Bike East Bay, as part of a fundraising drive, this week released a list of incremental bike-safety wins made throughout the huge geographical area where it advocates. The projects "...aren't the most exciting, as our intention was to highlight just a few of the many little things our advocacy has an impact on, and not only the big infrastructure projects that get the most attention," wrote Bike East Bay's Robert Prinz, admitting that many of the little wins are "...just paint-only bikeways that will probably get criticism from the Streetsblog readership, and the adjustments we negotiated are just little tweaks."
From Bike East Bay's statement:
We won bike access on BART at all hours of service. We’ve led campaigns to bring bike access to the Bay Bridge and Richmond San-Rafael Bridge. And now we’re working towards connecting many cities with high quality bikeways on San Pablo Avenue from Oakland to Crockett and on the East Bay Greenway from Oakland to Fremont.
But our day to day work also involves a lot of under-the-radar wins, like on design details, which add up to make a big difference for local communities.
Here's the list, which is just a sampling of some of the aforementioned tweaks.
- Pittsburg - Staff revised a project to reduce the widths of the driving lanes and increase the painted bicycle lanes while adding more green paint at conflict zones on three streets, after we pointed out inconsistencies with the city’s bike plan recommendations.
- Concord - City staff revised a project to replace 0.3 miles of shared bike/car lane markings (“sharrows”) on Concord Blvd with painted bike lanes, after we notified them that the sharrows proposal was in conflict with a new state prohibition of their use on high-speed roadways.
- Oakland - OakDOT staff revised a design plan on E 12th Street near Fruitvale BART upon our request, adding physical protection to a segment of paint-only bike lane to prevent car drivers from parking in and blocking the bikeway.
- Berkeley - The city is working to adopt a version of Oakland’s neighborhood bikeway traffic calming guide that we helped develop, with enhanced minimum levels of traffic calming on each block of every bike boulevard. Some upcoming Berkeley projects are already starting to reflect these new standards.
- CA DMV - After noticing an error in the California Driver’s Handbook incorrectly stating that carrying passengers on a Class 3 ebike was illegal, we and our partners at the California Bicycle Coalition followed up with a correction. The DMV confirmed that the section was wrong and will be fixing it on their website and print editions.
- Antioch - Following multiple fatal crashes, we held a walkthrough of Lone Tree Way with neighbors and Council Member Monica Wilson, where we visited a memorial and discussed taking steps towards development of the city's first ever bike/ped master plan.
The strategy, according to Bike East Bay, is to start moving the needle towards considering bikes. And that's especially difficult in places where bikes are still viewed as toys or sporting equipment, not an important form of transportation. Think of the more car-centric, far-flung suburbs, such as Antioch, Concord, and Pittsburg listed above.
"But adding up 1000s of little tweaks over time can result in helping to shift the envelope about what's the 'norm' in a city," wrote Prinz in his email to Streetsblog. He added that it starts "positive and collaborative relationships with staff and electeds that we can use to build toward more substantial changes."
Approve of this strategy? Consider becoming a Bike East Bay member. And if that's got you in the giving mood, consider a donation to Streetsblog while you're at it!
