Richmond is working on a plan aimed at making the city safer and easier to walk and bicycle in. 

A $250,000 Caltrans environmental justice grant and $100,000 grant from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission is paying for the planning effort by health, transportation and land-use experts and the public.

The idea: reduce collisions injuring pedestrians and bicycles. 

Meetings on the pedestrian portion of the plan will be held Wednesday (May 19, and Thursday, and Saturday.

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John Greaves of Walnut Creek loved cycling, trained hard at it and died during a ride when struck by a motorist who lost control of her car. 

Greaves’ memory will be honored in a ”Ride of Silence” that cyclists are invited to join 7 p.m. Wednesday in Danville. The 8-mile ride begins at Sycamore Valley Park at the intersection of Camino Tassajara and Holbrook Drive in Danville.

Click here for info. Read the rest of this entry »

New research is raising questions whether American car drivers who wear seat belts are getting  as much protection as they could from standards for front air bags.

Click here to read New York Times story about the research by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and the resulting safety debate.

The new research suggests that the latest standards for designing air bags may be doing more to protect drivers not wearing seat belts than drivers wearing them.  The story also explores the notion of revisiting  the 1970 federal ban on interlock devices that prevent a motorist from starting his car without his seat belt on.  That’s a politically delicate issue. Some people see interlock devices linked to seat belts as intrusive. Read the rest of this entry »

People in Los Angeles, the birth place of the freeway, are talking about covering a half-mile of downtown  freeway with a roof and turning it into a park.

Read here for a story in the Los Angeles Times about the proposal for a roof park over part of the Hollywood Freeway at a potential cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. Read the rest of this entry »

As thousands of Bay Area bicyclists pedal to work today on the region’s annual Bike to Work Day, it’s an appropiate time to remember the rift on the road that divides us: bicyclists versus car drivers. Read the rest of this entry »

BART tomorrow joins the many public agencies that  stream their board meetings live on the Web.  The idea: make the transit system more open and accessible to the public. Read the rest of this entry »