Dear all…

This is a special invitation to take part in a special class of Merritt College, a series of bicycle-based journeys into the heart of the East Bay. With the help of some wrinkles in time, we will travel ancient pathways, follow lost rivers, and learn the hidden stories within the city while visiting some spectacular destinations. Geography, ecology, hydrology, cultural history and other fields will be woven together as we move closer to this incredible place we call home.

The first day (Monday, July 20) meets at Merritt College – it is a hiking trip, and no bicycle is necessary. Thereafter, each trip will meet at a BART station and involve light to moderate riding. Bicycle tune-ups can be arranged! You have to enroll through the college’s computer system (or on paper, in person) to guarantee your spot in the class and be able to come on the trips. You can do this by going to www.merritt.edu, and signing up using the class code below (it’s in the Landscape Horticulture department!):

Cycles Of Land Use Class at Merritt College 7/20-7/31 10am-4pm

LH 04800 M1, Lec 31299, 3 Units

Instructors’ contact info:

Grey Kolevzon: greyloom@hotmail.com

Christopher Shein: wildheartgardens@yahoo.com

*Please sign up early and pass this message on to interested people, as there is a minimum enrollment to have the class run!!

A detailed schedule of trips/classes is as follows….hope to see you there!!!

7/20

Introduction

Local ecological history (people and land)

Lion Creek hike – Oakland ecosystems (3 miles, 3 hours, +400ft)

7/21

East Bay time travel tour -

Union City BART/bikes (15 miles, 6 hours, +0 ft)

7/22

East Oakland history/ecology tour -

Fruitvale BART/bikes (10 miles, 6 hours, +250 ft)

7/23

Permaculture tour of N Oak/S Berk

Ashby BART/bikes (5 miles, 6 hours, +0 ft)

7/24

Introduction to projects

Develop vision in small groups; investigate local models (Arroyo hike), begin research/planning with maps, texts; research plan/connect with local resources

7/27

Water and watersheds tour – East Bay

Tyson Ponds, Lake Elizabeth/marshes, Niles Canyon, Quarry Lakes

Fremont BART (10 miles, 6 hours, + 0 ft)

7/28

Urban creeks tour – Codornices creek

Secret waterfall, four restoration sites

North Berkeley BART (8 miles, 6 hours, + 250 ft)

7/29

East Oakland permaculture projects

Fruitvale BART (5 miles, 6 hours, + 100 ft)

7/30

Introduction to urban design/planning

Guest presenters, site visits…..

7/31

Final presentations at Merritt and potluck

If you’re looking for a wrap-up from today’s events in San Francisco, the SFBC site and Streetsblog are good places to go. On the SFBC site, you’ll find a link to the full list of approved bike projects as well as photos from today’s meeting and information on what needs to happen next to lift the bike injunction.

At Streetsblog, you’ll find two articles: one covering Mayor Newsom’s 3pm press conference about the results of the MTA Board Meeting and another that mention’s Newsom’s intention to request federal stimulus funds for the Bicycle Plan.

Today was a good day. Enjoy the weekend!

We’re still going to have to wait for Mayor Newsom’s press release at 3pm and other reports from the MTA Board of Directors Meeting from today for full details, but the broad strokes we can report are awesome. Massive supporter turnout at the meeting today (read the Streetsblog article) and here’s what the last few SFBC tweets had to say:

• Victory 1 of 2! #SFBikePlan approved unanimously by SFMTA Board!
• Victory 2 of 2! 45 bike projects green lighted by SFMTA Board. Thanks to 10K @sfbc members + ~2,000 letters + dozens of testimonies
• HUGE VICTORIES at #SFBikePlanHearing! Miles of Bike lanes in SF will double!!!

So it’s a pretty good day. We’ll have more later – you can count on that!

The dominoes are falling… tonight, the first of several steps needed to lift San Francisco’s bike injunction was taken. The SF Planning Commission certified the Environmental Impact Review (EIR) of the San Francisco Bicycle Plan.

The next step is tomorrow morning’s MTA Board meeting (9am), where the MTA will decide whether to approve the Bike Plan (indications are that they will) and then vote on projects under consideration for immediate implementation. If you’re able to make it to City Hall tomorrow morning, that would be huge. The SFBC put it well:

The Board of Directors of the SF Municipal Transportation Agency (MTA) will vote on the Bike Plan and whether to give a green light to nearly 50 Bike Network improvement projects. We need you at this City Hall hearing to speak up in support of these Bike Network improvement projects…

Do you live, work or commute along one of the proposed routes? Stand up at the hearing and add your voice, along with other SFBC members, on this historic day. Together we can win the biggest increase of bike lanes ever seen in San Francisco… We know that there will be opponents, and we want to make sure that the Board hears many more positive comments about biking… RSVP now at sfbike.org/26rsvp so that we can track who’s coming.

We’ll bring you more on this tomorrow after the MTA meeting, but if you want to know what’s happening at the meeting in realtime, you can sign up for the SFBC’s twitter feed (userid: sfbc).

By now, it’s clear that San Francisco “Sunday Streets” is a smashing success, and we at WOBO are excited to launch a similar car-free parkway event here in Oakland this fall or next spring.  But our campaign has a bit of an identity crisis.  What should we call our East Bay version of “Sunday Streets”?

Internally, we’ve been referring to the campaign as “Ciclovía,” taking inspiration from the pioneers of car-free parkways in Bogota, Colombia.  “Ciclo” – aka “bikes” – plus “vía” – meaning road or path – adds up to a very clear description of the event in Spanish.  However, when we talk to people outside the bicycling or Spanish-speaking communities, we get a lot of blank stares and have to spend a while explaining what we’re talking about.  (Check out a great 9-nine film about Bogota’s Ciclovía here.)

We could use “Sunday Streets,” a term that has graced the front page of the Chronicle more than once.  Yet the organizers of Sunday Streets have found the name to be a bit problematic when, for example, they held one on a Saturday.  Confusing?  A bit.  New York City’s “Summer Streets” poses a similar challenge, though neither name has kept participants from showing up in droves when the cars are fenced out.

At our recent campaign planning retreat, we decided on “Oakland Parkways” as a new way to describe this non-motorized health and recreation event.  Doesn’t that sound nice?  But those of you who just thought, “Hey, when is the Parkway reopening?” discovered the complication there.  (Not that WOBO doesn’t like the Parkway, we just don’t want people to be disappointed because they were expecting couches, pizza, and a second-run film.)

So we took the “Sunday Streets” issue to the streets – literally – at last Thursday’s Uptown Unveiled! event at 19th and Telegraph, which itself provided a dramatic illustration of how sweet it is to block off the streets for community entertainment.  Hundreds of Oaklanders filled the streets to enjoy performances, people-watching, and other free activities.  WOBO’s table drew a stream of walkers and cyclists, and we tapped their creativity to gather suggestions for a name.  Together with the ideas generated at last night’s Volunteers Meeting, we’ve got quite a list:

Open Roads
Saturday Boulevards
Open Oakland
Freedom Streets
Streets for the People
Walkland
No Mo (as in, no motorized nothin’!)
Bike For Life
Oakland Outside
Play East Bay
Party in the Streets
Freedom Trails
Cycle Sundays
OakCycle
BikeWay
Decompression Zone
Oaktown Bikedown
Street Play
East Bay Easy

Can you help? Leave us a comment with your idea, or tell us which one you like the best.  Together, we can make this Sunday-Ciclo-Park-a-Rama happen here in Oakland… whatever the heck we end up calling it!

Three years after an injunction on bicycle improvements in San Francisco:

[T]he MTA Board and the Planning Commission are expected to finally approve and adopt the [Environmental Impact Review] and the Bike Plan this week, and legislate at least 45 of the 56 projects, which could bring up to 34 miles of new bike lanes to the city.

Read the entire Streetsblog article, but more importantly consider supporting the push for new bike lanes in SF: send a letter of support to the MTA Board and attend the SFMTA’s special meeting this Friday.

Check out this recent Treehugger article on current US Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood.  There’s a lot in it to indicate that the Obama Administration is truly committed to improving the livability of neighborhoods. Here’s Secretary LaHood:

“What we’ve talked about is getting to a concept that we call livable communities, where people don’t have to get in a car every day. You can use light rail, you can use buses, you can use walking paths, you can use your bike.”

From the Treehugger article:

LaHood’s Department of Transportation wants every metropolitan area in the country to conduct “integrated housing, transportation, and land use planning.”… Although it sounds like a no-brainer, in reality, transportation, housing policy (including affordable housing) and land use issues are rarely addressed in an integrated fashion. The results of this disjointed approach to planning can be seen in every American city.

It’s a quick read, so I suggest perusing the rest of the article here.

Talk about your all-in-one solution to the problem of riding to work and then needing a shower and/or change of clothes, the folks at Penny Farthings Pushbikes in Brisbane (Australia) have come up with the Green Pod – a solar-powered bike storage unit that has change rooms, showers, a self-cleaning device and use of recycled water. What’s amazing is that the parking, lockers, 2 showers and 2 change rooms have the footprint of your regular (car) parking space! Check out the Treehugger article on the Green Pod.

It’ll likely take a while before we see anything like this in the US, but one can dream. However, Penny Farthings Pushbikes’ other bike-parking productsare the kinds of things that would be useful, practical and possible here right now.

This Tuesday night, League of American Bicyclists (LAB) Executive Director Andy Clarke will be the featured speaker at the SFBC’s Treehouse Talk.

It’s your chance to hear the latest about the Federal transportation bill and what it could mean for bicycling and livable streets, learn about LAB’s legislative and policy initiatives, and explore the intersections between local and national bike advocacy. The talk is free for SFBC members, $5 for non-members; bring your bike upstairs and relax.

Details: SFBC Treehouse Talk: Tue, Jun. 16 at 6:30pm, SFBC HQ, 995 Market St (at 6th St), 15th Fl. Bring your bike up!

You may have heard that the City recently installed over 360 bike racks in Oakland’s commercial districts, most to replace parking meters. What you may not know is that they still have a small amount of racks left and they’re looking for suggestions on where to install them.  Here’s your chance to ask for a bike rack in a much-needed spot!

Submit your bike rack location requests to the City using their online form. Note that racks can only be installed on a City-owned right-of-way (mostly sidewalks) in commercial districts and cannot be installed in AC Transit red zones, too close to light poles and other obstructions, etc. Check out the City’s rack placement guidelines (.pdf) here. Questions? Contact the City’s Bicycle & Pedestrian Facilities Coordinator at (510) 238-3983 or email bikeped@oaklandnet.com.