Chag Pesach Sameach!
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Streets For All introduced its legislative package for the 2026 session, sponsoring ten bills while requesting a $200 million annual addition to California’s Active Transportation Program.
Among their sponsored bills,
AB 1740 (Zbur) makes it easier to build bike lanes, bus improvements, infill housing, and other multimodal projects in urban coastal communities. Right now, even straightforward street safety projects can get bogged down in the coastal permitting process. This bill would let qualifying urban communities move more quickly on projects that improve safety and reduce emissions, while still preserving coastal access and protections.
AB 1837 (Mark González) extends transit lane and bus stop camera enforcement and makes that authority permanent statewide. Illegal parking in bus lanes and at bus stops slows buses, creates unsafe boarding conditions, and makes transit less reliable. This bill would help keep transit moving and make bus service faster and safer for riders.
AB 1976 (Wicks), the Safe Streets Streamlining Act, tackles the process barriers that delay or kill good street safety projects. It changes local input requirements, ends unreasonable petition requirements for traffic calming, updates the pedestrian mall law, and creates a clearer path for cities to actually deliver the bike, pedestrian, and transit projects they have already said they want. California cannot keep saying yes to safe streets in theory while allowing them to be endlessly blocked in practice.
SB 1167 (Blakespear) cracks down on high-powered “e-motos” being sold as e-bikes. It tightens definitions, changes labeling rules, and requires sellers to clearly disclose when a device is actually a motor vehicle and not a legal e-bike. Real e-bikes are an important transportation tool. But that only works if the category remains clear and trustworthy.
AB 2015 (Wicks) helps cities keep slow streets actually slow by stopping navigation apps from routing cut-through traffic onto neighborhood streets that have been intentionally designed for local access, walking, and biking. If a city has decided that a street should function as a calm neighborhood street, app-based routing should not undermine that decision.
AB 1599 (Ahrens) creates a centralized California Transit Stop Registry. Transit stop data is often fragmented, inconsistent, and confusing across agencies. A statewide registry would make transit data more accurate and useful, improve coordination, and help create a better rider experience. The bill will also help us get more data on what amenities are at transit stops.
SB 1292 (Richardson) gives cities stronger curb management tools to enforce parking violations in places like loading zones, bike lanes, and crosswalks. Curb space matters, and mismanaged curb space creates safety problems, transit delays, and chaos on the street. This bill gives local governments more tools to manage that space better.
AB 2284 (Dixon) requires CHP to publish a list of devices that are being marketed as e-bikes but are not actually legal e-bikes. That kind of transparency would help consumers, schools, local governments, and law enforcement better understand what devices comply with California law and which ones do not.
AB 1833 (McKinnor), the Consumer Driving Data Protection Act of 2026,allows drivers to voluntarily opt into insurance telematics systems, with privacy protections, to better align insurance rates with actual driving behavior. This bill is about allowing safer driving to be reflected more fairly, while preserving strong guardrails around consent, data use, and consumer protection.
SB 1423 (Stern) would steer half of one of California’s biggest transportation funding sources toward projects that actually make streets safer. The bill would dedicate half of STIP funds, one of the state’s largest transportation pots of money, to projects that improve safety for people walking, biking, and taking transit. It would also simplify the application process for the state’s top safe streets grant program and elevate its identity as California’s flagship source of funding for street safety.
Budget Ask: A $200 million annual addition to the Active Transportation Program (ATP), which is our state’s premier pot of street safety funding. Last year, ATP only funded about 30 of the 350 projects that applied.
They’ll host a webinar to discuss their support for the bills on Thursday, April 16th at high noon.
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Pink Bike highlights the best April Fools gags from around the bike industry.
Meanwhile, Road.cc wrote that BP — the former British Petroleum — is encouraging drivers to deal with rising gas prices by skipping the pump and riding a bike instead. Which actually had me fooled at first.
Strava joined in with a gag about opening a dating platform. Although that might not be the worst idea.
Then there was the electrolyte gravy, a fish tank bike saddle and skinsuits that come pre-crashed so you don’t have to worry about messing them up.
On the other hand, an Aussie writer says paying people to ride a bike is no joke, despite what an April Fools gag said.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
An op-ed from the executive director of the Washington Area Bicyclist Association decries demands from the Trump administration for the National Park Service to rip out a popular bike lane that has cut injuries by 91%; meanwhile, Bloomberg’s CityLab considers why Trump’s war on DC streets matters, as the administration exerts control over the city while sidelining its residents.
No bias here. A San Diego letter writer says if you really want to help kids, skip the bike lanes and use the money for libraries, instead. Which sets up a false dichotomy between libraries, which should get better funding, and bike lanes, which improve safety for everyone on the streets, not just kids. Although you’ll have to find a way around the paper’s paywall to read it.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
Great use of police resources. The Macomb, Georgia Police Department put their new drone to use in less than 24 hours by capturing a 14-year old kid speeding on his ebike. Next they’ll use it to bring in other dangerous desperados, like maybe a bunch of littering nuns.
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Local
The LA Times examines how to stay safe on an ebike, starting with knowing the difference between a ped-assist bicycle and an electric motorbike.
Streetsblog’s Joe Linton takes an in-person look at new protected bike lanes going in on Colorado and Broadway in Santa Monica, and Washington and Adams in Culver City.
State
Orange County’s Newport-Mesa Unified School District is considering a proposal to ban all ebikes for elementary and middle school students, and allow only Class 1 ebikes for high school students with parental consent.
San Francisco’s transportation department is working on plans for hardened daylighting, installing barriers like bike racks or bollards to keep drivers from speeding around the corners newly opened by California’s daylighting requirement.
Longtime Michelin starred San Francisco chef Roland Passot is one of us, balancing work with his passion for road cycling.
National
A prolific Portland burglar will spend the next five years and five months behind bars, after he was convicted for stealing over 30 bicycles and ebikes over a three-year crime spree.
A Eugene, Washington program is teaching residents of homeless shelters how to become bicycle mechanics.
Bodycam video is raising questions about a Texas cop’s takedown of a 16-year old kid, who make the simple mistake of trying to call his dad when the cop stopped a group of teens for rolling a stop sign; after taking the kid down, the cop then seized and searched the boy’s phone without a warrant.
A Providence, Rhode Island event demonstrates Intelligent Speed Assist, which could be authorized to rein in chronic speeding and reckless drivers under a bill in the California legislature, as well.
Life is cheap in Charlotte, North Carolina, where a driver faces just a misdemeanor charge for killing an eight-year old girl riding a bicycle, even though he was driving with a revoked license and an unregistered vehicle — and even though witnesses said he revved his engine and sped up just before the crash.
International
A British bike rider is suing three police departments for the equivalent of $6.35 million, alleging they covered it up when a driver knocked him off his bike; the cops said he just fell off his bike, even though a witness said she saw the driver clip him. Which sounds a lot like when I was run down by a road-raging driver, and the LAPD concluded I somehow defied the laws of physics by falling to the left while making a right turn, but it never occurred to me to sue them.
Bicycling Australia says that country is seeing a renewed interest in bicycling as a result of the fuel crisis caused by the war in Iran, but no full blown bike boom — yet.
Velo considers why bicycling in Taipei feels safer than riding in Portland (scroll down).
China’s longtime bikemaker Flying Pigeon is shedding its traditional image as a self-destructing bicycle-shaped object, and using combination of flexible sensors, artificial intelligence algorithms and the internet of things to redefine the bikes from a simple form of transport into an “intelligent health management terminal.” Unless China Daily is pulling an April Fool’s joke, in which case they got me.
Competitive Cycling
Filippo Ganna overcame a snapped handlebar and late bike change to win Dwars door Vlaanderen, while Swiss cyclist Marlen Reusser shocked herself by winning the women’s edition.
The Athletic looks, not at the pros taking part, but the Belgian super fans on the sidelines of De Ronde van Vlaanderen, aka the Tour of Flanders.
A 17-year British amateur, part of the country’s development team, was left brokenhearted when an insurance company refused to pay for three stolen Pinarello Dogma bikes worth a total of $20,000 because the thieves weren’t violent enough, and just walked away with the bikes instead of breaking in or causing major damage.
Austria’s eight-time national junior was lucky to walk away with a broken arm and a shattered bicycle when he was cut off by a driver on a training ride, and slammed into the back of the driver’s car.
Finally…
Playing bike polo, aka riding a bicycle with a big wooden hammer in your hand. And that feeling when your bike-on-bike collision is memorialized for the masses on Google Street View.
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Oh, and fuck Putin.
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