Alameda is located adjacent to Oakland and surrounded by the waters of the San Francisco Bay. It’s a wonderful place to live for our 80,000 residents. BWA has been working to make it a safe-and-getting-safer place to walk and bike every day since 1999.
Congratulations go to our island community, the city administrators, and officials for being recognized as a Silver Level Bicycle Community by the League of American Bicyclists’ Bicycle Friendly America. Real change requires teamwork. Let’s keep working for a better Alameda! Now, can we get to gold?
Mission
Bike Walk Alameda’s mission is to make our city a safe and enjoyable place to walk and bike. We support an active and healthy citizenry by promoting everyday walking and biking in and around Alameda and seek to enhance our environment by removing barriers that restrict our ability to walk and bike comfortably and safely.
Organizational Status
Bike Walk Alameda is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) corporation organized under the laws of the State of California with its office in Alameda, California 94501.
Our federal tax identification number is 91-2150996.
We are a member of:
- Alliance for Biking and Walking
- League of American Bicyclists
- America Walks
- California Walks
Our Work
We believe in developing positive partnerships in order to accomplish our goals and in educating to reach our goals. By working together, we can enhance the quality of life on the island. We believe that more people riding and walking around our island means safer streets; slower traffic; more thriving business districts; active, healthy citizens; and cleaner air.
Activities Bike Walk Alameda engages in to carry out our mission include:
- Help clarify safety issues and look for solutions.
- Examine traffic calming techniques and safety options and their effectiveness in other cities.
- Develop pedestrian/motorist education approaches in order to alert pedestrians, cyclists and drivers to their rights and their responsibilities.
- Build partnerships for community events such as Walk & Roll to School Day/Safe Routes to Schools and Bike to Work Day.
Statement of Equity
Bike Walk Alameda is committed to pursuing fair, equitable, and socially just access to and enjoyment of our streets and bikeways for all community members and visitors in relation to, and across, intersections of race, age, color, disability, faith, religion, ancestry, national origin, citizenship, sex, sexual orientation, social class, economic class, ethnicity, gender identity, and gender expression.
On Street Safety and Enforcement
Our current system of enforcement is not working well for our most vulnerable users. An epidemic of reckless driving compounds an already bad trend in bicyclist and pedestrian safety, particularly among the young and old, while people of color are experiencing disproportionate, biased, and sometimes lethal enforcement.
Issues with street safety and traffic enforcement:
- Crashes involving people walking and biking are disproportionately dangerous, representing 62% of fatal and severe injury crashes in Alameda
- Dangerous driving behaviors are up
- Bias is real and systemic; people of color are disproportionately impacted by police enforcement
- Our car-centric built environment works against our goals for safety, equity, and climate
Of the three E’s of traffic safety (enforcement, education, engineering), we feel we need to invest more in engineering: building street infrastructure that encourages safe behaviors and preempts the need for enforcement in the first place.
Proposed short-term solutions:
- Implement quick-build safety interventions in dangerous corridors
- Increase budget for Transportation Planning and Public Works staff to more expeditiously plan and build safe infrastructure
- Budget for the collection, analysis, and publishing of more detailed and timely traffic and crash data in coordination with Vision Zero
- Have existing police patrol focus on stopping dangerous driving behaviors in high injury corridors, like speeding, running red lights, and impaired driving, while examining ways to reduce discretionary traffic stops made by police
- Support state legislative efforts that allow for unarmed traffic enforcement
- Create a bike patrol to better assess safety issues from a bicyclist and pedestrian perspective
Proposed long-term solutions:
- Build streets and plan spaces in ways that naturally encourage (and enforce) safe driving, and less driving, while making alternatives to driving safe and convenient for everyone
- Explore migrating traffic enforcement duties from armed police to an unarmed patrol; consider moving these responsibilities to a Department of Transportation
Support for Measure Z
Bike Walk Alameda supports Measure Z because we believe it will allow the kind of housing that will enable residents, workers, and visitors to drive less, and more easily live car-free. We support reducing car dependency and driving because automobiles are detrimental to the health of bicyclists and pedestrians, running counter to our mission of making Alameda a safe and enjoyable place to bike and walk.
History
BikeAlameda and Pedestrian Friendly Alameda joined forces in 2013.
Founded in 1999, BikeAlameda made a strong impact on the award-winning bikeability of Alameda. BikeAlameda was the primary driver of the city’s Bicycle Master Plan and was instrumental in ensuring superior design for the Fernside cycle track. BikeAlameda hosted annual social group rides and supported valet bike parking service at all local public events.
Founded in 2000, Pedestrian Friendly Alameda spearheaded successful programs like Walk and Roll to School Day and the Alameda Recreation and Parks Department’s Alameda Walks program. Pedestrian Friendly Alameda supported outreach programs for youth and seniors and advocated for pedestrian safety and comfortable access to roadways for walkers and the disabled.