AB 825 is Peak Platitude-Driven Bicycling Absurdity

Don't fall for lawmakers who can't think or "bicycling organizations" who are manipulative fear mongerers.

AB 825 is grotesquely stupid.

AB 825, as introduced, Bryan.

Vehicles: bicycles on sidewalks. Existing law generally regulates the operation of bicycles, including prohibiting a person from leaving a bicycle lying on its side on a sidewalk or parking a bicycle on a sidewalk in any other position, so that there is not an adequate path for pedestrian traffic. Existing law also authorizes a local authority to adopt rules and regulations by ordinance or resolution regarding the operation of bicycles on public sidewalks. A violation of the Vehicle Code is punishable as an infraction. This bill would prohibit a local authority from prohibiting the operation of a bicycle on a sidewalk adjacent to a highway or corridor that does not include a Class I, Class II, or Class IV bikeway, as defined. The bill would require a person riding a bicycle upon a sidewalk to yield the right-of-way to pedestrians and to adhere to a 10-miles-per-hour speed limit. By creating a new crime, this bill would impose a state-mandated local program. The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement. This bill would provide that no reimbursement is required by this act for a specified reason.

Oh good lord.

What!

That may sound like a load of gobbledegook, fortunately it’s one of the easier laws to read. It’s simple: currently CA state law allows local governments to decide whether bicycling is permitted on sideWALKS or not via ordinance. Take this one in the town of Bishop painted onto the sideWALK.

AB 825 would invalidate such local laws, and allow bicyclists to ride on sideWALKS.

But it’s not reading the actual law that’s going to get the average person to decide whether they’re going to support or not support it - it will likely be from persons or organizations trying to persuade.

The California Bicycle Coalition, or CalBike, is one such example, and the California Association of Bicycling Organizations, or CABO another. CalBike has the money, grifters, media, and social media savviness, and of course Woke abusers on their side. CABO has the principles, but it’s small and lacks nearly everything else including funding from the deep pockets of the grifter industrial complex.

CalBike will push for anything that appears to be “for bikes,” as typical with the Bicycle Infrastructure Industrial Complex. CABO steps in to save us from the idiotic bills CalBike pushes. It’s largely thanks to CABO (story for another time) that the segregated bikeway (propagandized as “protected bike lane” law) law isn’t as bad, although still greatly flawed as it is.

CABO have yet to push out anything either in favor or in opposition, but CalBike have.

CalBike recently published a web page with the title “Support AB 825 for Safe Passage for People on Bikes.”

It’s poorly reasoned and thought out to an almost Idiocracy level.

Platitudes have completely parasitized even a sliver of critical thinking over there!

We’ll cover and largely debunk line by line their claims.

Assembly Bill 825 (Bryan) comes up for a vote in the Assembly Committee on Transportation on Monday, March 20, and it needs your support. The bill will legalize bike riding on sidewalks on streets and highways that don’t include a Class I, Class II, or Class IV bikeway, giving people on bikes a safe, legal option to ride. 

There is little wrong with this as they’re mostly just stating objective facts. The bill says this, it’s up for a vote at some time, we (Calbike) want you to support it.

It’s the “giving people on bikes a safe, legal option to ride,” uh, that’s dubious.

SideWALKs are intended for pedestrian use only. Nearly every safety book, course, website, etc on cycling strongly suggests to not ride on sidewalks due to the increased risk of conflicts with both actual pedestrians, and with turning or crossing motor vehicles.

However, it seems, to their credit, that both the author of the bill, has somewhat of an understanding of this as does Calbike who continue.

AB 825 includes provisions for sidewalk safety. It sets a bicycle speed limit of 10 mph on the sidewalk and requires people on bikes to yield to pedestrians. 

Bicycles are not required by law in California to be equipped with a speedometer so complying with this may prove difficult. A requirement for people on bikes to yield to people on walking (get with the inclusive lingo, Calbike!) sounds great on the surface but neglects this is encouraging the mixing of two completely different way of locomotion.

“Better bikeways are our first choice,” the CalBike manifesto continues. No shit Sherlock. Ya’ll exist for these things and to entrench the “industry” into the already too large parasitic entity known in the Golden State as Government.

Is sidewalk riding ideal? No. In CalBike’s perfect world, we’d have safe, connected, protected bikeways creating convenient transportation networks throughout our communities. Most streets would be Complete Streets, with safe facilities for all modes of transportation. 

To CalBike’s credit, they seem to realize, that at least for now (well actually never) their utopia of bikeways doesn’t exist. But that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to endorse a law that has a great chance of actually making things worse for both bicyclists and pedestrians.

But that’s not the reality today and, even if lawmakers take our Invest/Divest Campaign to heart and fully fund our active transportation needs immediately, it will take years to transform every dangerous roadway in California into a safe route for biking. In the meantime, people on bikes must, at times, travel on streets with fast traffic and no bike lanes. AB 825 allows bike riders to share space with pedestrians rather than 2-ton, speeding vehicles. 

That doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re advocating for both a utopia and for policies which are ironically regressive on the poor and members of marginalized groups as per Woke standard operating procedure.

CalBike at its core is an anti-car organization, not a pro-bicycling one - it’s important for actual bicyclists to not get caught as pawns for such an organization. CalBike, like most “progressive” and woke groups, engage in hysterics too. Nonsense such as “to transform every dangerous roadway in California into a safe route for biking” and “AB 825 allows bike riders to share space with pedestrians rather than 2-ton, speeding vehicles” are prime examples of this hysteria. Wokism relies on “annointed people” “saving” the downtrodden. But except for saving them, they keep them down as victims and dependent on the anointed.

CAlbike even insists, speaking of wokeness, that the law would help end harassment of bicyclists, especially those who are Black or Latino. To any one with an even slight amount of critical thinking skills, this claim doesn’t pass the smell test, as there are will still be ways for sidewalk bicyclists to be stopped by law enforcement. This bill replaces one law - no sidewalk cycling- with another - yes sidewalk cycling but with certain provisions. It fails to actually address any bonafide racist-based form of law enforcement to begin with.

As an excellent LA Times investigation showed, police disproportionately target people on bikes, particularly Black and Latino men, stopping them for small infractions and then subjecting them to invasive searches. Disadvantaged neighborhoods are more likely to lack safe bikeways, forcing people to ride on sidewalks. Decriminalizing sidewalk riding protects vulnerable populations from police encounters that can sometimes be deadly, in addition to shielding them from traffic violence.

There’s as some would say, “a lot to unpack here.” First of all, the chances of the LA Times (an organization whose chosen to move “beyond objectivity” in their reporting) piece being remotely accurate is slim. LA Times and other Corporate Press rags have made a killing misrepresenting nearly anything related to members of marginalized groups. They work for the coastal elites, not normal people such as you and I. The woke are largely the same but include copious numbers of useful idiots.

CalBike, fails to provide evidence for their claim too that “disadvantaged neighborhoods are more likely to lack safe bikeways, forcing people to ride on sidewalks” and they’re equally delusion for using the verb force in this context. Calbike have over and over again advocated for bikeways which increase the risk of conflicts between bicyclists and other users - elementary traffic engineering principles and physics be damned.

Both Motordom and Platitude-Driven Ideology (both pushed by CalBike) have contributed greatly to the myth that bicyclists do not belong on roadways and instead on sidewalks.

Calbike closes with this grotesque bullshit:

AB 825 puts bike rider safety first. CalBike strongly supports this bill, and we hope you will, too. Send the Transportation Committee an email today.