Bicycling

Despite a handful of small setbacks, East Palo Alto's dream of providing a safe crossing over the 101 Freeway for people riding bicycles and people walking is nearly a reality. Construction of the "East Palo Alto Highway 101 Ped/Bike Overcrossing," a 12-foot wide bridge over Highway 101 between Newell Road and Clarke Avenue, could begin as early as this summer. The bridge will provide a long-awaited connection between the city's east and west sides.

The Silicon Valley Bike Vision report shows what peninsula cities are doing right, as well as what they could do better to improve conditions for bicyclists and encourage more people to ride. It serves as a vision of what bicycling could be like, and provides a general roadmap on how to get there.

Nobody likes waiting at a red light. So motorists have this ugly habit of inching into the crosswalk. But there's a very simple way to correct for it.

Members of Oakland's "Mayor's Commission on Persons with Disabilities" (MCPD) are miffed at Motivate and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) for planning Bay Area Bike Share without including bikes for disabled users.

Some 20 bicycle advocates and city officials met up on Saturday morning to share ideas for fixing the eastbound bike lanes of the Hairball, San Francisco's notorious maze of freeway ramps, bike lanes, and homeless camps where Cesar Chavez crosses under US-101.

Representatives from San Francisco's Planning Department, the Municipal Transportation Agency, and Public Works were on hand last night at John Muir Elementary School to hear more public comment on the Lower Haight Public Realm Plan, a project that promises, among other things, better bike and pedestrian amenities for the neighborhood.

Last night, the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR) and Young Professionals in Transportation hosted a talk and discussion about bike-share and the transportation changes taking place in our cities. The event, which was held at SPUR's Oakland location, featured Jay Walder, the CEO of Motivate. One of many items that stood out: Walder said that Bay Area Bike Share, which Motivate operates, will definitely work with the Clipper card. "We will have it integrated into the transit system," said Walder. "It should be as simple as using BART or Muni or any other part that uses Clipper."

Last Wednesday, March 8, at 9:15 am, Mary Ann Blackwell was riding her bike down Martin Luther King in Oakland, on her way to the MacArthur BART station, to get to an appointment in San Francisco. She turned left onto 40th, to reach the station entrance. The long-time cycling advocate saw something familiar to cyclists throughout the Bay Area--a car, in this case a black sedan, stopped on the bike lane. “There wasn't even a car against the curb, but he didn't pull over,” she told Streetsblog, during her first trip back to the location since the incident.

Yesterday afternoon, thousands of people strolled, biked, skate boarded, and just generally had a good time on Valencia Street in the Mission, during the first Sunday Streets of 2017. After a long, wet winter, everyone seemed in especially good spirits on such a warm day. That said, there were serious overtones to the festivities and advocates of all stripes were out, pushing for some truly worthwhile causes. For example, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, its booth manned by volunteers Paul Valdez and Clay Woolam, was out building membership and making new connections.