Can I ask you a question or two? What if it helps us learn your biking/walking desires for our next year of advocacy and could put you in a swanky WOBO t-shirt? Sound good to you? Then take five minutes and fill out our brand-new survey.

This weekend, we’ll be hunkering down to formulate our plans at the aptly named annual Strategic Planning Retreat; your survey responses will have a big impact on how we tackle things over the next year (and beyond), so we want to hear from you. For helping us out, you’ll get the option (at the end of the survey) to enter a drawing which could net you an awesome bike light or swanky WOBO t-shirt.

So take five minutes, fill out the survey and enter the drawing… and while you’re at it, tell your friends. You’ll find the survey here: http://alturl.com/yov4. The survey closes this Wednesday, March 3rd.

Very exciting to see WOBO get some ink in the East Bay Express – thanks to them for highlighting our hard work to make Oakland a better place to ride a bike and walk to our local neighborhoods and schools!

On a Roll | Eco Watch | East Bay Express.

And let’s hear it for the importance of WOBO and all of you – and the difference we’ve made and will make!

Jason Patton, City of Oakland bicycle and pedestrian program manager, said he’s grateful for Walk Oakland Bike Oakland’s presence in city government, especially when it pushes Oakland to do things it normally wouldn’t. “Working with organized groups who have views and positions is much easier than working with a heterogeneous public,” he said. “It helps tremendously when there’s a self-organizing factor in the community.”

SFgate  In Oakland blog : Oakland BRT meetings start today.

This week important community meetings are taking place to get feedback from Oaklanders on the future bus rapid transit project that will connect Berkeley/the O/San Leandro via Telegraph, downtown, and International.  Show up, be heard!

Thursday, January 21st: 6-8 PM, East Oakland Youth Development Center, 8200 International Boulevard

Tuesday, January 26th: 6-8 PM, Faith Presbyterian Church, 420 49th Street

Wednesday, January 27th: 11 AM – 1 PM, Oakland City Hall, Hearing Room 2, 1 Frank Ogawa Plaza

Wednesday, January 27th: 5-7 PM, Oakland City Hall, Hearing Room 4, 1 Frank Ogawa Plaza

Thursday, January 28th: 6-8 PM, St. Louis Bertrand Church, 1410 100th Avenue

New shuttle bus service to serve downtown Oakland – ContraCostaTimes.com.

For those of use working in DTO, it is great to see a shuttle starting up to get around.  Having this available helps access Jack London, Old Oakland, the Uptown/Arts district and Pill Hill!  Easy to use to shorten otherwise long walks and a nice alternative to riding sometimes.

Hope this is just the first of many improvements in downtown to make it easier to get around without a car.

“(Councilmember) Kaplan said she and other city officials also hope that new bus shuttle can be the first step toward developing an electric streetcar system to the downtown some time in the future. Streetcars ran in downtown Oakland in the 1940s.”

Oakland needs your input on the proposed plan for Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). Come to one of six community meetings. Similar to light rail without tracks, BRT features bus-only lanes, level boarding and fare payment at stations to achieve faster and more reliable service.

Here are the meeting locations, dates and times:

• January 11: 6-8pm, Fruitvale Senior Center (3301 E 12th St, Suite 201)
• January 12: 6-8pm, Eastside Arts Alliance (2277 International Blvd)
• January 21: 6-8pm, East Oakland Youth Development Center (8200 International Blvd)
• January 26: 6-8pm, Faith Presbyterian Church (430 49th St)
• January 27: 11am-1pm, Hearing Room 2 – Oakland City Hall (1 Frank Ogawa Plaza – Broadway and 14th St)
• January 27: 5-7pm, Hearing Room 4 – Oakland City Hall (1 Frank Ogawa Plaza – Broadway and 14th St)

For more information, visit www.oaklandbrt.com or call 510-238-3792. For transit directions, call 5-1-1 or visit 511.org.

Traffic calming in HarriOak : A Better Oakland.

I was really excited to see V Smoothe’s article on A Better Oakland highlighting the terrific work going on in the HarriOak / 27th St area.  WOBO has been active in this area for a few years now, and the current plan is coming together:

“Harrison Street and Oakland Avenue, as I’m sure most of you are aware, are adorable and primarily residential streets near downtown Oakland that function mainly as super long freeway off and on ramps. 17,000 cars a day speed down these roads with no concern for the speed limit, while bicyclists enjoy basically no special accommodations and pedestrians are forced to use narrow, unlit sidewalks. Although there are plenty of crosswalks, getting across them is, as the draft plan mildly states, a “daunting task” and not one for the faint of heart. (The existing conditions chapter (PDF) of the draft plan outlines these problems in detail.”

There are now 21 comments supporting the Community Transportation Plan (PDF) that outlines improvements that would calm traffic and make the area safer for pedestrians and bicyclists.

The intersection at Whole Foods / 27th / Harrison gets more improvements, including TREES.  Thanks to V Smoothe for covering this and to all of you helping to transform these mini-freeways that dissect our community.

Want to help Cycles of Change and the young cyclists of Oakland with just a few clicks? ‘Course you do. As for how, it’s simple:

Brighter Planet donates money to organizations based on votes from you, the Internet public. If Cycles of Change is one of the top vote-getters this month, then they’ll get $5,000. Pretty sweet, right?

The project you’re voting to fund is Cycles of Change’s work at Bret Harte Middle School in East Oakland. This bicycle education/distribution project gives kids from low-income families the opportunity to earn their own bicycles, learn safe riding skills, and go on exciting bike adventures. Participants learn basic bike mechanics, engage in service projects (such as community gardening and creek restoration), and rebuild a recycled bike to use as their own sustainable transportation.

Here’s the best part: you get three votes at Brighter Planet. You can spread them around or use them all for one project! Personally, I voted three times for Cycles of Change – once for the kids, once for Cycles of Change, and once for the love of cycling. And since November is all about voting, here’s a great opportunity to do some! To vote for Cycles of Change, click here.

Thanks for voting!

Thanks to the Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center, we’d like to pass along the following tips for safe walking at Halloween:

Guidelines for Safe Walking at Halloween

1. Parents and Adults Should be Involved

• Young children need a parent or other adult to go trick-or-treating with them. There is no magic age when children are old enough to walk alone. Parents need to judge when their children are mature enough to go without an adult.
• Review crossing safety rules with children. Tell them:
  • Even when adults are looking, always look for cars for yourself.
  • Stop at the curb and look left, right and left again for traffic.
  • Wait until no traffic is coming and begin crossing. Keep looking for traffic until you have finished crossing.
  • When crossing the street at an intersection, obey traffic signs and signals and look for yourself to see if cars are coming. Look left, right and left and then behind you and in front of you for turning cars.
  • Walk, don’t run across the street.

2. Cross Safely

• Choose the safest routes to walk.
  • Pick places where there are sidewalks or paths separated from traffic if possible.
  • Look for well-lit streets with slow traffic.
  • Remind children to watch for cars turning or pulling out of driveways.
• Limit the number of street crossings. Avoid crossing busy or high-speed roads.

3. Be Visible

• Think visibility. Wear bright colors, use retro reflective materials. Carry flashlights. In bad weather, visibility is even more important.
• Choose homes that welcome Halloween visitors. Look for well lit driveways, walkways or paths to the front door.
• Do a costume check. Can the children walk easily in the outfit? Make sure the masks or head gear allow the children to see clearly what is around them. Be sure they can safely negotiate steps on dimly lit walkways.

4. When taking a group of kids trick or treating:

• Have a good ratio of parents/adults to children. For young children, consider 1 adult for every 3 children.
• Arrange the adults so that there is an adult in the front and one in the back. This is to prevent children from getting ahead or lagging behind the group.
• Plan how to cross streets:
  • Avoid busy, high-speed or multi-lane roads.
  • Give children exiting the street room to enter the sidewalk area.
• Remember children are not miniature adults:
  • They often act before thinking.
  • They have one-third narrower side vision.
  • They can’t judge speed.
  • They are shorter than adults and can’t see over cars and bushes.
• Make sure the children understand what is expected of them. Have a plan for dealing with disruptive kids.

5. Messages for Motorists:

• Drive slowly through residential streets and areas where pedestrians trick-or-treating could be expected.
• Watch for children darting out from between parked cars. Watch for children walking on roadways, medians, and curbs.
• Enter and exit driveways and alleys carefully.
• At twilight and later in the evening, watch for children in dark clothing.

If you want a printer-friendly version of these safety tips, we’ve got two options:

• PDF file (.pdf) http://bit.ly/19ySlB
• Word document (.doc) http://bit.ly/2uiWYe

Happy Halloween!

Yeah, yeah, we all know that climate change is a big problem and walking and biking is a great solution.  Right?

Since today is Blog Action Day 2009, with a focus on Global Climate Change, I wanted to add the WOBO blog to the chorus of online voices calling for action, as a reminder that our work to improve Oakland’s neighborhood quality of life through walking and biking has impacts not only our community but also our global community, from New Orleans to Nigeria.

Transportation accounts for 28% of greenhouse gas emissions nationally, and 38% in California.  Every trip you take that is accomplished by bicycle or foot helps keep carbon out of the atmosphere and make our future that much cooler.

It’s estimated that, thanks to our inaction over the past 30 years, sea level WILL rise (not maybe) 1-2 meters as a best-case scenario.  Every bike lane and crosswalk we stripe in Oakland means that coastal communities – in California, Louisiana, Bangladesh, everywhere – will face fewer relocations, fewer deaths from flooding and extreme weather events, and fewer social injustices from the unequal way that these problems are falling on the shoulders of poor and minority communities.

Oil drilling and refining causes health and environmental damage on the ground as well as the ultimate problem of climate change.  Every tank of gas you DON’T buy saves rainforests in the Amazon, preserves clean drinking water in Africa, and keeps smog out of the lungs of communities near refineries.  As the planet heats up, the pollution impacts on people and the environment we be even more devastating as the balance of ecology is made less resilient due to rising temperatures.

THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING WALK OAKLAND BIKE OAKLAND and helping make our community part of the solution.  This month, you can get involved – on the ground and in person – to further local efforts to fight climate change:

Saturday, October 24: Global Day of Climate Action in San Francisco

Tuesday, October 27: Oakland Climate Action Plan update at the WOBO Volunteers Meeting

Please join us in making sure that our leaders take the steps we need to address climate change – and know that every day, your time in the saddle or on the sidewalk contributes to the global effort on this issue.

For more information about Blog Action Day 2009 and links to other blogs on climate change, click here.

(Submitted by Shannon T.)

This past weekend, WOBO vols Michael and Shannon headed east to the Rockies for a “Winning Campaigns” training with the Alliance for Biking and Walking. The training, led by ABW staffer Jeremy Grandstaff and LA County Bicycle Coalition founder Ron Milam, was packed with tools and tips for, well, winning campaigns – and since we’ve both been at the forefront of the emerging “Oaklavia/Sunday Streets” effort, we used the practice sessions to scheme the next steps towards making fun, safe, free car-free parkways a reality in Oakland.

In addition to spending two and a half days honing a plan for bringing Oaklavia/Sunday Streets to the Town, we also had many opportunities to share stories and ideas with fellow bike/ped advocates from Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Minnesota.  Other groups are working on diverse goals ranging from changing Minnesota state law to allow bicyclists to turn left on red when they don’t trip the traffic light sensor, to inserting a “Bike Palace” with free, secure parking and showers into the newly restored Union Station in downtown Denver. We’re looking forward to leaning on these awesome, inspiring allies as we work for a better neighborhood quality of life here in Oakland.

Group photo with cow sculpture by BikeDenver board member Lise Neer.

It wasn’t all business, though.  Denver’s re-developed warehouse district has become a hopping scene for nightlife, especially when the Colorado Rockies are playing, and we spent the evenings walking to pubs where a base hit was cause for a conversation-stopping commotion.  The nearby Cherry Creek trail is a bicycle and pedestrian throughway that leads south from downtown, and Saturday afternoon about a dozen training participants took a ride on the paths and streets of Denver.  One of the most interesting locales was the Denver Art Museum, where giant cows lounge on the lawn in front of a recently completed, pointy building intended to reflect the shape of the mountains, and covered in 9,000 titanium panels.  That’s a lot of bikes!

Submitted by Shannon T.