15 Back to School Safety Tips for Kids and Drivers
Summer vacation is coming to an end and the back to school blitz is officially here. With kids getting set to resume their daily commute, and some younger…
Read MoreWe’ve been posting on the GJEL blog for over a decade! Some of our older posts are rarely read or visited, so we’ve archived them in an attempt to serve our readers with only our most relevant and popular content.
Summer vacation is coming to an end and the back to school blitz is officially here. With kids getting set to resume their daily commute, and some younger…
Read MoreMTC’s Restrictive Ford GoBike Contract Impeding Expansion of Shared E-Bikes Overshadowed by the expansion of scooters, shared pedal-assist e-bikes have quietly grown in popularity this year. Across the…
Read MoreSeveral highly-anticipated pedestrian safety improvements recently opened along Oakland’s Grand Avenue. One of the City’s high injury corridors, Grand has long served as a regional relief valve to…
Read MoreJust about everyone agrees that the Bay Area’s congested transportation system is in dire need of reinvestment.
Read MoreBiking on most urban streets may not always be a stress-free experience, but an individual with basic bicycle safety knowledge can usually navigate through streets without incident if…
Read MoreBus pads play a critical role in connecting Marin’s communities via transit. However, their hazardous conditions put bus riders in danger.
Read MoreThe series will discuss insurance topics that every driver ought to know in clear and simple terms, using up-to-date information.
Read MoreMany motorcyclists (and automobile) drivers ask whether or not lane splitting in California is legal. In our state, lane splitting is a highly contentious issue that is subject to many misperceptions. Unlike in the majority of U.S. states, lane splitting is legal in California and it has been for a long time. Still, lane splitting is highly misunderstood, by both drivers and bikers.
Read MoreWhen you are involved in an automobile accident in the state of California, whoever is at fault for the accident is responsible for paying for it. This means that if a distracted, drunk, or otherwise negligent driver crashes into you, you have the right to file a claim with that driver’s insurance company to recover compensation for your injuries. In fact, the state of California requires that every driver and vehicle owner have either insurance or “proof of financial responsibility” so that in the event they do cause a crash, they can pay for property damage and injuries sustained by others. Unfortunately, not everyone follows this law.
Read MoreAfter last year’s momentous Bike to Work Day that saw the unveiling of new high-profile protected bikeways in Berkeley and Oakland, this year’s event on Thursday, May 11th was a little quieter.
Read MoreCompared to other population centers in California, the San Jose area appears to be doing well at limiting alcohol-involved injuries, according to the California Highway Patrol’s latest report on statewide traffic collisions. If alcohol-involved injuries were distributed evenly across the state, you’d expect Santa Clara County to have 787 of them. For 2013, the latest year on record, CHP reports 609 alcohol-involved injuries in the county.
Read MoreThe Merced extension will serve very few riders and makes little sense in the context of California’s high speed rail priorities…
Read MoreOn Feb 23, a 9-year-old girl riding a bicycle in San Jose was injured in an auto collision. A few weeks later, the same thing happened to an…
Read MoreThe project has decreased collisions for all modes by 40 percent, increased yield rates, and reduced speeding. However, not everyone is happy…
Read MoreNumbers don’t lie. But unless you have experience analyzing data, it can sometimes seem difficult to draw meaningful conclusions from the stories they tell.
Read MoreWhile the Bay Area is known for its ride-hailing transportation startups, a low-tech casual carpool system has continued to thrive into its fourth decade.
Read MoreHalf a century ago, Caltrans plowed through Redwood City to build Woodside Road… Woodside Road was built according to the era’s abysmal design highway standards, creating a barrier between the eastern and western neighborhoods of Redwood City.
Read MoreThe City of Oakland released a progress report for the Telegraph Avenue Complete Streets Project to assess the project’s performance over its first six months.
Read MoreBuried in the EIR/EIS is an astonishing revelation of how cost-ineffective the BART extension will be in attracting new transit riders.
Read MoreAs Bay Area Bike Share inches toward a tenfold expansion by 2018, a new Chinese bike share company, Bluegogo, may try to beat it to the streets.
Read MoreCommuters working between Christmas and New Years were surprised to encounter sudden cuts in BART service this week.
Read MoreThe controversial Oakland Airport Connector (OAC) is losing money and struggling to meet ridership projections…
Read MoreParking can be a sensitive issue in most cities, and Oakland is no different…
Read MoreOakland has several skewed intersections that could be candidates for peanutabout designs. In particular, two intersections exhibit potential for such a design…
Read MoreFacing crush-load BART trains, packed buses and ferries, and congested freeways, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission recently approved $40 million in near-term capacity relief. The “Bay Bridge Forward” program seeks to enhance a range of bus, carpool, and ferry solutions to maximize Transbay capacity, including:
Read MoreThis summer marked the fourth year our firm has hosted local high school students for a one week program offering an introduction to careers in law. Once again,…
Read MoreTransportation funding keeps flowing into Oakland – last week, the Go Uptown project received $6.3 million via an extremely competitive federal TIGER grant. A joint effort between BART…
Read MoreAs Oakland remakes key Downtown corridors such as Telegraph, Harrison, and 20th, big changes are also in store for 27th Street. Oakland recently submitted a grant application to…
Read MoreAs BART’s ridership has surged over the past five years, the system has developed a shortage of station parking. On a typical weekday, many of BART’s lots fill…
Read MoreSeven years ago in the midst of the Great Recession, BART significantly cut evening and Sunday service in an effort to balance its budget. Prior to cutting service,…
Read MoreFollowing the first fatal accident involving a self-driving vehicle, the debate has been renewed over whether autonomous cars are ready to share the road with traditional vehicles. The…
Read MoreOakland’s Department of Transportation is finally taking shape, and it can’t come soon enough. In the latest example of poor attention to detail in street design, the City has neglected to reinstall parking meters on a busy stretch of Grand Avenue in the middle of one of the City’s densest neighborhoods.
Read MoreLast week’s Bike to Work day was one of the most significant in the event’s 22 year history in the East Bay. Four ribbon cuttings occurred in the…
Read MoreWithout a doubt the greatest challenges facing BART are expanding core capacity and maintaining a good state of repair. At the same time, however, the Bay Area’s regional…
Read MoreOver the past few weeks, BART and Los Angeles’ Metro have each made big headlines, albeit for very different reasons. In the Bay Area, BART’s ongoing mechanical problems…
Read MoreAbout every seven years, BART commissions a survey of its stations to learn more about who is riding and where he/she is going. BART’s last survey was done…
Read MoreAlameda’s Central Avenue Complete Streets Project passed a key milestone in receiving city council approval to move forward into final design. As we’ve previously covered, safety improvements are…
Read MoreOn February 2nd, Megan Schwarzman was run over by a car while bicycling along Fulton Street near Bancroft Way. Meghan was hit by Berwick Haynes, who was arrested…
Read MoreThe Bay Area is in desperate need of housing, especially affordable housing in walkable and bikeable neighborhoods located near transit. Downtown Oakland presents a tremendous opportunity to achieve…
Read MoreWhat kinds of open spaces does Oakland need? The City recently posed this question via Twitter as a part of its ongoing Downtown Specific Plan efforts. The Downtown…
Read MoreTransit riders across the country received a big boost in commuter benefits thanks to Congress’ new spending bill. The bill increased pre-tax transit benefits to $255 per month,…
Read MoreOakland continues to have tremendous success in winning grant money for complete streets projects. Following nine million in grant awards from the Active Transportation Program (ATP) for redesigns…
Read MoreGrand Avenue is broken. Like countless other streets in Oakland, the design of Grand Avenue no longer serves the people and communities that use the street. However, while…
Read MoreSeveral weeks ago we wrote about a proposed bill that would make San Francisco the largest U.S. city to adopt a stop-as-yield law for cyclists. Earlier this week…
Read MoreToday is “Giving Tuesday.” It might not generate the same amount of fanfare as Black Friday or Cyber Monday, but for the past three years, Giving Tuesday…
Read MoreShould Downtown Oakland be a great place to drive, or a great place to walk and bike? As Downtown lies on the cusp of rebirth and growth, these…
Read MoreAs of yesterday, pedestrian safety banners are now flying in SoMa. The banners, proclaiming “Slow Down!” and followed with either “We live here” or “I live here” are…
Read MoreBART’s recent weekend closures of the Transbay Tube were happily uneventful: thanks to advanced warning and frequent replacement “bus bridge” service, the closure did not appear to significantly…
Read MoreA recent study conducted by the University of Bath, Department of Psychology, has concluded that, improving street safety for cyclists is more effective than information campaigns when it…
Read MoreFor the past three summers GJEL has hosted high school students for a week long “Introduction to Careers in Law.” Over the course of the week students are…
Read MoreOakland has a lot of strange, poorly-designed pedestrian signals, but we think we’ve found the worst example in the City at the intersection of Grand Avenue and Euclid…
Read MoreThe City of Oakland, in partnership with UC Berkeley, recently conducted a survey of shoppers in Temescal along a controversial segment of Telegraph Avenue to better understand the…
Read MoreOver the past few months, a proposal to build a contraflow bus lane on the Bay Bridge has gained momentum among key transportation agencies such as the Metropolitan…
Read MoreStreetsblog California recently proclaimed a new bike lane in Orinda “The Worst Bike Lane in the World.” The bike lane sits outside of our office on Camino Pablo,…
Read MoreStanley Roberts’ People Behaving Badly recently highlighted CHP efforts to ticket Alameda drivers on Webster Street who failed to yield to pedestrians at marked crosswalks. In just 3.5…
Read MoreAs long as bikes and cars share the same roads there’s inevitably going to be conflict. As much as we’d love to see protected bike lanes become more…
Read MoreBig news from Oakland’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee last night: Walk Oakland Bike Oakland tweeted that the City is planning to install parking-protected bicycle lanes (cycle tracks)…
Read MoreGood news out of Sacramento: S.B. 192, Senator Liu’s disastrous law mandating helmets and reflective gear for bicyclists, was gutted thanks to strong backlash from bicycle advocates across…
Read MoreFor decades, California regions built freeways to enable the growth of new suburbs farther and farther afield. In response to the negative environmental effects of suburban sprawl, California…
Read MoreA striking video was posted to the Bike East Bay Facebook page on Tuesday depicting illegally parked cars clogging Oakland’s new buffered bike lane along Broadway. The video,…
Read MoreIt should come as no surprise that the holidays are one of the most dangerous times to head out on the road. Not only are more people driving–some estimates…
Read MoreLane widths might seem like a boring, esoteric aspect of traffic engineering, but they really matter for creating safe, livable streets. Noted city planner and urban designer Jeff…
Read MoreOakland recently hosted Oaklavia, an open streets event that invites people to walk, bike, dance, play, and socialize in the streets. It’s a terrific, if underappreciated…
Read MoreLast Friday, Governor Brown vetoed SB 1151, a bill that would have increased traffic fines in school zones and used these funds for active transportation investments. The bill…
Read MoreBy now you’ve probably already heard that the Three Feet for Safety Act went into effect on Tuesday. The bill, which was finally signed by Governor Brown last…
Read MoreStarting Monday, August 18th, we’re partnering with five local bike shops to promote safety and provide free helmets with every kid’s bike sold. Bike safety is a cause…
Read MoreWe’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: street safety is about equity. Streets designed for speeding cars are inherently designed dangerously, leaving people who do not…
Read MoreIn discussions of traffic safety, it’s all too common to desensitize ourselves from the striking numbers of roadway crashes that occur: 32,999 fatalities, 3.9 million non-fatal injuries, and…
Read MoreProposals for Cycle Tracks are emerging throughout the Bay Area, and that is generally good news for bicycle safety. But as the saying goes, the devil is in…
Read MoreA key challenge in planning, funding, and implementing bicycle and pedestrian projects is the lack of good data to guide policymaking. As Janie Nham notes on the NRDC…
Read MoreLADOT GM nominee Seleta Reynolds (right) with former New York City Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan (left) In case there was any doubt, Los Angeles has officially joined the…
Read MoreSan Francisco ambitiously seeks to expand bicycling to 20 percent of all trips by 2020. Yet, real concerns over safety remain the single greatest obstacle to expanding bicycling…
Read MoreIn discussions of street safety there is a tendency to view traffic fatalities as isolated incidents or just another statistic. It’s important to reinforce the human element of…
Read MoreThere’s long been a heated debate surrounding mandatory helmet laws, but up until now sexism hadn’t really been one of the talking points. However, a recent complaint from…
Read MoreLast week we looked at the Dangerous by Design report. One of the useful features is the map tool, which overlays the locations of every pedestrian fatality in…
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