding with their cliques; men with long beards; ladies with fashionable skirts and fancy hats; and people of every ethnic and social background together. All of them were viewing their city and fellow citizens like they had never seen it before — free of dominating and oppressive automobiles.

Cops were grinning with all the “thank yous” and reveling in the people watching. Gear geeks were astonished at the range of cargo bikes, antiques, high-end rigs, Pedersens, custom “big wheel” style bikes and homemade, custom-painted bikes. Dozens of homemade giraffe bikes stood over the crowds, but none more so than the four-frame-high beast (including a tandem frame for the foundation) that supported it’s cape-wearing captain 10 feet above the crowds. In short, it was a bicycle advocate’s dream — everyone you could imagine riding back and forth across the city, excited at the possibility never before conceived and happening at that moment.

Open streets events (Sunday Parkways, Ciclavias, etc.) have a magical ability to open the hearts and minds of people from shop owners to politicians. A hundred times the size of the biggest San Francisco Critical Mass ride I’ve ridden, it has none of the rancor or controversy. Kids have the safety and freedom to again play in the street while parents admire and laugh. Couples kiss at red lights, beaming with the joy around them. Families even cruise comfortably down streets they never would think of being on for fear of gangs. And the overwhelming threat of swarming two-ton SUVs and the noise and exhaust they emit are distant enough to forget. Everyone is having so much fun it almost escapes them that this is how it could be. Except it doesn’t.

Everyone gets a glimpse of how it could be. Young and old, thin and “not so thin,” rich and poor, all connect and realize they have a community they didn’t know existed. That is the power of the bicycle, and open streets events like this help open the possibilities and prospects of safer and complete streets. If your community has an open streets event of any sort – celebrate it and cajole every neighbor, elected official, family member, and friend to experience it. If your community doesn’t have one, it is well worth the effort to organize one. In the end, open streets aren’t the answer, but they are an incredibly powerful tool of persuasion and we all need to leverage that.

To see the full list of tweets and photos from Jeff’s CicLAvia adventure follow him on Twitter @jeffreybcmiller.

Last week, in the early morning of April 1, a young woman was struck and killed while bicycling near California State University. The Sacramento Area Bicycle Advocates responded almost immediately, reacting proactively to the tragedy with an effort to make cyclists more visible during the most dangerous nighttime hours.

According to The Sacramento Bee, Arlene Sasse, 22, was killed when a driver alleged did not see her cycling through the intersection of Carlson and J streets. The crash occurred less than 100 yards from a ghost bike memorializing the death of a bicyclist in the same area last year. “We don’t yet have clear understanding of what happened last night and will continue to gather information,” Tricia Hedahl, SABA Executive Director, said in the group’s April 1 press release.

But, while the city department of transportation investigated the cause, SABA didn’t wait to take direct action. The advocates immediately leveraged their Light On! program to raise awareness around CSUS and in the wider community by distributing free headlight and taillight sets near the campus. “We hope that giving out lights will be a one small step toward helping repair a campus that is torn over this disaster,” Hedahl said. “SABA’s other goal is to educate cyclists that they are required to have lighting equipment after dark. Light On! will make 50 bicyclists more visible and many drivers more aware.”

The Light On! program is supported by Planet Bike. Read more here.

In the past 10 days, the city of Long Beach celebrated a tremendous victory and suffered an incredible loss.

After a long, determined advocacy campaign, the Port of Long Beach Harbor Commission agreed on March 14 to include a class-one bicycle and pedestrian path on the Gerald Desmond Bridge. Two days later, the man who worked so tireless for that critical project — Mark Bixby — died tragically in a plane crash.

According to a Tuesday press release from Bikeable Communities, an advocacy organization of which Bixby was a board member:

“We’re elated that the Harbor Commissioners, Port staff and Caltrans have come to understand the importance of including bicycle and pedestrian access on the new bridge,” said Martin Howard, a longtime friend of Bixby’s and a fellow board member of Bikeable Communities, a nonprofit advocacy organization. “You only have one opportunity to build a billion-dollar bridge in a century. And Mark felt passionately that the bridge needed to be constructed to benefit everyone and to connect as many places as possible. He called it the bridge to everywhere.” As a member of the non-profit bicycle advocacy group Bikeable Communities, Bixby was tireless in his efforts to educate and inspire all parties involved to understand the importance of these facilities both to the Port with its focus on sustainability, and the City as it endeavors to become one of the most bike-friendly cities in the nation. Through Bixby’s efforts, Bikeable Communities leadership and volunteers worked in partnership with nearly 20 organizations, clubs and advocacy groups to raise awareness of the need for bicycle and pedestrian paths to create viable and safe routes to Terminal Island…

But shortly after the vote last week, Bixby died when a two-engine plane bound for a ski trip in Utah suffered mechanical issues upon take-off and crashed near the Long Beach Municipal Airport. Bixby’s untimely death sent shock waves through the local and national cycling community. “We in the bicycling community (and the broader community) are mourning the loss of Mark Bixby,” wrote Andréa White-Kjoss, President/CEO of Bike Station. “At 44, Mark was a husband and father of three, accomplished in many arenas, and was just hitting his stride as a cycling advocate. He was the leader in the successful fight, just concluded, for bicycle and pedestrian path on the new Gerald Desmond Bridge and was a driver for many other bicycling-related projects and programs. He spent a lot of time on his road bike as a member of the La Habra team. We have lost a warm, talented, and energetic friend, husband, father, son, brother, and advocate.”

Again, according to the Bikeable Communities press release:

“Advocates and professionals alike who worked with Bixby on bicycle and community related issues appear to all agree there could be no greater tribute to the passionate leader than to see the bicycle and pedestrian path on the new Gerald Desmond Bridge named in Bixby’s honor. “It was Bixby’s vision, passion, negotiating skills, work-ethic and ability to forge a collaborative coalition that took the bike and ped path from concept to a world-class idea that will impact thousands for generations to come,” said Howard. “His leadership and vision on many issues will be sorely missed by many in Long Beach, but in particular, by the cycling community.”

There will be a memorial ride tomorrow, March 25th, at 8 a.m., starting at Leeway Sailing Center on the Peninsula in Long Beach and traveling to the top of the Gerald Desmond Bridge. Read about Bixby’s efforts for the bike/ped path on his blog: asthewheelturns.wordpress.com. Learn more from Bikeable Communities here.

This spring, the Santa Barbara Bicycle Coalition is using free tune-ups to get tuned in to the needs and desires of the Spanish-speaking community.

Building on its Bici Centro community bike shop program, the SBBC is dialing up its Spanish Language Outreach program with a new Taller Movil Comunitario de Bicicletas (Community Mobile Bike Shop) that aims to listen to the voices of Santa Barbara’s often-overlooked cyclists.

Carmen Lozano, one of the SBBC organizers, says the group has always had a Spanish-language outreach component, but new and larger interest last year spurred a renewed push and exciting pilot program. “We read the invisible cyclist article published a while ago, and it really resonated with us,” Lozano says. “Our main task is to take the opportunity to start a dialogue with the Spanish-speaking cyclists in our town and find ways to hear their needs to better serve them.”

They came up with an idea that connects service and dialogue. Starting in April, a mobile bike repair shop, mounted on the back on an Xtracycle, will roll into the predominantly Latino Westside or Eastside neighborhoods every Saturday to provide free repairs and educational resources to residents. SBBC’s bilingual staff will help fix flats, adjust brakes, and teach basic bicycle maintenance. But, it addition to better bicycling, the effort also serves as a conversation starter.

“We’ve created a bilingual survey and prepared bilingual outreach materials to involve the business and other agencies in the area where the workshops will take place,” Lozano explains. The short, one-page survey (created in both Spanish and English) asks residents if they’ve heard of the SBBC or Bici Centro, and allows them to weigh in on how useful the group’s various services have been to them. It also gives respondents the chance to make suggestions: “Que servicios adicionales podrian Bici Centro y la Coalicion de Bicicletas de Santa Barbara ofrecen en el futuro?” (What additional services would you like Bici Centro and the Bicycle Coalition to provide in the future?)

“Our hope is to run the clinics for three months in the spring, get more people to know us and collect lots of information from folks taking the survey,” Lozano says. “It’s just a pilot project, but we believe that the data will collect will give us enough of a sample. We’ll analyze it and based on the results we hope to implement requested changes in the fall.”

Learn more from the SBBC here.

Blog contributed by Kate Hopkins

In San Francisco, 58 percent more people are biking today than just four years ago. The boom is largely thanks to new bike paths and events geared toward cycling.

One of the boldest efforts to boost biking in the Bay Area is the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition’s Connecting the City campaign, which envisions an extensive and practical network of safe and inviting bike routes across the metropolitan region. The goal by 2020 is 100 miles of bikeways that encourage residents to pedal to shop, work, and play, while preserving the city’s historic integrity and relieving traffic congestion and strained transit systems.

To advance that ambitious goal and build the movement for a connected city, SFBC launched a new website this month, which lays out the routes, tells how to volunteer or donate to the campaign, and highlights recent news and events. The site is accessible, user-friendly and offers visual renderings of the proposed lanes. The Coalition also created a short video — Stephanie’s Story — to give a snapshot of everyday use and grassroots demand for family-friendly bike infrastructure. Stephanie shares her family’s transportation needs, the ease and convenience of bike travel, and the innocent joy of a kid on a bike. She says that safer bike paths will allow her children to be more independent and her husband safer in his commute.

To make sure policymakers are aware of the grassroots demand, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition sent a letter to new Mayor Edwin Lee just a few days after he took office, welcoming him and asking for his support in Connecting the City. The letter has specific suggestions for new areas to develop, upkeep and repair of existing bikeways, and a concrete timeline for putting it all into practice.

Check out the routes that Connecting the City is working on here and keep up with the entire project here.

Photo from Connecting the City: Artist rendering of Market Street

Allison Mannos is working to reframe the concept of environmental justice. With the City of Lights program, Mannos and the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition are not just empowering immigrant cyclists, but challenging local officials to recognize the transportation needs of low-income neighborhoods as a critical social justice issue. Last week, the evolving initiative earned some ink and air time from GOOD magazine.

In the thoughtful story, GOOD highlights the history and objective of the still-young program. “The goals of the City of Lights program are ambitious, but the group started small, in response to complaints that immigrant bicyclists were riding on sidewalks at night (which is legal in the city of Los Angeles) but without lights or reflectors (which is not),” reporter Alex Schmidt writes. “City of Lights began distributing lights at day labor centers and were soon inundated with questions about routes and the intricacies of bike repair. Their next step was to open a weekly educational and bike repair workshop at a day labor center, south of downtown. In October, they were successful in getting the city to install bike racks in some of the poorest neighborhoods of Los Angeles. All small steps, the organizers concede. But they could be crucial ones in building momentum for big picture environmental justice.”

The article does a great job delving into that big picture issue, speaking not only with day laborers but an organizer with the Bus Riders’ Union. It explains Mannos’ efforts to integrate low-income neighborhoods into the city’s Master Bike Plan — an idea city officials were open to but had no idea how to implement. “So Mannos looked for models she could follow around the country but found next to nothing,” Schmidt reports. “She ended up doing the legwork herself, talking to 20 urban planners and submitting recommendations for how to target bike planning to lower-income areas. She recommended that the census, transit dependence, obesity and concentration of industrial sites all to be taken into account to determine the course of the city’s bike planning. She borrowed a recommendation from Seattle’s Master Plan, which offered suggestions for targeting amenities to low-income communities.”

To Mannos, that’s what the City of Lights ultimately aims to do. It’s not just about blinky lights and bike racks and weekly repair workshops. It’s about making bicycling — a necessary mode of transportation for those who can’t afford a car — safe and accessible for everyone.

“I think environmental justice is going to broaden to become increasingly more about urban planning, not just about factories and other important issues,” Mannos says in a companion video produced by GOOD. “It will be about the day-to-day lives that we lead and that’s shaped by housing, transportation and land use. My interest in that and in the City of Lights is how to address the people who don’t really ever get taken into account in these planning issues even though transportation is a major part of a low-wage worker’s life.”

Read the full story from GOOD here or learn more about the City of Lights program on its blog.

Looking out at an excited crowd of more than 300 cyclists and pedestrians, Deb Hubsmith, advocacy director for the Marin County Bicycle Coalition, couldn’t have smiled any wider. “This is one of the happiest days of my life,” she said, as video cameras rolled and flashbulbs popped.

The happy and high-profile occasion was the December opening of the $27-million Cal Park Hill Tunnel, a world-class facility that will connect Larkspur and San Rafael, California, reducing the travel time for as many as 800,000 bike commuters every year.

The big-ticket project has been a major campaign for the Marin County Bicycle Coalition since its inception in 1998. But the vision for a bike-ped pathway through the former rail corridor far pre-dates the MCBC. According to the Coalition: “The Cal Park Tunnel was originally constructed in 1884 with significant renovations taking place in the mid-portion of last century. Originally designed to haul lumber and freight, and then later passengers, the tunnel was sealed in 1978 after a series of fires and structural collapses made it unsafe.”

When the tunnel was closed, local resident Jean Starkweather initiated the bold proposal to repurpose the facility for bicycle and pedestrian access — and kept the idea alive for more than two decades. In the late 90s, she handed off the torch to Hubsmith, who, in her own words, doesn’t take no for an answer.  “A lot of agencies came together and there were some fights along the way,” Hubsmith told a reporter from Streetfilms. “We had to stop a parking lot from being built at one side of the tunnel.”

But, Kim Baenisch, MCBC’s executive director, explained that the result was well worth the marathon effort. “We’ve been working on this for 12 years now, so it’s amazing to see it finally come,” she told Streetfilms. “It’s 1.2 miles tip to tip of paved path, including the stretch of tunnel, which is 1,100 feet long. This is a state-of-the-art facility with lighting and cell phone access and security cameras and beautiful smooth pavement and a ventilation system. I mean, what else could you ask for? And it’s for bikes and peds!”

It wasn’t just local residents celebrating, either. Tim Blumenthal, executive director of the Bikes Belong Coalition, was there for the ribbon cutting, too. His organization gave MCBC a $10,000 grant to work on the project back in 2002. Blumenthal called the tunnel’s completion a major development. “This is a classic example of a tunnel replacing a round-about way,” Blumenthal said. “When you make bicycling faster than any other way to travel from Point A to Point B, you really win.”

Watch the Streetfilm video here or read more about the project from the Marin County Bicycle Coalition.

Photo credit: Marin County Bicycle Coalition

Sadly, those nights of riding home from work or happy hour in the golden evening glow are behind us. For the next several months, the sun will set before quitting time and bicycle commuters will be cruising home on darkened streets.

From Alaska to New York City, many bike-ped advocates are making sure their area cyclists stay safe — and visible.

This week, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition kicked off its ongoing “Light up the Night” program. Teaming up with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency and the local police department, the Bay Area organization is giving away 2,400 front white and rear red blinky lights.

“The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition is proud to be a partner in helping promote safe night riding by distributing free bike lights to those who can’t afford or don’t have access to them,” Renée Rivera, Acting Executive Director of the SFBC, said in a press release this week. “Bicycle lights are a key item for safe night riding and we want everyone to use them, especially during the winter months when it gets dark earlier.”

Just the first night of the effort resulted in the distribution of hundreds of lights and bike safety brochures. But the SFBC isn’t advertising where and when its blinky ambassadors will take to the streets. According to the SFBC: “The locations are being kept under wraps in an effort to light up riders who truly need lights.”

Read more here.

The event was three weeks ago, but we’re willing to bet that folks in Los Angeles are still smiling about CicLAvia.

On 10-10-10, the City of Angels hosted its first open streets event, closing a 7-mile stretch to automobiles and throwing open the floodgates for car-free fun. The public rushed in: An estimated 50-100,000 participants showed up on foot, on bikes, on inline skates and plenty of other creative means of self propulsion to reclaim their public space.

The Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition was a key partner in making the event possible and (wo)manned a pit stop in MacArthur Park. Over the course of the day, advocates supplied bicyclists and pedestrians with water, energy bars, air for their tires, LACBC brochures, and route information. But mostly they reveled in the unprecedented and off-the-chain atmosphere.

“Several families stopped by — many from the first ever MidDay Ridazz Family/Kids’ ride — and it gave us hope to see some of the future leaders of the bicycle movement out on their bikes, experiencing how fun and efficient bicycling can be,” membership manager, Carol Feucht, wrote on LACBC’s blog. “Props to the one kid who explained to a pit stop visitor and me what sharrows were and where we could find them. That’s a future LACBC employee right there!”

Over on Streetsblog LA, writer Damien Newton noted that, even residents who didn’t directly participate, benefited from CicLAvia. It wasn’t just the cyclists and pedestrian who were inspired by the wide open roads. The success of the event trickled far beyond the streets themselves. “CicLAvia touched hundreds of thousands of people, even if it was just that they heard laughing on their streets instead of cars honking their horns,” Newton wrote. Organizers hope to make that millions in 2011. Four days after the event, still basking in the success, the CicLAvia board met. They’re still in the early planning stages, but LA residents could be treated to as many as half-a-dozen LA open streets events next year.

The sooner the better: Feucht joked that Angelinos already are suffering from CicLAvia withdrawal, pondering the creation of a support group to ease the pain until the next event. “Our cheeks hurt from smiling so much, and we can’t wait until the next one,” Feucht added. “Sunday, October 10, 2010 will be remembered as the day Angelinos came together to reclaim their streets by playing in them.”

For a tiny dose of that day’s energy, check out the StreetsFilms above.

Last summer, the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition launched its City of Lights program to assist and empower the area’s many immigrant cyclists. The new initiative quickly led to the creation and distribution of more than 600 Spanish guides that cover the fundamentals of safe cycling.

Bridging the language gap is just the first step, though. The far bigger leap is addressing the lack of bicycling infrastructure in Central LA. But early in the campaign, City of Lights volunteers recognized a serious problem — with a relatively cheap and simple solution.

“Despite the affordability of cycling to work, some day laborers have told us about an unwillingness to bike to the day laborer center because of the threat of bicycle theft,” the City of Lights blog noted back in December. “The fences and poles that laborers use to lock up their bicycles often do not provide adequate visibility or assurance to potential cyclists.”

It wasn’t just the day laborer center that lacked safe parking options, either. When the City of Lights crew conducted a survey in late 2009 they discovered that the Pico-Union and Westlake neighborhoods — two of the city’s most densely inhabited areas with more than 140,000 residents within a five-mile radius — had a mere 53 bike racks. The scoping led to a list of 40 proposed bike parking locations submitted to the LA Department of Transportation, and a new Bike Parking Community Resource Guide for advocates and business owners.

Last week, LACBC celebrated a key victory in its parking campaign. Video cameras rolled and volunteers cheered as LADOT pounded four new bike racks into the pavement outside the CARECEN day labor center.

“This is a really important site, because it was the birthplace of City of Lights,” says Allison Mannos, the LACBC’s urban programs coordinator. “It also sets a precedent for low-income cyclists and working people who don’t own cars that their needs for safer neighborhoods, worksites, and streets are just as important. Having bike parking encourages such long-running ‘accidental environmentalism’ that working class people, such as day laborer cyclists, practice everyday.”

With the City of Lights program gaining steam, city officials promised CARECEN is just the first site of many to come. “LADOT is proud to partner with LACBC, CARECEN, and Councilmember [Ed] Reyes in providing adequate bicycle parking opportunities to some of the Angelinos who are most in need,” said Rita L. Robinson, LADOT General Manager.

Learn more about the exciting work of the City of Lights program here.

Photo: Allison Mannos, LACBC urban programs coordinator, celebrates with CARECEN’s Jose Veliz.

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