Cities, Counties, and Countries

The Dumbarton Bridge, which connects Menlo Park in southern San Mateo County with Fremont in the East Bay, remains the only bridge that allows bicyclists and pedestrians to cross the San Francisco Bay from east to west, with an eight-foot wide path on its southern side. From the bridge, the path continues for three miles along Bayfront Expressway (Highway 84) through Menlo Park to Marsh Road. It's an important biking and walking connection for both commuting and recreation.

The evolution of state and regional transportation agencies is painfully slow in places like Missouri and Ohio, where officials are plowing ahead with pricey highway projects conceived of decades ago. But plenty of Midwesterners have different ideas for the future of their communities, and they aren't shy about speaking up.

In case you haven't seen it, don't miss the keynote address from livable streets luminary and New York City Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan at the SF Bicycle Coalition's Golden Wheel Awards last week.

Just after our look at the faltering pace of plaza expansions under San Francisco's Pavement to Parks program last week, we get another glimpse of New York City's ongoing efforts to reclaim street space for people and improve safety using low-cost, temporary measures like posts and gravel epoxy.

Oakland celebrated improvements to Lake Merritt in style on June 9th, closing the streets ringing the city's historic centerpiece to cars--and opening them to cyclists, joggers, skaters, street performers and families. The 3.3-mile Ciclovía-style event coincided with the dedication of Lake Merritt Boulevard, a multimillion dollar project that has brought bike and pedestrian improvements to the lake's southern flank, along with a sparkling new amphitheater, a four-acre park, and a restored estuary connection to the San Francisco Bay.

The dream of reconnecting the two halves of East Palo Alto divided by Highway 101 with a bicycle/pedestrian bridge moved one step closer to reality last month with the release of the project's draft feasibility study [PDF].

Forget the ridership numbers: you know you've hit the big time when Jon Stewart and company spend a full nine minutes satirizing you at the top of "The Daily Show."

When Walk Oakland Bike Oakland hosted the city's first Ciclovia-style event in downtown Oakland in 2010, onerous city fees meant plans for a second Oaklavia that year proved too ambitious for the small organization. "We thought we wouldn’t be able to do it again," said Jonathan Bair, WOBO's Board President.