End-of-Session Legislative Recap: Big Wins for Safer Streets

This legislative session was momentous for people biking and walking. Eight bills CalBike championed to bring safer streets to Californians are on Governor Gavin Newsom’s desk. The bills represent significant opportunities to make our roads safer, especially for vulnerable road users. While we also lost some good bills along the way, the end-of-session inflection point leaves us in an optimistic place.

Here’s a full recap.

Growing support for Complete Streets

Senator Scott Wiener’s Complete Streets Bill, SB 960, passed the legislature and awaits the governor’s signature. We’ve been here before: in 2019, Senator Wiener’s Complete Streets Bill passed the legislature only to be vetoed by the governor. However, there are reasons for hope this time.

In 2019, Caltrans had a new leader and the governor stated in his veto message that he wanted to give the agency a chance to reform its practices without legislative oversight. Five years on, CalBike examined Caltrans’ record and found that, while there are some positive changes in the way it handles infrastructure serving people who bike and walk, there is still much more that needs to improve. Our widely read Incomplete Streets series, which also ran in Streetsblog California, highlighted some of the recent projects that fell short of serving all road users.

We look forward to a future where our state road maintenance considers the safety and comfort of all users on every project. The Complete Streets Bill will help us get there. We hope Governor Newsom signs it.

Seven more excellent bills the governor should sign

While the Complete Streets Bill is CalBike’s top legislative priority this year, we are also excited about these seven bills we support, which are one signature away from becoming law.

• Safer Vehicles Save Lives Bill, SB 961 (Wiener): The second half of Senator Wiener’s street safety package, which CalBike sponsored along with the Complete Streets Bill, will require most cars, trucks, and buses sold in California to include passive intelligent speed assist (ISA) by 2030. ISA gives drivers a signal when they exceed the speed limit by 10 miles per hour and can help prevent speed-related collisions, saving lives. It is already required in Europe and uses existing technology that is widely available.
• Transportation Accountability Act, AB 2086 (Schiavo): An excellent complement to the Complete Streets Bill, this measure will require Caltrans to account for where California’s transportation dollars go. It will be an essential tool for advocates who want to make sure our spending matches our climate and equity goals.
• Banning Bridge Tolls for People Walking and Biking, AB 2669 (Ting): This bill makes permanent a measure that sunsets next year. It allows toll-free crossings for people who walk or bike across toll bridges. It will have the biggest impact in the Bay Area, which has several toll bridges with bicycle and pedestrian lanes.
• Bike Lanes in Coastal Areas, SB 689 (Blakespear): This bill limits the ability of the Coastal Commission to block the development of new bikeways on existing roads in coastal areas.
• Limits on Class III Bikeways, SB 1216 (Blakespear): Class III bikeways are lanes shared by bike riders and car drivers. While they may be appropriate for neighborhood streets and some other contexts, they are sometimes used in place of more protective infrastructure because the cost is much lower. This bill would limit the use of state funding to create Class III bikeways on high-speed routes. It was originally in conflict with a provision of AB 2290, but since that bill died in the Senate Appropriations Committee, we’re happy to see this measure reach the governor’s desk.
• E-Bike Battery Safety Standards, SB 1271 (Min): This bill requires all e-bikes sold in California to use batteries with safety certifications. It will help prevent most, if not all, battery fires, as those are usually caused by substandard batteries.
• Unsafe Speed Penalties, SB 1509 (Stern): Continuing the speed theme, this bill would increase penalties for speeding more than 25 mph over the speed limit on roads with speed limits of 55 mph or less. 

One bill signed already

Governor Newsom often waits until the last day to sign or veto a raft of transportation bills, but he’s gotten a head start this year. The E-Bike Modification Bill, AB 1774, prohibits the sale of devices that can modify e-bikes to provide an electric boost beyond top speed limits that meet the definition of e-bikes. This addresses concerns about modified e-bikes that reportedly allow riders to go much faster than the 28 mph boost allowed under Class 3, the fastest classification of e-bikes.

The ones that didn’t make it

California’s legislature has two-year sessions, so bills that weren’t ready for prime time at the end of 2023 could become two-year bills, with an opportunity for modification and passage in 2024. This August marked the end of a two-year cycle, so the bills that didn’t make it are no more. If their authors or other legislators want to move their concepts forward, they will need to introduce new bills next session. 

There were a lot of excellent proposals that didn’t make it, often because of budget considerations. But we also know that it can take time for a new concept to garner enough support to become law. We hope many of these bills will return in some form in the future.

Here are the bills that died.

• Quick and Better Bikeways, AB 2290 (Friedman): This excellent bill would have created a quick-build pilot at Caltrans and required bicycle or pedestrian facilities identified in an active transportation plan to be included in projects funded by Road Maintenance and Rehabilitation dollars. A third provision banning funding for Class III lanes was included in a separate bill, so it will make it to the governor. This measure made it almost all the way through the legislature but fizzled at the last minute because of fiscal concerns, a common issue in a tight budget year.
• No Freeway Expansions for Freight, AB 2535 (Bonta): This bill to protect environmentally burdened communities from freeway expansions to accommodate more freight trucks is an important policy idea that we hope returns in a future session.
• Regional Transportation Planning, AB 6 (Friedman): Carried over as a two-year bill, this measure would have required regional transportation plans to prioritize projects that support California’s climate goals. 
• Bicycle Safety Stop, AB 73 (Boerner): The author held back this bill in the last session and didn’t move it forward this year. This commonsense measure would allow people on bikes to legally treat stop signs as yields when it’s safe to do so. Another study showing the safety of this bike-friendly law was just released and the evidence continues to mount for the safety and efficacy of legalizing stop-as-yield. We hope a committed legislator will pick up this cause next year. CalBike is ready to campaign for the safety stop.
• Freeway Caps, AB 833 (Rendon): This measure would have built caps over freeways in disadvantaged communities.
• Bicycle Safety Handbook, AB 2259 (Boerner): This bill would have required the DMV to create and distribute booklets about safe bike riding.
• School Slow Zones, AB 2583 (Berman): This bill would have established a default speed limit of 15 mph in school zones.
• Intersection Safety Act, AB 2744 (McCarty): This bill would have changed the rules on adding right turn lanes and when car drivers could make right turns across bike lanes and crosswalks. It’s a complex problem, worthy of finding a solution, but even active transportation advocates were divided about the best approach. We hope to see future legislation to make intersections safer, and we’re looking forward to being part of the discussion.

CalBike was also watching a number of other bills. Check our Legislative Watch page to find the status of all the 2024 legislation affecting active transportation.