Just last week, the legislative session for the year ended in Sacramento meaning a batch of legislation was passed that, if signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom, would change the way the state conducts its transportation business. In this episode of SGV Connect, co-host Damien Newton goes it alone, interviewing Streetsblog California Editor Melanie Curry.
As an aside, both Newton and Curry will be at the Streetsblog San Francisco/Streetsblog California anniversary party next week at Manny’s in the Mission on Thursday, September 12, at 6:00 p.m. along with a bevy of transportation reform superstars including mayors, transit board chairs and Senator Scott Wiener. If you happen to be in the area, drop by and join us. Reserve your ticket.
But for now, buckle in and enjoy today’s podcast. A full transcript can be found beneath the audio player below.
Before we get into the podcast, let me remind everyone that SGV Connect is supported by Foothill Transit, offering car-free travel throughout the San Gabriel Valley with connections to the new Gold Line Stations across the Foothills and Commuter Express lines traveling into the heart of downtown L.A. To plan your trip, visit Foothill Transit. “Foothill Transit. Going Good Places.”
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Podcast Transcript:
Hello, welcome to SGV Connect episode 127. My name's Damien Newton. We have a bit of a throwback episode here in that I am doing it on my own - or well, I'm not on my own, I have a guest: Melanie Curry, the editor of Streetsblog California, who's going to give us an update on legislation that has been passed and is awaiting the signature of the governor…hopefully.
We timed this episode to coincide with our Streetsblog San Francisco/California anniversary dinner next Thursday. If you’d like to join us on September 12, click here for more details.
And a link with all the information is in the email, excuse me, in the text of the story that accompanies this podcast. Boy, I'm struggling today, Melanie. I hope you're on your A game.
…and she gave a thumbs up. You guys can't see that because we're not recording the video.
All right. So it just so happens that the first couple pieces of legislation we want to talk about were authored and introduced by Senator Scott Wiener, who happens to be one of our guests of honor next week.
Isn't that an amazing coincidence? So why don't you start off by telling us a little bit about these two pieces of legislation? And again, these are passed by the legislature, but awaiting signature or possibly something worse from the governor.
Melanie
Oh, we don't want it to be worse.
This is one of the reasons that we are giving a Streetsie to Senator Scott Wiener - because he got SB 960, a complete streets bill, passed… again. He's tried three times with this bill and last time it was vetoed by the governor. So we're crossing our fingers that that doesn't happen again.
It's a little bit different this time around. Caltrans pushed just as hard against it as it had in the past. They keep saying, “we're already making complete streets a priority.”
Damien
…um…are they already making complete streets a priority?
Melanie
It's hard to say. At the headquarters level, their talk is good, but how it comes out on the ground is a different story. CalBike is working on a report about that very issue, which they're not quite ready to release, but we'll find out soon what they have to say.
At any rate, Caltrans says they have a complete streets policy. But they're not really doing it. So what happened with SB 960 is Caltrans pushed back. They got language that they are more comfortable with, which is kind of similar to what they already have: they'll make complete streets when they are working on maintenance projects where feasible, which still gives them kind of a lot of outs.
However, the bill is a lot stronger than last time around. It specifically includes a requirement to create a transit priority policy at Caltrans - which is a huge difference. It requires better transparency, so Caltrans has to report on their complete streets and how much money they're putting into it.
It also requires them to come up with a shorter encroachment permit process - which sounds really wonky and kind of is - but it makes it easier for cities to make their own changes on their streets if they want to build a bike lane or something like that without having to go through
the onerous process that Caltrans makes them do..
Anyway, it's been passed. We've got our fingers crossed. It's not the solution, but it's a really good step in the right direction for making Caltrans make complete streets on all of their facilities when they are repairing them..Not freeways, but all the other ones.
Damien
If this is a stronger piece of legislation than last time, doesn't it seem less likely that Governor Newsom will sign it?
Melanie
Well, it's interesting. It's stronger in ways that are outside of the when and where. It's stronger because it has transit priority, which it didn't before. It's stronger because it calls for better transparency and a shorter permit process. But in terms of requiring when and where complete streets are to be incorporated into Caltrans projects, it's really similar to what the current Caltrans policy is.
It's kind of an interesting argument. [Newsom] said “give Caltrans a chance” when he vetoed a similar bill in the past. But at that time, there was a new Caltrans director. So they got a chance. That was four years ago. They had their chance. We haven't seen any results. So we're back with this bill.
I think it will take something to get the governor to sign it, but it might not be as onerous as it would have been four years ago. I mean, weigh in, call the governor! I don't know. It definitely needed support to get passed by the legislature, but I think it has a better chance than the last one did.
Damien
But that's not the only thing that Senator Wiener's done that has him on our list of “legislation to talk about today.” He's also done something with passive speed enforcement. You might need to explain this one a little bit.
I know you just did a story on it, and I read the story. I could totally talk about this if I had to, but, you know, people would rather hear you talk about it than me.
Melanie
Are you sure?
Damien
I assume.
Melanie
I don't know. My voice can get a little whiny. No, it's not enforcement. It's assist. So it's in-car technology that tells people, hey, you've gone over the speed limit. And it does that with, like, a beep.
So this one was going to be a great bill. We were excited about it when Wiener first [introduced it] because he was looking for something more active - which is also a, technology that exists where … it prevents you from going over the speed limit. But that was just too crazy. So - not too crazy, it's a known and used technology. European cars have it. But there was too much pushback. So he said, “OK, passive speed limit assist technology in all new cars starting in 2030.”
And that passed. And you know it's better than nothing. A lot of new cars already have this technology…
Damien
…almost every rental car too
Melanie
It would be very surprising if it didn't get passed. It's a help. There's actually surveys that show that drivers like it.
And what's really strange to me is that about six or seven Republican legislators in California wrote this strongly worded letter to Governor Newsom telling him to veto it because enforcement is a better way to [handle this issue]. And they said it puts an “undue burden on the majority of responsible drivers,” which, uh, wait a minute.
Damien
Wait, but they're speeding, right?
Melanie
Yeah. Yet it's an “undue burden.” Like it's going to beep at you. Like one beep. It's only a one-time notification. So I don't know where they get any of that, “Undue burden on responsible drivers?”
If you're going over the speed limit, wouldn't you want [your car] to tell you? I don't know. I really don't know where this comes from. I imagine all of them just want to speed like crazy for as long as they want to.
Damien
These are the people that obviously rent rental cars and then speed in them.
Melanie
And they don't like that one beep.
Damien
They don't like that beep…Not that I know from my recent road trip what that sounds like.
Melanie
Does it continue or is it just one [sound]?
Damien
I think it depends. The car that we had, it beeped every time you went 10 miles over the speed limit. So, we obviously heard it once and then adjusted our driving for the rest of the drive across the country because, yeah.
Melanie
Yeah. Right. Which is what people want. You know, like what if you're in a place that you don't know? What if you're driving in Oregon and there might be a cop that's going to pull you over?
Damien
Or what if the speed limit drops and you miss the sign?
Melanie
Exactly.
Damien
If we drove through a county and you know at the speed limit dropped 10 miles an hour, and then all of a sudden we went from driving roughly the speed limit to driving 10 miles over the speed limit…that's where we were.
Melanie
And that's where you're likely to get a ticket, too. So it's really helpful to be told by your car.
Damien
Was it the ticket lobby that was against this?
Melanie
You know, I don't know who those people are. I don't know if they're a lobby. They're just Republicans. I could find the letter and read you their names if you want, but they're Republican legislators who just hated it.
Damien
I'm just flashing back, as I always do, to the efforts to set the speed limit…legislation that we fought for for so long and finally got passed by Laura Friedman a couple of years ago, and the dumb arguments we would hear about it.
Melanie
Yeah, it's weird to me…. I'm looking at some of the names of the people that signed it, and I have to say some of them say some really dumb things in the hearings.
So I don't want to say they're dumb, but they're not very well informed.
Damien
We can say that if you want to.
Melanie
And this letter proves that…And they have an agenda that doesn't make a lot of sense.
Just the idea there, they are law-and-order Republicans and for some reason they really love the idea of giving people tickets to enforce this [issue]. I don't understand their thinking. I have the feeling that's not going to have much sway with Governor Newsom. Who knows?
Damien
I mean, you never know these days. And he's been… he's been more conservative in the past year than I would have thought.
Melanie
Yeah. I'm not a politician for a reason. I don't understand the way you think about things when you're a politician. It's not always logical.
Damien
Speaking of not always logical, let's talk about a bill that had to do with when you can and can't paint sharrows that was passed, but without the support of its initial sponsor, Streets for All…So what happened there?
Melanie
Gosh, who knows. So, this is SB 1216 from Catherine Blakespear.
This was also a[similar] provision in another bill from Laura Friedman, AB 2290, but that one was just held back. It didn't go anywhere.
So what this was trying to do was limit the use of Class III bike routes, which are, you know, they are signs and sharrows painted in the street, at most. They might just be signs, but they were really trying to get away from calling those even bike routes. People like Caltrans will put them down and say, “look, we made you a bike route.” But they don't really have any kind of good standards for when they use them, so the legislature tried to limit their use..
Plus, [the sponsors] wanted to eliminate funding for those projects. And actually, they sort of succeeded. When it was in the Assembly [Transportation} Committee, the bill was amended to restrict sharrows to roads that are 30 miles an hour or slower.
Imagine riding your bike at, what, 10 miles an hour on a 30 mile an hour road, and there's a sharrow there telling you to go ahead and use it. So whoever decided that 30 miles an hour or slower made sense is not a bike rider. And [the committee] would not remove any limitation on using bike route signs, so they can mark a bike route wherever they want, which doesn't also doesn't make sense.
Thinking of fast streets in the San Fernando Valley, for example, they could just call those bike routes. So when you look on Google Maps, it's going to tell you to go that way…and you get out there and you're like, “ah, I don't want to ride this road.”
It was so bad that the sponsor, Streets for All, just gave up. But! One good thing about that bill is it does have a provision that says that … Active Transportation Program projects can no longer use [ATP funds] for Class III bike routes, after January 2026.
I have a feeling that it doesn't really do that much anymore because the people who run the program are pretty aware of what makes a good bike route or a good bike project, and Class III doesn't really count. However, Caltrans is still going to use class III bike routes and claim credit for creating bike facilities. We have to keep our eye on that.
Damien
One piece of legislation that we covered in our Santa Monica publication is Malibu would now be able to put speed cameras on the PCH as part of the pilot program.
There's a lot of reasons this is interesting.
A) that so many communities want to get in on a pilot program. There were three cities in Senator Ben Allen’s district, but only Malibu made it on this piece of legislation.
B) is the need for this extremely complicated pilot program that a year after the legislation was passed, no cities actually have speed cameras up. Yet they're allowing other cities - and yet we [already] know from the entire rest of the world that speed cameras work - to join this complicated pilot program.
Do you want to talk at all about this legislation, what it actually does, and if maybe I took all of the thunder away on the interesting things, tell me to be a better interviewer. But if I did not, then fill in some other interesting things about this.
Melanie
SB 1297 from Senator Ben Allen adds the city of Malibu to the speed camera pilot program that was created by AB 645 last year. That was from assemblymember Laura Friedman that allowed Glendale, LA, Long Beach, San Jose, Oakland, and San Francisco to do pilot programs with a limited number of cameras under all these really tight restrictions about where they could be, how they could be deployed, how they collected information from them, how they gave tickets, and they had to keep the the tickets out of the court system, and the fines had to be low and all kinds of really really tight restrictions.
None of those cities, as far as I can tell, have put up any cameras yet.
San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose have chosen locations for them, but they're not going to install them until next year. I can't find out about the other cities. At any rate, the city of Malibu will be able to add five cameras along the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu [under this bill].
So what do we do about all the other cities like Santa Monica that might also want to put up speed cameras? They're all gonna have to wait. There's so much pushback from privacy groups and law enforcement, all these people who object to these programs. For law enforcement, this will make their life easier, but okay, whatever.
Damien
The whole thing baffles me. Allen introduced this after there was a high profile crash that killed a bunch of Pepperdine students standing on the side of the road late last year. The PCH in Malibu has always been a safety disaster for bicyclists, for pedestrians, for car drivers, for everyone. Allen tried to address this - there are several different project programs that are going on, educational programs, enforcement programs…this effort was sort of added on to those.
But as soon as he announced it, all the other cities in his district were like, “ooh, us too, us too.”
Because cities want these. It just feels weird to me that the state is making it so hard, with a cumbersome pilot program and only certain cities.
This feels like an effort to keep them out, not an effort to promote them.
Melanie
Yeah. What's fascinating to me about it is one of the arguments - which is a valid argument - against this was that street design is a more [effective] way to slow people down.
Yes, it's true. So one of the provisions in the original bill is that other street design changes had to be made. And especially if they put up a camera and it didn't slow speeds, then they had to make those street design changes.
Well, PCH really needs some design changes. And the ones – the responses that they have [had] to that crash are just pathetic. I'm sorry, they put up speed feedback signs and they put up signs. Education, enforcement, those are fine, but those are not the kinds of things that make people slow down or actually change the street so that people have to drive slow.
We just have so much resistance to creating calm streets. And because the PCH is such a heavily used thruway, people want to zoom on it. It doesn't make sense for people to be zooming on it. But it's just part of our speed culture that we just can't change [yet]. It's a bummer.
Damien
I say romantic, I don't necessarily mean romance; but how many pop culture references over the years feature the hero or heroine in their convertible speeding up the PCH?
Melanie
Absolutely. It's glamorized for sure.
I say people who want to go fast and feel the wind in their hair should roll their windows down and stick their heads out the window while they drive and feel the wind that way because it feels like you're going fast even if you're going like 20 miles an hour.
Damien
Is it a little weird to hear the argument that it's road design that really slows streets down so we can't…we shouldn't do speed cameras 10 minutes after we were just discussing how Caltrans doesn't want to be mandated to do safe road design.
Melanie
Yeah, we're in a very strange tangle trying to make sense out of all of this.
I mean, we can see it, advocates can see it. But the arguments can be complicated. I maintain hope that we will prevail sooner or later. And it's partly because we have super smart people working on these issues. But man, it's not easy. It's not easy.
Damien
There was one more piece of major legislation we wanted to talk about before we might run down some of the other pieces, and that was what's been going on with e-bikes. It doesn't appear like there's much of an effort to make statewide e-bike policy. Instead, it's an effort to define what different communities can and can't do.
Melanie
Yeah, and I wouldn't even call these major legislation.
Both of the authors of these two e-bike bills, [Assemblymembers] Tasha Boerner and Damon Connolly, had started off with bills that were going to require a license to ride e-bikes, at least class 2 or class 3 e-bikes. I'll go over the classifications in a minute. They're all about speed and throttle and stuff like that. But it became pretty clear those bills were not going anywhere. So both of them changed them.
In Boerners case San Diego and in Donnelly's case Marin County - they allow local jurisdictions to create e-bike restrictions.
Borners would allow San Diego to pass an ordinance banning children under 12 and from riding class 1 or 2 e-bikes. You have to be 18 to ride a class three e-bike [already]. What is a class 3 e-bike? Let's see, [it’s] a little complicated: You have to use the pedals. You can't use just the motor, but it can go up to like 28 miles per hour using pedals.
You have to be 18 to ride that kind of bike. So Boerner wants it to change it so no one under 12 can ride a class 1 e-bike, which has a little bit of pedal assist up to 20 miles an hour at the most, or class 2, which has a throttle assist up to 20 miles per hour. And then after that, you would have to use your pedals, but [a class 2] could go 28 miles per hour.
Connelly has a similar bill, but he doesn't want anyone under 16 [to ride]. So [his bill would] allow Marin to pass an ordinance to require people to be at least 16 to ride a class 2 e-bike. And they could, if they wanted to, [also] pass an ordinance requiring any e-bike rider to wear a helmet. Even adults.
So it's a problem because they're inconsistent. They're local ordinances. Local helmet ordinances from the get-go are a bad idea. There's a lot of people from Berkeley who ride into Marin. So like, what are they going to do suddenly? There's a different law for them over there?
Damien
I remember down here when one city was talking about banning scooters and others weren't, and it was like, well, what's gonna happen to someone riding on a scooter when they cross a border…Is it just gonna, like, stop?
Melanie
Yeah. Well, yeah, actually they can. They do put speed limiters on scooters! Not cars…not cars where they could really do some good.
Those [bills] are like mostly annoying. They both passed, though. They're on the governor's desk. He may well sign them. Whether San Diego and Marin County passed those ordinances is a different question.
Another e-bike bill was from Senator Dave Min, which is kind of [an] interesting [one]. First it says that any e-bike sold in California has to have an e-bike battery that is certified to be safe, either the UL or the EU certification [or the like]. People are worried about battery fires and that would prevent that.
It’s not without its controversy because when they were talking battery standards for the e-bike incentive program, there were a lot of bike sellers who were mad about that. They were selling bikes that didn't have that certification. And they were like, “they're fine!
But anyway, that passed. So if he signs it, they'd have to be certified.
And then the other thing that [the bill] did was clarify the definition of e-bikes. The reason that was an issue was because there is at least one manufacturer that makes these bikes that they sell as class 2 ebikes.
So class 2 has a throttle assist and you can go with the throttle up to 20. With pedaling you can go up to 28 miles an hour. So they were selling these as class 2 e-bikes, but they had a switch on them that would allow them to go “off-road.” [That would allow them to] go way faster with just the throttle, which means they're basically mopeds. Min’s bill made those illegal. If you sell something that's switchable, it's not an e-bike.
Wait, it's not illegal. It's a moped, which means, you know, age restriction and helmet restriction, etc. Because if you can go over 28 with a throttle, it…Yeah, that's not an e-bike.
And the thing is, like, how do you enforce that?
Can a cop tell from looking at it whether a bike is an actual class 2 e-bike or is it something else?
Damien
So let's try and run down the rest of the legislation we had that we were going to at least touch on today.
Melanie
Just a few things…One thing that passed that I think is really important because it makes me nervous is Assemblymember Aguiar-Curry worked really hard to get a bill passed that said you could not have any autonomous vehicle big rigs being tested on California roads unless there was a human operator present.
It was amazing how hard she had to argue for this.
Newsom had vetoed a similar bill last year, so he may veto this again. But meanwhile, the DMV is already … starting to put out draft regulations… for autonomous big rigs.
Isn't that fun to think about: driving on a road like Highway 5 and knowing the truck next to you has nobody in it?
If he signs this, there will have to at least be a person in the vehicle.
Damien
Yeah, he's not, he's not signing that, I bet.
Melanie
Maybe I can just like curl up in a ball and stay home for the rest of my life. Or they hurry up with that train so I don't ever have to get on a highway again.
Damien
You saw the video? I mean, it looks like it's just about finished.
Melanie
Uh no… but okay it's happening.
I would say one more more [bill] that's kind of cool is AB 2503 which gives a CEQA exemption for zero emission trains. There’s a problem with that, of course, as it's another way that they're poking holes in CEQA instead of just reforming CEQA, and also it specifically says zero emission trains and people are still calling hydrogen trains zero-emission trains, and they don't understand why I refuse to do that. So, okay…a CEQA exemption for clean energy trains.
We need that, but still it's not great.
Senator Blakespear had got passed SB 689 so that you would not need to conduct a study to convert a vehicle lane into a bike or a transit lane in coastal areas. That was specifically to overcome problems with the Coastal Commission process.
And then there's another one, AB 3177. Streets for All sponsored it, and it's a little wonky. It says that you cannot require a new housing project to pay a mitigation fee to be used towiden a road. So that’s big. And then there's one more, AB 2086, which calls for more transparency from Caltrans - they have to create a dashboard that shows their funding which is very complicated
None of these have been signed, however.
Damien
Right. None of these have been signed. Based on previous years, some of them might not be slam dunks, but if people have heard anything today that they want to weigh in on - again, you can contact your governor.
Sorry. It's a little play of words off the, you know, contact your representative today. Contact your governor. It's the same governor I have. I think he's in state right now. So it's a good time to get him
So again, if you want to talk to us about this in person, we will be in San Francisco next week at Manny's in the Mission at 6 PM on Thursday. Feel free to stop by. Feel free to buy a ticket. Feel free to say hello. More information on that event is on Streetsblog California and Streetsblog
San Francisco, and of course, links to all of that are included with the text that accompanies this podcast.
Thank you for your time today, Melanie, and we will talk to you again probably at the end of the year. We'll talk about which of these bills have been signed and not signed and what we're looking forward to in 2025, which is getting closer.
