Bay Area bike safety advocates face alarming intimidation

Leaders of one of the Bay Area’s premier cycling communities will decide Tuesday whether rider safety is truly a priority — even if it pushes some people out of their traditional car-centric comfort zone.

The Danville City Council is expected to vote on whether to oust two of the region’s top bicycle safety advocates from Bicycle advisory commission. The decision, which comes after nearly a year of disturbing intimidation tactics by two council members, will send a signal to the cycling community whether Danville truly cares about cyclist safety.

Most weekends, the East Bay suburb of 43,000 residents, which leaders prefer to call a town, is teeming with spandex-clad riders who often pass through or stop downtown at Peet’s Coffee on their way to the start of the world-famous climb. near Mount Diablo.

Over the years, city officials have had mixed feelings about bicyclists and bicyclist safety. After that there were signs of improvement of voters in 2020 will be approved a housing development project that includes a critical road for cyclists to head up the mountain from the dangerous Diablo Road; in 2021, when the council adopted a Bicycle master plan; and in 2022, when a six-member Bicycle Advisory Commission was created.

The commission’s responsibilities included, among other things, advising the council on the implementation of the Bicycle Master Plan and assessing bicycle safety in the city.

Original members included Al Kalin and Bruce Bilodeau. For serious cyclists, Kalin is it hero — the man who led the effort to create bike lanes to reduce the risk of bicycle collisions with cars during blind turns on Mount Diablo.

Bilodeau worked closely with Kalin on this. The successful campaign for 67 turnouts lasted more than ten years. It started with the fact that Kalin was collecting state documents to statistically document collisions on Mt and culminated in campaigns that raised $2.3 million in public funds and private contributions.

But when it came to safety within Danville city limits, Kaelin and Bilodeau’s penchant for data-driven analysis upset some municipal workers and elected officials after the bike commission was formed.

Kalin and Bilodeau led the identification efforts collision hot spots in Danville and document the real danger of posts set too close together just before the intersection along the Iron Horse Regional Trail that runs through town.

That was exactly what the commission was tasked with doing when it did aimed atamong other things, to “assess the conditions, operation and safety of existing bicycle facilities and non-motorized transport”.

Exile quest

Still, council members Newell Arnerich and Robert Storer accused Kalin and Bilodeau of irritating city staff as they continued to analyze bicycle safety and hazards in Danville.

Last year, Arnerich and Storer tried to dissolve the commission could not get support from other council members, and continued their quest to oust Kalin and Bilodeau.

In March 2024, Arnerich met with Kalin at Peet’s and demanded his resignation from the commission. As Kalin recounts this encounter, Arnerich stood over him, visibly angry and pointing a finger at Kalin’s face.

Arnerich claimed that the employee of the transport service had left the city for another job because of Kalina. This person told me last week that he left to find a better job. Arnerich declined to comment.

And Arnerich and Storer, who did not return my call seeking comment, claimed that Kalin and Bilodeau forced other commission members to resign.

Two commissioners left last year. Dave Williams, in a letter to the board before he left, called for Kalin’s firing. Although Kaelin is “very knowledgeable and passionate about cycling and cycling safety…too many meetings have been sidelined by his passionate advocacy”.

But Elliott Call, a physician and active cyclist who retired due to other demands on his time, credited Kalin and Bilodeau for “keeping things organized and prioritized.” I thought things were going well.”

When talking about safety, “Al and Bruce had an incredible way of looking at the logistics, the fine details of how the intersections are set up, and looking at the data to really impact the differences.

“It would be a travesty if Bruce and Al couldn’t continue their security research in the city of Danville. … I think these are the best of these guys.”

“Council deputies are running”

However, Arnerich and Storer want, according to the latter, to “get rid of” Kalin and Bilodeau. Storer accuses them of being “lobbyists,” which begs the question of why the council appointed them if they didn’t want representatives from the cycling community to advocate for safety.

There was a disturbing lack of concrete information about what Kalin and Bilodeau did wrong. In a verbal critique at a council meeting last month, Storer did give one example criticizing the study of pillars, also called pillars: