Melanie Curry

Three California counties are considering transportation sales tax initiatives for the upcoming November ballot. Los Angeles Metro just announced its proposed expenditure plan today; Contra Costa is working on a draft proposal, and Santa Clara county has developed a scoresheet to help prioritize potential projects according to agreed-upon goals. Sacramento, Stanislaus, and San Francisco have made some noises about possible sales tax measures as well.

At a packed meeting last night, the Berkeley City Council approved a project to bring a long-delayed bike lane to Fulton Street, the site of a recent collision that seriously injured a cyclist.

SCAG sent a last-minute letter attempting to delay progressive updates to California's outdated environmental standards.

Your intrepid Streetsblog reporter braved a few rain drops to check out the Oakland Bay Bridge bike path yesterday afternoon and found it still open, at least partway, despite Caltran's recent announcement that it would be completely closed until April.

The Alliance for Biking and Walking just published its 2016 Benchmarking Report, which ranks states and cities on key statistics including the percentage of people commuting by bike. Every biannual report is a little bit different, as states develop their data collection and the Alliance is better able to compare statistics across fields.

“Caltrans is prioritizing safety,” says Friday's press release announcing that the bike path on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge will be closed, beginning today, for the entire month of March.

The California Bicycle Coalition, aka CalBike, continues to push for increasing funding for the Active Transportation Program, which currently receives $120 million per year. The bike coalition wants the state to add $100 million to the program, which sounds like a lot but is roughly one percent of the total transportation budget—even though bike and walking trips make up nearly 19 percent of all trips made in California. The state budget planning process, in which the two legislative houses and the governor negotiate a final budget by June, is one avenue for getting more funding.

TransForm has updated and relaunched its Climate Benefits map, adding new data and a video about California's climate investments. The map now includes a user-friendly “tour” to help people understand and search for data on where California's cap-and-trade revenue goes.

The Federal Highway Administration recently released figures showing that U.S. driving is way up. In 2015, for the first time in nearly a decade, Americans drove more than the year before. In fact, the 2015 vehicle miles traveled surpassed the previous high from 2007.

As the California legislative session revs up, several committees have been holding oversight hearings on the state's cap-and-trade system.