Photo: Richard Masoner/Cyclelicious

Editor’s note: This story marks the return of former Streetsblog San Francisco editor Bryan Goebel, who will be contributing occasional pieces.  

Bicycle advocacy can be an especially daunting challenge in the South Bay and the Peninsula, where car-centric policies and culture rule the day. At this week’s Silicon Valley Bike Advocacy Summit the focus was on improving relations between advocates and government officials at a time when a growing number of cities in the Silicon Valley and big companies such as Facebook, Google and Apple are starting to embrace the bicycle.

“We have more individuals who are becoming engaged and we have more institutions who are becoming engaged and more organizations who want to work with us,” said Corinne Winter, executive director of the Silicon Valley Bike Coalition (SVBC). ”There’s a coalition of individuals and organizations who are really interested in seeing the bike become a commonplace thing, whether it be for transportation or recreation. That group of people is growing quickly in our area.”

Although there are no official counts on the burgeoning numbers of people who ride bikes in Silicon Valley and the Peninsula, Winter said it’s evident on the streets, especially in San Jose.

“Bike culture in San Jose has been growing really rapidly. It started with a lot of folks in the fixie crowd, and now I’m seeing more folks riding the Dutch-style bikes around town,” said Winter. The popularity of the San Jose Bike Party has been another indication.

Just last week, the San Jose City Council unanimously approved six bike projects that will add 8 miles of new bike lanes downtown. Five of the projects will include road diets and lane reductions, and many sections will include bike lanes with extra space between motorists and bicyclists, said John Brazil, who heads up the city’s bike/pedestrian program. The projects are expected to be completed by the end of June.

There was no opposition to the removal of vehicle lanes and that came as a surprise to the city’s Transportation Director, Hans Larsen, who also attended this week’s summit.

“I am blown away by that,” Larsen told Streetsblog. “Ten years ago we were nearly crucified for talking about getting people out of their cars. You’d go to a community meeting talking about transit and bike use and you didn’t get a whole lot of support.”

But now “individual council members and the mayor particularly made points about reaffirming our direction to be a more sustainable city and get more people to bicycle.” Larsen also credited SVBC for organizing and “getting the word out.”

The city also plans on installing green bike lanes on San Fernando Street, along with a public bike share system at 15 stations in the downtown area, sometime this summer or fall. In addition, Brazil said plans are in the works to “test and identify best technologies for bike signal detection, including capabilities to accommodate green wave signal timing, bike lead interval signal timing, etc.”

At the summit, veteran bicycle advocate Randy Neufeld gave an inspiring opening keynote, telling the crowd that advocates must go beyond engaging individuals, and create a true coalition that involves all segments of a city’s political power structure.

“Think: how do you engage local employers? How do you engage local retail? How do you engage chambers of commerce and business associations? All community organizations, health organizations,” said Neufeld, the director of the SRAM Cycling Fund. “I’m not suggesting you abandon your individual members. They’re very important to you. But think about it. There’s a difference between engaging a particular individual.”

“Think of it not as a coalition addressing these people, or pushing these people, but getting the coalition to be something bigger than it is now, where these people are actually part of the coalition,” he said. “We’ve got this difficult job of trying to change and move a culture and we’re not pushing city hall, we’re working with city hall to move the culture. They can themselves be a part of this coalition.”

More than 150 people attended this year's Silicon Valley Bike Advocacy Summit. Photo: Bryan Goebel

This year’s 150-plus attendees included a number of mayors, elected officials, public health professionals and advocates interested in sharpening their skills. The SVBC relies heavily on volunteers to advocate for better bicycling infrastructure and smarter planning within the region’s 40 jurisdictions.

Winter said one of the most significant outcomes of the summit was bringing together law enforcement officials and advocates for a closed-door session on how to deal with group bike rides “that have created animosity on both sides” in places like Woodside, Portola Valley and Los Altos Hills.

“There was a real sense of ‘yes, this is something we want to work on, let’s keep meeting about it.’ We didn’t come to any conclusions. It’s a big topic and it’s going to take awhile. But there was a commitment to enter into that process,” said Winter.

Winter said SVBC’s biggest priority is to work on adding and improving bike infrastructure.

“We’ve really tried to organize the coalition more and start local teams in three communities up and down the Peninsula. So, we have membership groups who meet in San Jose, Palo Alto and Redwood City on a monthly basis and we’re leveraging our volunteers on the local level to find out exactly what is relevant on the infrastructure level,” she said.

Bicyclists -- and blue bike lanes and physically separated bikeways -- abound in Copenhagen, where biking makes up 37 percent of the trips to work and school. Photos by Leah Shahum

Editor's note: This is the first in a series of dispatches from Copenhagen and Amsterdam from Leah Shahum, the executive director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition who is on sabbatical in Europe. 

More than 1,000 bicycling leaders from nearly 60 countries are gathered in Copenhagen, Denmark to oooh and aaah, share and compare, and, above all else, challenge ourselves to step it up back home.

For a dozen of us from the Bay Area, the Velo-City Global Conference is a chance to experience the much-praised Copenhagen bicycling environment and to bring home ideas and inspiration at a time when our own region could be on the cusp of awakening to the benefits of great bicycling cities.

"In the Bay Area, people are starting to realize that this is the future, in terms of our development. And cycling is an integral part of that," says Corinne Winter, Executive Director of the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition.

In presentations from biking advocates from Europe, North America, South America, and Asia, it is clear that cities are now considered the most vital frontier for increasing and improving bicycling, particularly as more people move to urban areas.

"Cycling is the most obvious way to encourage more mobility no matter which corner of the earth you come from," says Bo Asmus Kjeldgaard, Copenhagen's Mayor of the Technical and Environmental Administration, who spoke to the eager crowd. "Copenhagen is just a drop in the ocean…but the power of our example is not to be missed. Cities need to look beyond their national borders and raise the bar worldwide."

Copenhagen clearly takes its role seriously as a pioneering bicycling city and wants to serve as a model for the rest of us. The numbers are impressive: 37 percent of Copenhageners ride bicycles to work and school, though the city's leadership is not satisfied with this and aims to increase that to 50 percent by 2015. More than 350 kilometers of physically separated bikeways grace the city's streets, and plans are underway to expand the already-impressive bicycling network with more dedicated bike space and improved intersections.

In an effort to better appreciate and recognize bicyclists, the City of Copenhagen recently added this railing at a busy intersection to allow cyclists to hold on while they wait for the light to change.

Even more compelling than the high numbers of people bicycling here is the normalcy of it all. A huge number of families with small children are riding, elderly people are riding, well-dressed professionals are riding. This is a country where Nobel Laureates and the Crown Prince ride bicycles for transportation.

The mainstreaming of bicycling is another prominent theme - and much-needed - theme of the Velo-City Conference. Along with the importance of great, on-the-ground bicycle facilities, conference goers from around the globe are highlighting the need to build the culture of bicycling in our communities so that riding is "as common as brushing your teeth," as Kjeldgaard describes Copenhagen today.

Andreas Rohl, Copenhagen's Bicycle Program Manager, is clearly not resting on the laurels of his city's impressive reputation, though, acknowledging that they need to do more to respect bicyclists. "We see you. Every cyclist counts," Rhol says. "It's very important for the city to show you are trying to promote bicycling."

Or, as Mikael Colville-Andersen does in his popular blog celebrating bicycle culture, we need to re-humanize urban cycling, or Copenhagenize it.

A great idea for Market Street in San Francisco?! This automated bicycle counter is positioned on one of Copenhagen's busiest bicycling roads and tracks the number of cyclists passing by (in the single direction) on a daily and annual basis. It shows that, as of 10:22a.m. on this sunny Monday morning, 2,572 people had biked by. This street regularly sees between 20,000 and 30,000 bicyclists a day.

Copenhagen's "green wave," which times traffic signals for smooth, easy bicycling is hugely popular among those who ride. On one street where the green wave was implemented, there are between 20,000 and 30,000 bicyclists riding each day. And there is even an automatic, electronic counter to show of the daily and annual number of riders on the busy stretch.

One of the biggest challenges today in Copenhagen, says Rohl, is congestion in the popular cycle tracks. So, what's their response? The city of Copenhagen is widening busy bikeways, replacing auto lanes with double-wides.

Most encouraging for me to learn at the conference so far is the fact that Copenhagen has not always been this good for bicycling, but rather, something they have worked at, particularly during the past 30 years. According to Rohl, bicycling numbers peaked in the 1950's but then backslid for decades as the car became more dominant and city planning paid less attention to two wheeled transportation.

In the early 1980's, grassroots activists demonstrated and demanded better bicycling conditions in Copenhagen, ultimately winning support from the decisionmakers who directed planners and engineers to re-focus on biking.

This is not dissimilar from where many American cities are today, particularly San Francisco. We have a solid base of people who bicycle, as Copenhagen did in the 80's, and we also know we could - and should - have so many more people choosing bicycling if conditions were improved. Today, politicians are starting to listen to us too, and transportation planners and engineers are stepping outside of their usual box to prioritize bicycling environment.

Copenhagen has not been without their challenges since then. Even though car ownership has increased a whopping 50 percent during the past 15 years, according to Rohl, bicycling is still the predominant way people move around the city, thanks to the investments in Copenhagen's welcoming and comfortable biking environment and promotion of bicycling as the fastest, easiest way to move around the city.

"Why the Danish people bike is not because they have honey running through their veins," says Gil Peñalosa, Executive Director of the Canadian nonprofit organization 8 - 80 Cities. "No. It's because they have a great infrastructure for biking. We do need the infrastructure more than anything else."

One of the conference's keynote speakers, Peñalosa travels the world advocating for more bikeable, livable communities and visited the Bay Area recently. He says he hopes the Velo-City Conference is a reality check for those of us in North America, pushing our Mayors not to compare ourselves with Atlanta and Houston, but rather to raise our standards by using Copenhagen as our benchmark.

"I hope people realize that there has never been a better moment to promote bicycling than now," he says. "We need to take bold steps, not baby steps…It's time that cycling grows up in North America."

Using an analogy of the U.S. soccer team playing against England in the World Cup match a few weeks ago, Penalosa says: "They [U.S. team] realized they could play. They went up that notch."

"In cycling, we have to go up that notch. I do think the U.S. has the capacity. We should stop coming up with excuses."

Bay Area bicycle advocates experience Copenhagen biking on a special tour arranged by the League of American Bicyclists. From left, Corinne Winter, Executive Director, Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition; Andy Thornley, Program Director, San Francisco Bicycle Coalition; and Jodie Medeiros, Development Director, SFBC.

This new covered bike parking is specially designed to hold cargo bicycles, a growing segment of bikes in Copenhagen during the past five years. Today, 25 percent of all families with two children in Copenhagen own cargo bikes.

Photo: richardmasoner.

Data from the 2008 US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey found that 2.7 percent of San Francisco's population commutes to work by bike. The survey reports that 3.7 percent of men ride to work, while only 1.6 percent of women do. A 2009 study in Scientific American found that men's cycling trips surpass women's by at least 2:1. In the competitive arena, 87 percent of competitive cyclists are male, according to 2009's active member demographic conducted by USA Cycling. 

These bicycle commute numbers also skew pretty far from commute rates by other modes. As noted in a Transportation Research Board survey by Susan Handy, a professor of environmental science at the University of California, Davis, "82 percent of the bicycle commuters were men and 21 percent were students, compared to 54 percent and 11 percent of all commuters, respectively." 

So what do these numbers mean about bicycling in the Bay Area?

Many researchers, including Handy, believe the presence of women on bicycles is an important indicator of how bike-friendly a city is. Research shows the better a city's bike infrastructure, the more commuters there are, including more women, seniors, riders with special needs and children. 

Ironically, many of the people working hardest to create more bike infrastructure in the Bay Area are women, including the directors of five bicycle coalitions: The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (SFBC), Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition (SVBC), Sonoma County Bicycle Coalition (SCBC), and Marin County Bicycle Coalition (MCBC), and Walk Oakland Bike Oakland (WOBO).

Many of these women leaders don't see gender, theirs or among cyclists in general, as having much to do with the coalition's goals and projects. 

Christine Culver, the Executive Director of the SCBC, says that while SCBC is working hard to make streets more attractive to all riders, they aren't doing anything specifically catered to women. 

"I guess I just don't see the divide between men and women as that significant or worth mentioning," says Culver. "I think by making the divide a bigger deal than it is just perpetuates the stereotype that bikes are for men." 

Culver notes, however, that there are a number of teams and bike classes in Sonoma County that are geared toward women, including Team Speed Queen, Nimble Training, and Early Bird Women's Developmental Cycling Team. 

Furthermore, the Census statistics don't necessarily match up with coalition membership.

"Based on a survey we did of our members and fans in February 2010, 55 percent are women," said WOBO's Executive Director Cassie Rohrbach. "For the most part at WOBO, we do not target our events, programs or campaigns specifically at women. Our goal is that as we grow, we represent the diversity of Oakland, including the geographic, racial, cultural, socio-economic, age and gender diversity of this city."   

WOBO does have Women's Rides every second Sunday of the month. They also offer "Kidical Mass" (I bet you say that out loud after reading this) which gets families out and about.

For the SFBC, the focus on women cyclists is part of the larger effort to increase safety in the streets.  

"The SFBC has done a few things to focus specifically on women cyclists -- we have done a women-only urban cycling workshop, and have also organized cultural history tours with topics of interest to women," said Renee Rivera, SFBC's Acting Executive Director.

"The top priority for the SFBC is to work with the city on improving our streets, and increasing bike ridership overall, to make the streets safer for everybody, and through doing that I believe that women will feel safer and more confident to bike."

Personally, as a woman and a regular cyclist, I think the indicators don't adequately match the conditions on the streets. Everywhere I go, I see women riding and it makes the numbers hard to believe. What's more, Census commute statistics can't adequately measure the participation of women in Bay Area bicycle culture.

Bikes and the City, a regular online source for bicycle news and fun, recently started a series in conjunction with Bike NOPA called "Women Who Bike," which chronicles the experience of an array of woman and their pedal-powered locomotion. Velo Vogue, another local blog, documents the growing trend of Cyclic Chic here and in cities worldwide. And how could you not be inspired to ride (no matter your gender) after watching The Derailleurs perform a scintillating routine?

I live in the Mission and I've commuted to work in SOMA for two years by bike. Now, at eight months pregnant, I work from home but still ride my bike to run errands. My fiance and I are investigating bike seats for kids. We're having a girl.

So if the statisticians out there are concerned, that will be one more female riding a bicycle.

A family enjoying the warm day and car-free streets. Photos: Matthew Roth.

San Jose kicked off its first ViaVelo Saturday with the opening of seven blocks of San Fernando Street downtown to bicycle riders, skaters, and pedestrians who enjoyed five hours of car-free space. Several hundred people showed up, many of them families and the burgeoning young fixed-gear crowd, riding bikes and socializing on a brilliant spring day.

San Jose joins San Francisco and San Mateo county (whose Streets Alive was mostly rained out last month) in hosting the increasingly popular events, which are modeled on the enormous ciclovia in Bogota, Colombia. San Francisco has held three of the nine Sunday Streets of 2010 and Oakland will premiere its first Oaklavia on June 27th.

Organizers of ViaVelo were upbeat about the turnout and the day's events, suggesting that if there is enough positive public feedback, the city would like to make the events a tradition next year.

"It's nice not having to worry about cars, to see families with their kids out, to see families happy and having fun, rather than worrying about how to cross the street or if it's safe to ride a bike," said John Brazil, Bike Coordinator for the San Jose Department of Transportation. "I know that all the organizers and many of the sponsors would like to see this continue, so hopefully the community will tell their elected officials they like it and it's a priority."

As one of the primary community partners involved in organizing ViaVelo, the San Jose Bike Party led various feeder rides to and from the event. Several rides from downtown went to points of interest along San Jose's extensive trail system.

"I love the fact that San Jose is becoming a bike city and putting so much focus on it," said Ian Emmons, a Bike Party organizer attending ViaVelo with his son. "I think we've got a ways to go before we catch up with Portland and 7 miles of closed streets, but we're working on it."

Bike builder Domenick Guida and his custom chopper.

"A lot of guys can relate to how much work goes into this. They know what goes into it and they notice the little details," he said.

Guida said he wished he had received more notice about the event from the sponsors, but assumed next years ViaVelos would be more inclusive. When asked how his work fit within the traditional bicycle advocacy efforts, he said, "It's all the same thing, they've all got two wheels."

One of the more surprising sights was the specter of four Mormon missionaries riding custom fixed-gear bicycles in their standard church attire. One of the missionaries, Dan Bishop, said he had been inspired to ride fixies after seeing bike messengers in San Francisco.

"Most times we get around faster than in cars. We have bus passes, but we usually ride," he said.

ViaVelo's founding sponsor was Mattson Technology, whose CEO Dave Dutton, extolled the value of cycling at a press conference during the event.

"Why is bicycling important? It unites families, it brings us all together, it helps us and the environment at the same time," said Dutton. "San Jose has done a lot of work in helping make it bike friendly. We now want to take advantage of that and make use of that so they can justify and do more."

Also at the press conference were San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed, Councilmembers Rose Herrera and Sam Liccardo, and Supervisors Dave Cortese and Ken Yeager. Silicon Valley Leadership Group CEO Carl Guardino said, "It's nice to see so many people pedaling what we preach, about getting out of four wheels and onto two wheels."

Standing behind the podium in his bicycle racing socks, Guardino tied the ViaVelo event in with last week's Bike to work Day and the upcoming publicity for cycling that will be generated by the Amgen Tour of California race.

"If we change it from just 'Bike to Work Day' to 'Bike to Work Every Day,' then we can change Silicon Valley around," he said.

Mattson's Dave Dutton with the microphone, flanked by San Jose DOT's Acting Director Hans Larson, San Jose's Chief Development Officer Paul Kruttko, Silicon Valley Leadership Group's Carl Guardino, Supervisor Dave Cortese, Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition's Corinne Winter, and Mayor Chuck Reed.

Some of the many fixie kids using the grassy mounds for tricks.

Missionaries working the crowd on their fixies.

Dan Bishop doing track stands.

SVBC E.D. Corinne Winter, Silicon Valley Leadership Group CEO Carl Guardino, and San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed at the San Jose City Hall Rotunda. Carl Guardino's bike is in front of the podium. Photo: Matthew Roth.

The San Jose Cycling Classic will kick off with Bike to Work Day and finish with the Amgen Tour of California Stage 4 on Wednesday, May 19th, where luminaries like Lance Armstrong will race through the streets of the capital of Silicon Valley.

There will be two King of the Mountain events that encourage avid cyclists to ride a portion of the Tour of California race to raise money for charities, one dedicated to CEOs and corporate executives and one open to anyone who thinks they can surmount a very steep section of Sierra Road.

This year will also mark the first ciclovia in the South Bay, similar to San Francisco's Sunday Streets, where the city opens its streets to cyclists and pedestrians by closing them to cars. San Jose's ciclovia, called Via Velo and sponsored by Mattson Technology, is a modest first step that will close San Fernando Street downtown for just under one mile, from 3rd Street to the 87 freeway.

At a recent press conference, San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed and various Silicon Valley business leaders asserted that the week's events would continue to boost the profile of bicycle riding in the city, and not just for the spandex crowd.

In fact, Mayor Reed made a special plea to residents in his city who were not the typical sport cyclists, urging them to take advantage of the Cycling Classic events or even the 50 miles of creek trails to reacquaint themselves with their bicycles.

"I know there are a lot of people out there who have bicycles in garages, bicycles in sheds," said Reed. "Those bicycles are lonely and I want this to motivate people to get out, get the bicycle out, and pump up the tires, put a little oil on the chain," and come out for Bike to Work Day or Via Velo.

"I ride in the name of people who don't wear spandex," added Mayor Reed, who said the creek trail system was a great way for families to ride without the worry of traffic.

Dave Dutton, CEO of Mattson Technology, said his company was sponsoring Via Velo this year in an effort to promote the health benefits of cycling and physical activity. For those who haven't taken up bicycle commuting in San Jose for fear of traffic or who discourage their children from riding, Dutton said the Via Velo would provide the safe space for families to embrace cycling together.

"Remember the first time you rode a bike and your parent let go of the bicycle and [you had that] first realization that you're on your own?" asked Dutton. "That's what we're trying to capture again, to bring families back together and really bring it into a community."

Dutton said globally 15 percent of Mattson Technology staff rode their bikes to work for last year's Bike to Work Day and that the company hoped to promote more regular riding among employees, which was good for the company's bottom line.

"At Mattson, a thriving community is a good community for employees," he said. "A more well community actually lowers health-care costs and overall helps the industry have an advantage."

Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition Executive Director Corinne Winter made the decidedly bike-geek joke that the 16th Annual Bike to Work Day could be considered the true prologue to the Cycling Classic.

Guardino hoping his promise will be a competitive advantage. Photo: Bryan Goebel.

For some at the press conference, fun was certainly important, but the lure of friendly competition and King of the Mountain bragging rights was clearly more of a draw.

Carl Guardino, CEO of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group and a noted cyclist who routinely rides to work 30 miles round trip, talked up the King of the Mountain ride, a 3.7 mile course up Sierra Road that averages 10 percent grade.

Guardino, who pattered around the Rotunda in San Jose's City Hall in socks after leaving his well-used cycling shoes clipped into the pedals of his carbon-fiber bicycle, said with some irony that he expected to lose the race up the hill.

In order to give himself a further advantage, he held up a razor and shaving cream and made a promise (threat?). "For every CEO who beats me up that King of the Mountain ride, I will personally shave your legs," Guardino smiled.

"I will be there at the top of the hill at the VIP tent, ready to shave their legs, not their backs, their legs."

For more information on Bike to Work Day, visit the SVBC's website. For more information on Via Velo, the King of the Mountain Ride and other events planned around the Tour of California, visit the San Jose Cycling Classic website or the SVBC website.

Let's just say right away that Critical Mass is a bike party, and the San Jose Bike Party has a lot more similarities to Critical Mass than differences. A half-dozen San Francisco and Berkeley Critical Mass veterans took a field trip to join the San Jose Bike Party on Friday night as it cruised through the heart of Silicon Valley. We piled onto a "Baby Bullet" Caltrain that got us into downtown Sunnyvale well before the 8 p.m. starting time. (Along the way we pondered how many cyclists it takes to make a Critical Mass and concluded that it takes enough to break into different factions that don't like each other!)

After leaving the train, we soon came upon a couple with a big couch on a bike trailer, their two dogs occupying the seats of honor, and a sound system ready to pump some tunes from within. As we approached the gathering point, not really sure how to distinguish one intersection from another along the sprawling avenues of the South Bay, we were excited to see feeder rides streaming in from all directions, numbering anywhere from a dozen to nearly 100. Riders gathering in a big parking lot, hanging with friends, energy and anticipation rising.

By the time we got rolling there were over 1,000 riders, and possibly twice that many. Unlike San Francisco, there weren't too many white hipsters in this ride. Most of the crowd was Latino and Asian youth on all manner of bikes from beaters to chrome low-riders, and a smaller number of "properly" garbed older white cyclists in yellow reflective clothing with helmets -- classic bike nerds, in other words.

A lot of folks come in groups and hang together throughout the ride.

We talked about how different it felt in terms of the demographics of the riders, refreshing for us old-time San Francisco cyclists. And given the relatively short life of this ride, and the fact that it's clearly growing fast, some of the most compelling reasons that we've remained enthusiastic Critical Mass riders for so many years were reaffirmed by the event. The hundreds of kids on this ride, ages 12-22, were all experiencing their environment in a new way. The material experience of a mass bike ride changes imaginations, changes how one conceives of urban (and in this case, surburban) space.

The origins of the Bike Party go back to a "get out the vote" ride in 2004, and then during the following year, individuals from the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition and other cycling activists discussed with each other how to stimulate a larger South Bay ride. Some folks had been tending the flames of a fledgling Critical Mass, but it sputtered out during the dark, rainy winter. On their website they explain how the San Jose Bike Party got started:

"Many conversations among involved riders led to the common conclusion that a ride styled after San Francisco's confrontational and controversial Critical Mass would not work well in the car-centric South Bay, but we never arrived at a full consensus of what a "San Jose Bike Party" should look like. All sat quiet and calm for a few years until a wonderful meeting of minds happened. In the summer of 2007, one of the original organizers of the 2004 and 2005 "Bike Party" Halloween rides met a new roommate who had helped organize a bike gang in San Diego and had ridden with LA's "Midnite Ridazz." Together, they determined to re-start the San Jose Bike Party idea..."

They decided to start it at 8:30 p.m. on the third Friday of the month, well after work and dinner, to pick a theme for each ride, and to have planned routes. This is quite similar to our approach in the early years of San Francisco's Critical Mass, except the starting time, which has always been at 6 here. The Bike Party has a tight coterie of volunteer organizers, and they appoint themselves and others to be "Birds." My main experience of them Friday night was the two or three times I had a yellow-vest clad monitor running past me flashing their bike light in people's eyes, yelling "stop! stop!" at a red light.

The San Jose ride's main difference from San Francisco's, besides having a self-designated organizing group who maintains close contact with police, is that it tends to stop at most intersections, and when the light turns red, not very many cyclists are inclined to keep streaming through. This is in contrast to our approach in SF, which was always premised on maintaining a dense Mass to preserve maximum safety for cyclists.

In Sunnyvale and Mountain View, the ride was pushed into the right lane of three northbound lanes on El Camino Real, with many police squad cars and some motorcycles riding herd on the cyclists. We split ourselves into dozens of small clots of cyclists, usually 10-50 riders each, and it was increasingly difficult to catch up with the riders ahead. After almost an hour of this odd experience, we did some turning and twisting before being herded by organizers into a mid-point parking lot for a regrouping stop.

Bean Powered at the San Jose Bike Party, here at the regrouping stop.

The organizers are anti-alcohol, but plenty of folks were nursing beers and flasks along the way. The folks with the Beaners wagon above had a cooler full of beers on their trailer. But no one was as inebriated as the drunk guy who spends each and every San Francisco Critical Mass bellowing at the top of his lungs.

Overall, the Bike Party captured a lot of the magic that Critical Mass does. I found it frustrating and self-defeating to not hold intersections long enough for larger groups of cyclists to pass through, but one of the characteristics of mass bike rides is how they each find their own comfort level and culture. At least a half dozen sound systems were on the ride, pumping funk, hip-hop and other popular tunes.

Given the participants in the ride, I doubt if the culture will remain the same for long. The youth culture in San Jose hasn't established its own voice in the Bay Area and it seems like the Bike Party might be a place where it could erupt.

The couch on wheels!

During the mid-point regrouping stop, Jason Meggs, who was the first person to bring a rolling couch on Critical Mass (in Berkeley in the early 1990s) approached the folks with the rolling couch and their dogs. When he mentioned he was a long-time Critical Mass rider, the couch pedalers were visibly dismayed. I spoke to a dozen different cyclists while riding and most of them were curious about our Critical Mass and knew little about it. So even though the webmaster and (perhaps) the main organizers choose to characterize San Francisco Critical Mass as confrontational and controversial, parroting the distorted accounts that have been broadcast far and wide in the mass media, the San Jose Bike Party is clearly influenced by Critical Mass, in spite of deliberate attempts to distance the event from its more notorious predecessor.

Still, they have to make the same disclaimers about real or potential participants that we often make here in San Francisco: "At Bike Party, we welcome all riders. However, the atmosphere can be diverse and chaotic, much like a rock concert. There are people who act badly, as you might see at any large event like a concert at Shoreline. We strongly discourage inappropriate behavior... Still, no one can fully control someone else's actions. Most people are generally respectful, friendly, and helpful."

Just like when we talk to the media and emphasize that they cannot get an interview until they come on a Critical Mass and experience it first-hand, the Bike Party describes itself this way: "We're one-half political party, one-half street party -- made up of all types of bicyclists and human-powered transportation advocates who celebrate and build community in a monthly ride that must be experienced to be understood."

Kindred spirits animate the ride. Describing it online they say:

Everything looks better from the seat of a bike. You can feel the wind on your face, the rhythm of the ground in your legs, you can feel your heart pumping, and the energy of your surroundings encompassing your body. On a bicycle, you can see the city, talk to strangers, escape the insulated bubbles of cars and feel free from the confines of cubicles. A bicycle is freedom, a bicycle is friendly, and a bicycle is life... Bicycling frees people from costly fees, stuffy cars, sedentary lifestyles, and dreadful commutes. Bike Party rides aim to teach riders the street skills and confidence they need to become daily riders on all kinds of roads.

We didn't make the whole ride, but returned to the Caltrain station to catch the last train before it was over. We all agreed it was great fun to join a neighboring ride, and we welcome the San Jose Bike Party as a member of the Critical Mass family of rides. From the huge and nearly city-sponsored Critical Mass that happens twice annually in Budapest, Hungary, to the thousands-strong rides in cities from Vancouver, BC to Rome, Italy, to Sao Paolo, Brazil and San Francisco, every urban area reinvents the idea of mass bike rides for its own context and needs. Congrats to our southern neighbors for opening up a vital space for social transformation. San Jose and the South Bay are part of the worldwide bicycling renaissance. Check it out next month, May 21, 8 p.m.

Though it may seem esoteric, one of the biggest impediments to designing streets for people is the over-reliance on design standards that have long privileged movement of vehicles over any other consideration on the streets. That’s why advocates cheered when U.S. DOT Secretary Ray LaHood published a policy paper recently that, at least in word, placed bicycles and pedestrians on equal footing with motorists.

“Every transportation agency, including DOT, has the responsibility to improve conditions and opportunities for walking and bicycling and to integrate walking and bicycling into their transportation systems,” read one line of the statement.

Yet, an advisory policy paper won’t change the streets overnight and that’s where reforming the design manuals and guidelines at state departments of transportation is imperative, work that groups like Congress for New Urbanism have made a priority at the national level.

Various cities in California that have tried to rebuild their streets to be safer for pedestrians and bicycle riders have often been met with resistance from traffic engineers and city attorneys who rely on Caltrans manuals and standards that are good for moving traffic, not always for protecting vulnerable users.

“The Caltrans Highway Design Manual [HDM] has been the bible for highway engineers for the past half century and has guided the development of California’s freeway system,” said Hans Larsen, Acting Director of San Jose’s Department of Transportation. “Unfortunately, the HDM has also become the default gospel for designing local streets by many city engineers.”

Larsen said the standards that make freeways good for carrying large quantities of vehicles at high speeds are not context appropriate on most streets in urban areas. “Even today, the Caltrans HDM continues to promote such commandments as ‘a design speed as high as feasible should be used’ and ‘the basic lane width shall be 12 feet,’” he said.

All this may be slowly changing, however, as Caltrans has adopted a Complete Streets policy and has recently set out a timeline for reforming its standards to better reflect the needs of urban areas.

Caltrans spokesperson Matt Rocco explained that the agency has adopted a long checklist of reforms, the Complete Streets Implementation Action Plan [PDF], including the number one item, a revision to the HDM to incorporate multi-modal design and safety standards. Rocco said he would be surprised if the revisions to the HDM weren’t presented to the public for review before the end of the year.

One proposal for Van Ness BRT lanes, designs that are not standards in the Caltrans HDM. Image: San Francisco County Transportation Authority.

Some Bay Area congestion mitigation agencies that have been repeatedly rebuffed by Caltrans engineers over Bus Rapid Transit or pedestrian and bicycle projects are skeptical of the pace of change.

Tilly Chang, Deputy Director for Planning at the San Francisco County Transportation Authority (TA), the local congestion mitigation agency (CMA) and a major funder of innovative transportation projects in the county, said that just formulating general policy documents and checklists won’t lead to change.

“It doesn’t influence anything,” said Chang, unless it leads to a meaningful revision to the HDM.

Chang referred to the Van Ness BRT project and 19th Avenue as examples of recent struggles with Caltrans over design standards. Both are state-controlled highways, even though they cut through the center of a dense city. On 19th Avenue the TA belabored a plan to stripe a parking line so that drivers would stop parking on the sidewalk; on Van Ness, Caltrans compelled the TA to compile research that demonstrates the safety and feasibility of BRT treatments like bus bulbs.

“I think they just don’t have a lot of pedestrian safety research. They are not a transit organization,” said Chang. Chang and her team have had to apply for design exemptions, a rigorous process of approvals for treatments that aren’t standard in the HDM.

“When they look at safety, they look at vehicles,” she said.

In San Jose, the Valley Transportation Authority (VTA), the local CMA, had to fight tooth and nail to convince Caltrans to allow them to narrow vehicular lanes and widen bike lanes and sidewalks on an overpass at Tully Road and Interstate 101. Everywhere else along the length of Tully Road, lanes are 11 feet wide, but at the overpass, Caltrans told VTA it was unsafe to have lanes narrower than 12 feet.

“In order to accommodate wider sidewalks and wider bike lanes, we had to take away other real estate,” said Casey Emoto, Deputy Director for Project Development at the VTA. Emoto explained that the VTA and the City of San Jose had to indemnify Caltrans against liability [PDF] before the agency would consent to the changes.

“I think the thing that hasn’t caught up to all this is the design standards,” said Emoto. “Until the design standards catch up to these, we’ll continue to have these kinds of problems.

Dave Campbell of the East Bay Bicycle Coalition said the biggest concern for cities is liability, which city attorneys attempt to minimize by relying on the accepted state standards from the HDM. “If [cities] do things that aren’t in the Caltrans manuals, they’ll be liable,” said Campbell. “Cities need to know that improvements they make for bike and pedestrian safety will be supported and endorsed by Caltrans.”

Change will take time, as Caltrans’ own documents readily admit. Simply writing complete streets guidelines into the HDM won’t result in
green bike lanes sprouting up everywhere or bus bulbs and chicanes on state-controlled roads.

“The implementation of this action plan will face challenges, including changing the corporate culture, limited resources, and more,” conceded the authors of the Action Plan.

In addition, the issue of liability is one that Caltrans admitted won’t go away with the new HDM. “There’s always going to be tension between liability and providing a safe facility that is used by trucks and all vehicles,” said Rocco.

In the end, VTA and San Jose pushed hard enough for Caltrans to relent. The Tully Road overpass reconstruction will be advertised in April and likely be built by the end of summer, with 11 foot travel lanes, 6 foot bike lanes, and 10 foot sidewalks.

“We have local leaders being innovative and they are being thwarted by Caltrans, whose design manual is out of date,” said Corinne Winter, Executive Director of the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition and a supporter of the changes at the Tully Road overpass. Winter said that San Jose was fortunate because the city and the VTA never relented on their plans for narrower lanes, but smaller cities don’t often have the planning staff or budget and default to Caltrans standards.

To deal with liability, some cities have asked Caltrans to relinquish control of shared state roads, which allows a municipality to make the final call on safety and design, but means they need to foot the bill. Assemblymember Jim Beall recently introduced a bill that would grant San Jose the control and maintenance of portions of Caltrans routes so the city could reduce lane widths, traffic calm the street, or widen sidewalks.

Larsen explained that relinquishment of the routes would allow the city to cast the problems and potential of the streets in a new light. By presenting his engineers with new problems to solve, like improving safety for pedestrians and cyclists, he expected his department could create safer streets and a more livable city.

“Don’t blame the engineers, just fix the direction they are given,” said Larsen. “That’s why modernizing the HDM is important.”

Photo: markofphotography

"This was something that was an oversight from the initial enactment from 2006, which took effect in 2008," Simitian explained in an interview with Streetsblog. He said he waited a year after the law took effect to make changes, which include the increased fines, adding a point to a driver's record for the infraction, and using a portion of the fine to create an education fund for the dangers of distracted driving. Simitian also said the motivation for adding cyclists to the bill did not come from a dramatic incident nor a trend of increased cycling collisions due to cell phone use.

"Common sense tells us it’s not a safe habit, given all the risks that cyclists have to contend with," said Simitian.

The California Bicycle Coalition (CBC), which was an early supporter of the original distracted driving legislation, was not thrilled about the inclusion of cyclists in the bill. CBC Communications Director Jim Brown said that he was confused about the motivation for extending the same level of fines to cyclists, particularly absent data showing distracted cycling as a public safety hazard.

"The consequences of a distracted driver are considerably more serious than the consequences of distracted cycling," said Brown, adding that safe riding should be encouraged at all times and that talking on a cell phone or any other practice that distracted a cyclist from riding would not be advisable.

As for the actual danger to the public of distracted cycling, Brown said the data didn’t support the presumption of risk the law seeks to redress. "There are theoretical risks and there are actual risks," he said. "As far as I’m aware, there is no accident evidence that points to a problem. In the absence of any evidence against bicyclists, this law seems premature."

Tom Rice, Research Epidemiologist at UC Berkeley's Safe Transportation Research and Education Center, said the issue could be one of data and the definition of a collision. "Unless there is also a motorized vehicle involved, it won't make it into traffic collision reports," he said. The traditional databases, such as the CHP's Statewide Integrated Traffic Records System (SWITRS), don't capture bicycle-pedestrian injury collisions or fatalities. "The data are hard to come by. It's not a nice, easy reliable data set," said Rice.

Photo: Bryan Goebel

Simitian defended his record of support for cyclists, citing his work as mayor of Palo Alto to build that city's bicycle boulevard and numerous initiatives that improved cycling conditions. He also said he would be open to reviewing the fine structure in committee if that was a significant issue.

"I’ve been an advocate for cyclists for 25 years for full rights to the road, but with those rights come a certain degree of responsibility," he said.

UPDATE: The SFBC's Andy Thornley wanted to be sure readers know they don't oppose Senator Simitian's bill: "We're definitely in favor of cell phone and distracted driver/rider prohibitions that create safe streets for all users, no special forgiveness for folks on bikes. The concerns I expressed to Streetsblog about the proposal are not whether bicycle riders should follow the same rules as everyone else (they should), it's whether a distracted SUV driver and a distracted bike rider should be fined the same amount, given the enormous disparity in their destructive potential."

Bryan Goebel contributed reporting to this story.

Just how dangerous is San Francisco for pedestrians?

A new report on pedestrian safety in the 52 largest U.S. metro areas ranked San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont 13th safest for walkers, based on an index that takes into account annual pedestrian deaths and the percentage of workers who commute by foot. San Francisco looks pretty good at first glance, but Walk SF president Manish Champsee said a closer look at the city's record reveals a less favorable state of affairs: 47.7 percent of all traffic fatalities in San Francisco are pedestrians, more than four times the national average of 11.8 percent. The rate of pedestrian fatalities per 100,000 residents is 2.60 in San Francisco, 70 percent higher than the national average of 1.53.

That's partly because far more people walk in San Francisco than in the country as a whole. The rate of pedestrian fatalities per walking trip is still much lower in the city proper than in most metro regions. But a fairer comparison, said Champsee, is between San Francisco and other very walkable cities. "We do rank favorably when you control for the number of people who walk to work. Having said that, I think a truer measure of that would be to compare San Francisco to its peers cities, places like New York City, Chicago, Seattle, and Washington DC."

The report, co-authored by the Surface Transportation Policy Partnership and Transportation for America, only includes regional data, and doesn't break out statistics by city, which would give a more precise picture of how dangerous San Francisco is compared to peers. Regionally, however, San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont is more dangerous than other metros with very walkable cores, like Chicago, Portland, New York, Seattle, and Boston.

"We hope to see a report coming out that will compare San Francisco to other similarly land-used cities," said Champsee.

San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont is safer for pedestrians than most U.S. metro regions, but is more dangerous than most of its walkable peers. (Chart: Dangerous by Design report)

By another measure, San Francisco is definitely trailing in improving pedestrian safety: while the report found an average of 1.5 percent of federal transportation spending is focused on pedestrian and bicycle safety, Champsee said San Francisco is spending only 0.5 percent of its federal transportation dollars on that purpose (MTA spokesperson Judson True said he couldn't immediately confirm that number.)

"MTA keeps saying, 'Yes, this is the amount we spent directly on it, but in all the other stuff we do, like road repair, there's a bunch of pedestrian stuff we roll into it,'" said Pi Ra of the Senior Action Network. "We keep saying, show us."

Champsee and Ra both point to pedestrian safety projects the MTA is currently working on, including the 19th Avenue and Van Ness Avenue double-fine zones, pedestrian countdown signals, and DPW's pedestrian improvements on Divisadero Street, Valencia Street, and Leland Avenue.

Still, Ra would like to see the total pedestrian safety spending figures itemized. "The bottom line is we aren't spending enough money on pedestrian improvements," he said.

For now, many of the cities' most dangerous streets for pedestrians remain untamed.

"If you look at places where there are a lot of lanes, a lot of traffic, and a lot of people walking, I think those are the priority areas," said Champsee. "Places like Market Street, Van Ness, Geary, Mission, 19th Avenue, Sunset Boulevard, Cesar Chavez Street, Guerrero, just places where you have a lot of fast-moving traffic and a lot of people."

True said the MTA has moved vigorously to improve pedestrian safety in recent years. "So much of what we do is about pedestrian safety," he said. "Road diets, ... improving traffic signals, the school crossing guard program, Safe Routes to Schools, Safe Routes to Transit, the accessible/audible pedestrian signals which were installed on Market Street, increasing ladder crosswalks around schools, the speed humps that have been put in as part of traffic calming projects and others. Improving pedestrian safety permeates everything we do every single day."

True said the MTA is advocating for greater pedestrian safety funding in the upcoming federal transportation spending bill.

"The key is that we all know we could use more dedicated resources for pedestrian improvements in the next federal transportation spending bill," said True. "That's really our focus."

Carli Paine, president of Walk Oakland Bike Oakland, said the economic downturn has made it even more difficult to find funding for pedestrian safety. "Oakland has come a long way in pedestrian safety over the past decade, but the city's fiscal crisis has put the squeeze on our public works budget," said Paine. "Federal support for Complete Streets policies and increased funding for pedestrian safety projects are critical to meeting our goals for walkable neighborhoods and safe access to transit."

The San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara region, which was measured separately, fared worse than its northern neighbor region, with 1.3 deaths per 100,000 residents, in spite of only 1.8 percent of residents walking to work, according to 2000 U.S. Census data. San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont had 1.6 deaths per 100,000 residents, but had a much higher walk-to-work ratio of 3.9 percent.

"The data that we have in San Jose shows that the areas in which we have pedestrian fatalities are really more in the suburban areas of the city, where we've got high-speed, four-lane, six-lane arterial streets that are difficult for people to cross," said San Jose's acting transportation director, Hans Larsen. "We are looking to try to transform some of these streets to be more pedestrian friendly."

"It just illustrates how important it is that we have safe facilities for bicycling and walking," said the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition's Colin Heyne. "San Jose and Silicon Valley are definitely making large strides towards those ends, but definitely we'd love to see more done and we'd love to have it done quicker."

"In order to encourage that kind of transportation, you have to have the infrastructure in place that makes it safe and easy and, as a result, enjoyable."

Photo: barolodrinker

The VTA used an initial $75,000 from their general budget to hire Economic and Planning Systems (EPS) to conduct the planning work, but applied for a $500,000 Safe Routes to Transit grant to implement the pilot, money that will come from bridge tolls collected by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC). VTA has learned that the project has been ranked for funding, though it might not get the money for a month or two.

"Bikes in general are given short shrift in suburban sprawling areas," said Chris Augenstein, Deputy Director of Planning at VTA. "We can do a lot more to make bicycles a real mode and integrate them into everything we do."

VTA's Augenstein countered any doubts about the agency's approach to the project, arguing that by doing extensive market research and intercept studies, they will be targeting the project to expressed need. "We don't have all the answers, but we want to put our feet out there in the deep end," he said. "By focusing on the Caltrain stations where you have bike capacity problems, we think we're taking a logical step. Nobody really knows how [bike sharing] is going to fare in the Bay Area, but that's the whole purpose for the pilot."

Photo: richardmasoner

Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition Executive Director Corrine Winter echoed Beasley's concern, though she was also clear to point out that the new leadership at the DOT was very encouraging. "We're very happy with the vision of what's going to happen," said Winter, who said that between the Mayor, Councilmember Liccardo, and Larsen, all the important players are talking the talk. "How does the vision turn to reality-- that comes down to dollars."  Winter also noted that among 447 staff at the DOT, only two work full-time on cycling, a fact she argued would have to change.

"If the city really wants to see this project come to reality, they need to have more people [working on it]," she said.

San Fernando Bikeway and 4th Street Cycle Track

John Brazil of San Jose DOT's Bicycle and Pedestrian Program said the two biggest priorities for his department in moving forward with the bicycle plan are to make cycling in San Jose safe and convenient, so that it would be as commonplace to see throngs of cyclists commuting to work in his city as it is in Portland, Oregon or other cycling hotspots. Brazil noted that despite a large budget deficit, bike plan improvements will be built out, should the plan be adopted.

In addition to working with the Valley Transportation Authority on a trial bike-share program, Brazil said two projects in particular would capture the public's attention over the next two years. The first is the San Fernando bikeway, a painted, buffered bicycle lane from Diridon Station a mile and a half to downtown destinations, such as San Jose State University. Because Caltrans doesn't currently recognize colored bicycle lanes, however, Brazil said the city has to complete a rigorous experimental pilot process with the agency to convince it that adding paint will fit within its street engineering guidelines. Funding for the project will come from a mix of internal budget apportioning and external grants.

The second project of note is a bi-directional, physically separated cycle track on 4th Street from St. James Street to San Carlos Street, intersecting the San Fernando colored lane and linking up Japantown and destinations north with the downtown core. The DOT intends to remove a lane of vehicular traffic to make room for the cycle track, move the parking lane off the curb, and run the cycle track curbside. Numerous technical difficulties still need to be worked out, particularly the challenge of minimizing turning conflicts at the intersections where bi-directional bicycle traffic would create signal and visibility issues. Brazil estimated that this project would take 1-2 years to clear Caltrans experimental process designation, but hoped San Jose's example, if successful, would make it easier for other cities to follow the lead with the innovation.

2020 Plan Objectives

• Bikeway Network - Complete 500 miles of the Bikeway Network
• Mode Share - Achieve 5% of all trips taken by Bike
  
• Safety - Reduce bike collision rate by 50 percent
  
• Parking - Add 5000 bike parking spaces
  
• Validation - Achieve Gold-level Bicycle Friendly Community status from LAB

• Bikeway Network – Complete 25 miles of new bikeways each year
• Mode Share – Increase bike mode share by 1% from baseline every two years 
• Safety – Reduce bike collision rate by 5% from baseline each year 
• Parking – Install 500 new bike parking spaces each year 
• Validation – Achieve Silver-level Bicycle Friendly Community status by 2013 and Gold-level by 2020.
  

In our ongoing coverage of the adverse affects of traffic engineers' over-reliance on automobile level of service (LOS) measurements, we've examined how new amendments to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) would allow local jurisdictions greater freedom in choosing whether they want to develop their cities for cars or for transit, cycling, and livable streets.  Simply put, if the CEQA amendments are codified, cities all over the state could become more like San Jose.

While San Francisco labors with the development of its auto trip generation (ATG) metric and could spend a year or more setting a development impact fee that would go to improving transit, cycling and pedestrian safety, San Jose completed a citywide transportation environmental impact statement (EIS) in 2002 and adopted its vision for sustainable, transit-oriented growth in 2005 [PDF]. What's more, this transportation and land-use plan moves San Jose ahead of the curve compared to other cities in meeting the requirements under AB 32 (carbon reduction targets) and SB 375 (limiting sprawl).

"We want to grow up, not out," said Hans Larsen, Acting Director of San Jose's Department of Transportation (DOT), noting the city couldn't accommodate the 400,000 new residents expected by 2030 within San Jose's current boundaries by adding more sprawling developments and more traffic. "We had a policy conflict between our growth plan, which was really smart-growth, and our transportation management policies, which have historically been oriented toward providing enough capacity for cars."

Because new development will inevitably bring additional car trips, no matter how well situated near transit, the DOT conceived of a development impact fee that is applied to improving pedestrian safety and the sustainable transportation network. In determining the impact fee, the DOT looked at how much, on average, developers traditionally spent on LOS mitigations to increase car capacity. This number, $2,000-3,000 per auto trip generated by the new development, is assessed for developments that create 400 or less net new peak-hour trips. If the project will create more than 400 new peak-hour trips, a fee is determined in the process of environmental review.

Through the Strong Neighborhoods Initiative (SNI) started by former Mayor Ron Gonzales, communities located in the SPAs developed lists of neighborhood priorities, most of them related to transportation and livability. The auto-trip fees from new developments are then distributed by the DOT to meet the needs elaborated in the community's priority list.

In the process of creating this very strong link between new development and efficient transportation, the DOT designated Protected Intersections along transit corridors. At these intersections, no matter how bad auto LOS would degrade with a transportation or development project, the city will not widen the streets, soften turning radii, or otherwise add vehicle capacity. In fact, the only mitigations permissible are those that calm traffic further, improve transit and bicycle accessibility, or make pedestrian conditions safer. The DOT created an initial list of approximately twenty Protected Intersections when it completed the citywide transportation EIS and the public has added a handful more in subsequent negotiations with the DOT and City Council. 

Because of the broader economic downturn, the policy has yet to realize the full benefits of using development fees to improve sustainable transportation. Four development projects in the SPAs, totaling more than 3,000 residential units, have been approved by the city since the plan was adopted, but none of them has started construction, according to Pineda. The project closest to completing its financing obligations, a residential development that would build on the existing parking lot at the San Jose Flea Market, will provide $1.7 million in impact fees, much of which will go to improve streetscape and pedestrian conditions in a nearby commercial district as established in an SNI priority list.

BRT corridor currently. Photo: San Jose DOT.

BRT corridor as envisioned when develiopment impact fees are applied to transit, bicycle, and pedestrian improvements. Image: San Jose DOT.