Legislative Update: New Session Brings New Bills for Bikes

Date 3/10/2019

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The deadline to introduce bills for the first year of the new two-year California legislative session was last week, and more than 2,500 bills have been introduced in both the Assembly and the Senate. A few of them hold specific interest for bicyclists.

These include Scott Wiener’s Complete Streets Bill, S.B. 127, which would require Caltrans to implement safety improvements like protected bike lanes and sidewalks every time they repave or rebuild a state-owned road. So far nothing in the bill’s wording has changed since we first wrote about it. Its first hearing, in the Senate Transportation Committee, will take place some time in April.

Two other bills sponsored by the California Bicycle Coalition are aimed at cleaning up confusion in the California Vehicle Code about where bicyclists are supposed to position themselves on the road.

One, A.B. 697, is the third such attempt from Assemblymember Phil Ting (D-San Francisco), whose earlier tries on this topic ran up against strong resistance from law enforcement. It aims to clean up wording in the California Vehicle Code section 21202, which requires bicycles to be “as far as practicable” to the right of the road.

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