Stay connected with News, Action items and Happenings
Our Community Cycling Program provides direct services to individuals to ensure that they can travel by bike conveniently, comfortable and safely.
We provide valet bike parking at about 300 community events per year so that attendees can easily choose to ride a bike instead of drive. This year we’ll park some 15,000 bikes. If we assume that each bike is used to travel an average of 1 mile in each direction, that translates to 30,000 miles traveled or 13.5 tons of carbon pollutants kept out of the atmosphere (and everyone’s lungs) – and that’s just this year. Bike Valet is our most prominent and impactful program. Read more here.
You can’t rely on your bike for everyday travel if you don’t have a way to keep it in good condition. Unfortunately, most residents of our region live in a bike shop desert where there are few if any nearby bike shops.
Our team of mechanics provides free maintenance checks and simple repairs at community events in North Natomas, Rancho Cordova and South Sacramento where residents can’t afford or don’t have convenient access to retail bike shop services and supplies.
Last year we began teaching kids in West Sacramento the basics of bicycling safely and confidently through a Safe Routes to School program at seven elementary schools.
This summer we launched urban cycling skills classes for adults in West Sacramento, and we’re looking to expand into nearby communities.
Bike rodeo at Southport Elementary School in West Sacramento
Sacramento’s first protected bikeways (also sometimes called protected bike lanes, cycle tracks or separated bikeways) are being installed on three downtown streets and we’re hearing a lot of questions. This is the second of several blog posts where we'll explain more about this kind of bike infrastructure.
There’s a protected bikeway in Davis on J Street near Drexel Drive, and in West Sacramento on Linden Road, west of Jefferson Blvd. More are planned for Sacramento and also in Rancho Cordova.
As of 2016 there were 292 streets with protected bikeways in 82 North American cities. Sacramento is actually somewhat late to this particular party.
Read more here about the inventory of protected bikeways in North America.
Protected bikeway on Linden Road in West Sacramento.
Two-way protected bikeway on J Street near Drexel Dr. in Davis
Two features make a protected bikeway “protected”: a painted buffer at least 2 to 3 feet wide and a vertical element such as a flexible bollard, median, planter or a row of parked cars.
Protected bikeways are almost always placed against the curb. They can be one-way or two-way and can be placed on the right side or left side.
Sacramento's new protected bikeways were designed according to Caltrans standards, which provide for flexibility to accommodate the characteristics of a specific street – for example, not all streets are the same width. The City of Sacramento located the bikeway on the left side of P Street because of the high number of public transit and commuter buses with loading areas on the right side of the street, especially west of 14th Street. While there are design options for protected bikeways that wrap behind bus stops, they only work where there is enough road width. P Street wasn’t wide enough and widening it wasn’t an option.
On Q Street the left-hand bikeway keeps bike traffic separate from the large volume of eastbound vehicle traffic that turns right onto 15th St.
The protected bikeway on 10th Street between L and I streets is located on the right side of the street.
Read more here about the various kinds of protected bikeways.
The project increases sight distances at streets that cross P and Q streets by removing one or more spaces from near each intersection. The shorter parking lanes on P and Q make people on bikes (as well as pedestrians) more visible to drivers.
P Street looking east from 13th Street. Parking spaces removed from the end of each block make bikes more visible to drivers.
For drivers waiting to cross north at P Street or south at Q Street, the approaching bike traffic is now visible for the entire length of the block – much more visible than where the bike lane is placed on the outside of the parking lane.
This design happens to be the oldest kind installed in the U.S. The first two protected bikeways in the U.S. were installed on 8th Ave. and 9th Ave. in Manhattan. Both are on the left side of one-way streets and buffered by parked cars.
9th Ave protected bikeway in New York City, one of the first two protected bikeways installed in the U.S.
Where the protected bike lanes cross entrances to 8 parking lots, garages and alleys on P and 10th streets, those entrances will be painted bright green to signal to drivers and people on bikes to use extra caution, as recommended in Federal Highway Administration standards. You can already see green paint used this way on Carlson Drive at H and J streets.
Continuous green bike lanes are generally no longer installed, due to high maintenance costs.
Green paint marks the place where the bikeway crosses the entrance to Southport Elementary School on Linden Road in West Sacramento.
Creating more separation between bikes and cars on busy streets reduces the potential for conflicts. That’s what protected bikeways are designed for. New York City's protected bike lane on 9th Avenue led to a 56 percent reduction in injuries to all street users, including a 57 percent reduction in injuries to people on bikes and a 29 percent reduction in injuries to people walking, as well as an 84 percent reduction in sidewalk riding.
A traffic lane on each street has been removed on 10th, P and Q streets to accommodate the new bikeways. This so-called “road diet” slightly increases vehicle congestion, which has the effect of reducing speeds. But it doesn’t completely eliminate potential conflicts at an intersection with a two-way stop (i.e., for cross traffic only) or at alleys.
For example, there are no stops for traffic heading west on P St. at 14th, 13th and 11th streets. Vehicles can freely turn left or right. Where cars turn left, they cross the left-side bike lane without having to stop. This hazard currently exists on all one-way, two-lane streets with a conventional bike lane on one or both sides and no controls at cross streets, including portions of 5th, 9th, 10th, 19th, 21st, G, H, N, P and Q.
Creating more four-way intersections with stop signs and traffic signals can help reduce this hazard, although that's an expensive option - one 4-way traffic signal costs about $1M. And even then, these kinds of collisions also occur at intersections with 4-way traffic controls.
The protected bikeway project reduces this hazard two ways: the road diet helps calm traffic speeds, giving drivers and bicyclists more reaction time, including drivers making right or left turns, and the removal of parking spaces at the intersections makes bicyclists more visible to turning drivers.
Sacramento’s first protected bikeways (also sometimes called protected bike lanes, cycle tracks or separated bikeways) are being installed on three downtown streets and we’re hearing a lot of questions. This is the first of several blog posts where we’ll explain more about this kind of bike infrastructure.
May 1 is the start of our region’s annual month-long celebration of all things bicycle, with rides, classes, events and promotions meant to encourage more people to choose a bike for everyday travel.
Public agencies like to use this month to unveil new improvements and programs that support bicycle transportation. For example, in a few weeks the City of Sacramento will open 20 blocks of buffered and protected bike lanes (AKA separated bikeways or cycle tracks) on three downtown streets.
From the preview of the proposed P Street protected bikeway in downtown Sacramento in October 2017
Many people who already ride a bike recognize the benefits and feel validated by such improvements. Yet the real beneficiaries aren’t even on a bike yet.
For every person currently riding a bike, there are as many as five drivers who say they want to ride a bike for transportation but won’t do it on streets where they have to ride with traffic. These interested but concerned would-be cyclists are waiting for less stressful conditions – off-street paths and bike lanes comfortably separated from moving vehicles.
Six years ago researchers working with San Jose State’s Mineta Transportation Institute published a groundbreaking methodology for creating continuous, low-stress bikeways meant to accommodate the interested but concerned cyclist.
By sorting streets according to their level of "traffic stress" -- based on factors such as size, vehicle speed and traffic volumes -- it's possible to identify those that are naturally calm and those that need to be tamed. Potential networks, including gaps to be filled, reveal themselves easily.
Their research changed the way cities think about bikeway networks and how to design for all ages and abilities. Low-stress bikeways became the gold standard in bikeway design. Dutch-style designs, such as buffered and protected bike lanes, became potent tools for reducing the level of traffic stress on streets that are challenging for people on bikes.
Stockton Blvd. looking north from Fruitridge Road.
Anyone who regularly travels by bike in our region encounters big disconnects: the bike lanes that just end, the white-knuckle ride on the busy streets and boulevards that clearly weren’t designed for people on bikes. Imagine a trip by bike without those gaps and without facing a limited number of poor options for traveling safely. That's what you get with a low-traffic-stress bikeway network.
Now do the math. If we created bikeways that enabled even 20% of the interested but concerned to choose a bike over driving, we would immediately double the number of people traveling by bikes, with a corresponding drop in traffic and thus air pollution related to transportation. An increase in bike traffic also means fewer traffic deaths and injuries of all kinds.
Sounds like a dream? The Canadian city of Calgary installed nearly 3 miles of protected bike lanes in its downtown grid and within the first three months saw a 95% increase in the number of bicyclists on those streets compared to the year before. A study released last year in Seattle showed the highest rates of bicycling near the calmest facilities, including bike paths and protected bike lanes.
Two-way protected bike lane in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
As you ride around our region this month, look around and ask yourself who you don’t see riding there. They're the ones we’re building for.
Support our work to enable more people to choose to a bike as safe, convenient everyday transportation with a generous donation on Thursday, May 3, the Big Day of Giving.
Stay connected with News, Action items and Happenings
