Robert Prinz

Do car-free zones hurt disabled people? We asked experts. City planners and advocates are seeing "accessibility used as a political football."

“…disabled people are actually less likely to drive than nondisabled people and more likely to get around by walking and rolling and taking transit. Car-heavy cities are also disproportionately dangerous for disabled folks…”— @nondriver.bsky.social

Don’t use accessibility “as a political football.”

"CAMPAIGN MAP Click on the street lines below to learn more about each project segment" Illustration of the "Lake Merritt Cycletrack Loop" with various segments color coded based on whether they are completed, in construction, in design, or recommended but no plan yet

Can't make the rides but you still want to know more about the bikeway projects? Check out the Lake Merritt Loop campaign info at BikeEastBay.org/LML & sign up for the notification list to receive updates & info.

"SLOWKLAND slow roll around Lake Merritt - Last Tuesday of every month - Meet 5:30pm @ Lake Merritt BART - Bike East Bay"

Join me on a slow roll to check out construction progress for various bikeway projects around Lake Merritt in Oakland!

Monthly rides every last Tuesday, starting 5:30pm at Lake Merritt BART. First ride March 31st, 4.4 mi route, all ages/abilities. Details here
👇👇👇
bikeeastbay.org/series/slowk...

I wrote that petition, thanks for signing it!

Anything related to enforcement of state regulations has to be championed in the state legislature. This is in part why Assemblymember Bauer-Kahan’s bill is so frustrating, as it’s a distraction from real solutions.

Anyway @calbike.bsky.social is working on better e-bike bills w other legislators.

WRT the “bike route” on Ygnacio, it’s actually just the legally bikeable sidewalk on the south side. The city could also choose to upgrade that sidewalk & road crossings to meet Class 1 trail design standards, but they haven’t done that either.

“Ygnacio Valley Road is Walnut Creek’s principal east-west thoroughfare, and one of the widest and fastest-moving roadways in the city. It is three lanes wide in each direction for its entire duration, with speed limits of up to 45 miles per hour, and observed speeds that can be even higher, making it a Walnut Creek hotspot for speeding. The intersections along the roadway also feature numerous safety risks, including long and often missing pedestrian crossings, uncontrolled slip lanes, and lack of protected left turns. Combined, these conditions make much of the roadway extremely uncomfortable to walk along and across. This project conceptualizes several systemic corridor-level improvements First,narrowing travel lanes from their current widths of 11 to 12 feet wide to 10 feet wide, and repurposing the space as a buffer between vehicular traffic and the sidewalk to make the pedestrian experience more comfortable. Accompanying this change, signal timings could be modified at all intersections along the corridor to ensure they encourage the desired speed of travel. Accompanying signal timing modifications, several intersections along the corridor still feature permissive lefts on the side street approaches, including the intersections with Walnut Boulevard, Homestead Avenue, Marchbanks Drive / Tampico Place, Wimbledon Road, Wiget Lane, and Via Monte. These signals could be upgraded to protected lefts. Many intersections along the corridor are also missing crosswalk legs, and the missing crosswalks could be installed at the intersections with Marchbanks Drive/ Tampico Place, La Casa Via/ Kinross Drive, San Carlos Drive, Bancroft Road/ Walnut Avenue, and Wiget Lane. Many intersections along the corridor also feature uncontrolled slip lanes that feature high speeds, and several of those intersections, such as the intersections with California Boulevard, Civic Drive, San Carlos Drive, Bancroft Road / Walnut Avenue, and Oak Grove Road could see slip lanes removed.

But staff rejected the idea. They said that Ygnacio was too dangerous for bikes w/o a protected bikeway, but they also didn’t move to add a protected bikeway.

More recently their own 2023 local road safety plan recommended the same Ygnacio lane narrowing I proposed many years prior.

Years ago when Walnut Creek was repaving Ygnacio Valley I advocated to narrow the travel lanes to 10’ each which would help reduce speeding while also creating enough space for at least painted bike lanes on each side.

I sent a report of that exact device to the state attorney general but have not heard anything back, even though Segway has offices in CA.

Legislation to help w & encourage enforcement actions against illegal device manufacturers & retailers would be a million times more effective than AB 1942.

The current design also has a danger of SB bike riders not being able to anticipate whether an EB or WB will turn onto NB Bonar, while they proceed left from Bonar into the cycletrack.

This would allow SB bike riders to at least monitor both EB & WB car traffic at the same time & know if it’s safe to proceed. The current design does not allow for this.

I highly encourage people to not use the cycletrack crossing SB until this is fixed.

I don’t think an ideal design is feasible w/o major changes. But Berkeley could improve the SB dangers a lot by moving the EB stop sign further back to before Bonar & adding a separate painted jog lane from Bonar to Mabel on the other side of the street w/o conflicting w the bus stop.

I love bike boulevards too, but they should be in addition to arterial bikeways not instead of them. San Pablo Ave remains more dangerous for all road users as a result of Berkeley punting on that opportunity.

This is supposed to be part of the primary San Pablo Ave “parallel” bike route through Berkeley. I will be following up w ACTC to try to get them to fix these issues via their additional project starting construction in 2027

The rest of the Mabel/Bonar project is also very insufficient: No speed tables at all south of Bancroft; No 4-way stop at Bancroft; No traffic calming on Allston or markings to highlight the blind West St path entrance

Unfortunately I have a different take about the Mabel/Bonar jog at Dwight. Northbound it’s fine but southbound it’s very bad. It positions bike riders pointing east so it’s not possible to monitor both east & westbound drivers at the stops before crossing. I had multiple close calls in just 15 mins.

“10.5 PRODUCE HIGH-QUALITY BICYCLE INFRASTRUCTURE One of the most effective ways to reduce electric bicycle safety incidents is to provide riders with safe bicycling facilities that reduce potential conflict points between bicycles and other road users. The Safe Systems approach to road safety accepts that road users will inevitably make mistakes, so infrastructure needs to be designed so that those mistakes are not fatal. Strategies include physically separating pedestrians and bicyclists from cars and using road design to control speeds, since lower speeds reduce both the likelihood of a crash (road users have increased time to react) and the severity of crash outcomes. Caltrans could prioritize applying the safe systems approach to building and maintaining bicycle infrastructure on its own rights-of-way, which include many "main streets" that are key community transportation arteries for bicyclists. Although many safety improvements will require major changes to roadways, quick-build projects offer the potential to provide immediate safety benefits until funds are available for more permanent improvements. Legislators may wish to consider reintroducing a bill like AB 891, which failed to make it out of committee this legislative session, that would have directed Caltrans to create a "Quick-Build Pilot Program" to expedite low-cost bicycle and pedestrian improvements. Caltrans can also support and incentivize local cities and counties to build and maintain bicycle infrastructure by offering technical assistance and more grant funding through programs like Caltrans' Active Transportation Program. In addition, the state can look for opportunities to streamline the environmental clearance process for bicycle/electric bicycle projects.”

In the meantime the study suggests that safety for riders of all types of bikes can be improved through high quality infrastructure investments.

However, this is an opportunity that cities in the Assemblymember’s district have intentionally declined to act on, over many years.

“10.13 COLLECT BETTER DATA ON ELECTRIC BICYCLE USE RATES Currently the state collects data on the numbers of electric bicycle incidents, but not on the numbers of people who ride the devices, how many unique trips or miles of travel are completed by electric bicycle riders, or other travel behavior factors such as trip purpose or rider demographics. As a result, it is impossible to calculate the “rate” of electric bicycle incidents. The state has seen increasing numbers of electric bicycle incidents, but it is impossible to know the risk of using an electric bicycle versus other travel modes without a measure of overall device use. The state has a number of opportunities to collect bicycle usage data itself or to encourage other local stakeholders doing travel behavior research to do so. Examples that would apply to both the state’s own work and local government work include: • Ensure that statewide and regional household travel surveys collect data on electric bicycle trips and report the findings. The most recent such statewide survey, the California Add-On to the National Transportation Survey, did not ask respondents to report bicycle and electric bicycle trips separately, and much of the reporting on the findings lumps bicycle travel into an “other modes” category that includes not only bicycles and other micromobility modes, but also ferries (Federal Highway Administration, 2024). Mineta Transportation Institute Opportunities for California to Improve Electric Bicycle Safety Encourage the local entities that contract with bike-share firms to require that the firms provide detailed, trip-level electric bicycle data, including speed profiles, numbers of trips, length of trips, and reported crashes. Some of this information is already shared publicly, but other details are either not shared or not even collected, such as reported crashes.

Per the Mineta study, e-bike mileage data does not exist so we can’t know the level of risk based on exposure.

The study has ideas for how to start collecting this data. The Assemblymember could have introduced legislation to assist with this, instead of their AB1942.

Rebecca doesn’t bike.

If the Assemblymember had coordinated w bicycle advocacy orgs from the national, state, or regional levels before introducing their legislation, we would have been able to help clear up any confusion for them & collaborate on constructive traffic safety solutions. I have dozens of policy ideas.

“.5 PRODUCE HIGH-QUALITY BICYCLE INFRASTRUCTURE One of the most effective ways to reduce electric bicycle safety incidents is to provide riders with safe bicycling facilities that reduce potential conflict points between bicycles and other road users. The Safe Systems approach to road safety accepts that road users will inevitably make mistakes, so infrastructure needs to be designed so that those mistakes are not fatal. Strategies include physically separating pedestrians and bicyclists from cars and using road design to control speeds, since lower speeds reduce both the likelihood of a crash (road users have increased time to react) and the severity of crash outcomes. Caltrans could prioritize applying the safe systems approach to building and maintaining bicycle infrastructure on its own rights-of-way, which include many “main streets” that are key community transportation arteries for bicyclists. Although many safety improvements will require major changes to roadways, quick-build projects offer the potential to provide immediate safety benefits until funds are available for more permanent improvements. Legislators may wish to consider reintroducing a bill like AB 891, which failed to make it out of committee this legislative session, that would have directed Caltrans to create a “Quick- Build Pilot Program” to expedite low-cost bicycle and pedestrian improvements. Caltrans can also support and incentivize local cities and counties to build and maintain bicycle infrastructure by offering technical assistance and more grant funding through programs like Caltrans’ Active Transportation Program. In addition, the state can look for opportunities to streamline the environmental clearance process for bicycle/electric bicycle projects.”

The study is extremely helpful, especially in the acknowledgement about all the data which is not available at all. The safety findings synthesis starting on pg 123 should be a must-read for any legislators getting involved in these issues.

Also this recommendation should not be missed:

Indeed, per the Mineta study analysis of media reports ~70% of e-bike rider fatalities involved cars, compared to ~30% solo falls.

transweb.sjsu.edu/sites/defaul...

Also per the study the number of pedal bike crashes in CA was estimated at ~10X the number of e-device crashes.

“Pleasanton Weekly No criminal charges pursued in San Ramon crash that killed NFL coach Greg Knapp DA’s office determines driver’s inattention in causing collision with cyclist didn’t rise to criminal culpability”

With regard to an “accountability act”, can we do something about this?

If not for the driver then at least for the city of San Ramon in your district, which didn’t implement its 2018 bike plan recommendation for a protected bikeway where Greg was killed in 2021, nor have they since.

Correction: As per the data in the attached table I should have written “50% were pedal bikes & 43% unknown.”

The same point applies.

Per your comment in the video: “I should be able to not worry about an e-bike going 60 miles per hour.”

What you are describing is an electric motorcycle or other out-of-class device, not e-bikes which are limited to 20 mph unassisted or 28 mph w pedal assist. You are targeting the wrong thing.

The numbers I cited above don’t even include the half across the border in Concord, which is just as bad.

Concord had an opportunity to act on this with a paving project in 2023, designed a safety upgrade, but then passed on implementing it.

If you want to do something for traffic safety, then focus on fixing the massive roads, ridiculous speed limits, and egregious lack of high quality, protected bikeway infrastructure throughout your district.

Of the 12 Walnut Creek fatalities, 8 occurred on just one road: Ygnacio Valley.

Advocates who have been fighting for solutions to this crisis for many years can not take your legislation seriously when there is no action on the PRIMARY traffic safety issues in your district, all involving CARS.

In Walnut Creek alone there have been at least 12 people killed in crashes since 2021. This included 5 pedestrians & 6 drivers, 3 of whom were teen drivers killed in solo crashes in just 2024-2025.

Why aren’t you responding to THIS crisis!!!

As far as I know there haven’t been any e-bike rider fatalities in your Assembly District 16 to date.

There have however been MANY pedal bike riders killed in AD16. I continue to struggle to get local staff & electeds to follow up on these tragedies, even just by implementing their own bike plans.