Labor Day Weekend Roundup: Hopkin’s Bike Lane Lawsuit, Orwellian Assault on E-Bikes…

Streetsblog is starting the Labor Day Weekend a little early. Here are three quick Streetsblog news nuggets.

Anti-safety crowd sues to stop bike lanes in Berkeley

In July, protected bike lanes were approved (again!) on Hopkins Street in Berkeley.

But the foes of safety aren’t quite done. The so-called “Friends of Hopkins Street” lost at the Berkeley City Council in their attempt to stop safety improvements and preserve all parking. So now, of course, they’re suing.

As Bike East Bay’s Robert Prinz put it on Bluesky, the suit is pretty wild and includes “meritless claims of conflicts with the ADA, CEQA, and the city’s new bike plan.” Prinz was especially taken aback by the environmental claim: “I get that re-balancing street design away from car dominance is inconvenient to those whose lifestyle is fully oriented around driving. But personal passenger vehicles are the No 1 source of GHG emissions in CA.”

Streetsblog expects the judge to file this nonsensical suit in the appropriate receptacle. Be sure to check out Prinz’ full thread. And read more on advocate Darrell Owen’s substack.

San Mateo officials again try to pin tragedy on e-bikes instead of the SUV driver who actually killed a toddler

In August, the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance regulating e-bikes. The ordinance itself seems fine: it’s about yielding to pedestrians and not obstructing sidewalks.

But they’re calling it “Ayden’s Law.”

Many readers may recall this tragedy from last year: the teen driver of an SUV pulled out of a parking lot on Donnelly Street in Burlingame directly into the path of an e-bike rider who had the right of way, causing a crash. But instead of braking, the driver floored it and drove into the restaurant across the street, killing Ayden Fang, a four-year-old boy who was on the sidewalk.

But the Burlingame police framed it in statements as a “chain reaction” crash that started with the cyclist, who happened to be riding an e-bike. Mainstream media echoed this claim. Only later did police confirm the cyclist (actually, two siblings riding a legal e-bike) had the right of way.

But San Mateo County and Burlingame seem determined to distract from what actually killed Ayden: a young driver in an SUV. In addition, a car was parked on the street at the edge of the driveway, obstructing the driver’s view of the oncoming cyclist, because Burlingame had failed to restrict parking there despite complaints about poor visibility (they’ve since painted that curb red). If the county wants to pass safety ordinances and name them after the child killed in this tragedy, maybe do the decent thing and pass a new ordinance to mandate daylighting and traffic calming with funds for concrete installations to keep errant drivers off of crowded sidewalks.

Read more in the family’s lawsuit

Another SFMTA driver falls asleep

Video surfaced recently of an L Taraval operator apparently dozing off just before crashing into another train. Fortunately, nobody was injured.

If this story sounds familiar, it’s because the same thing happened less than a year ago—a Muni rail driver fell asleep and, in that case, nearly derailed a packed train coming out of the Sunset tunnel. As Streetsblog pointed out at the time, these incidents should force SFMTA to take a hard look at its safety systems, management, and culture. In addition, rail transit operators generally have automated systems that prevent operators from speeding or crashing into other trains. Muni doesn’t have them in most places. And it needs to fix that before there’s a major catastrophe. Check out our commentary from last year for more.