El Cerrito/Richmond Annex Walk & Roll blog

By Janet Byron. On April 16, about 25 cyclists—ranging in age from 8 to 80—met at El Cerrito Plaza BART station to explore the possibilities and promise of an improved route from to the Bay Trail via Richmond Annex and the Sacramento Street pedestrian bridge. Along the way, Steve Price and Janet Byron of El Cerrito Strollers & Rollers highlighted a series of “pain-points,” including the lack of signage pointing out a bike route to the Bay Trail (and back), challenges crossing San Pablo and Carlson avenues, unsafe landings and limited traffic calming on both sides of the Sacramento Street pedestrian bridge over I-80, and  the need for better bike protections on the I-580 overpass. Once we made it to the Bay Trail at Central Avenue, it was smooth sailing to Armistice Brewing Company! The trip from the Plaza BART to Bay Trail takes only about 10 minutes by bike. From there, cyclists have easy access to terrific birdwatching, the Point Isabel dog park, Costco, Albany Beach an...

Bureau of Transportation Statistics We live in anxious times. On top of your many worries, add “range anxiety,” the fear that if you drive an electric car on a road trip, you will run out of juice in the middle of nowhere. This will be a real concern for longer trips until chargers become more widely available. Yet electric car ranges are getting longer (some go up to 350 miles or more on a charge) and chargers are becoming more widely available by the month and year. Nevertheless, as the above diagram shows, only 2% of car trips are over 50 miles. Some motorists have plug-in hybrid cars that will go 25 to 50 miles before kicking into gasoline mode. If the cars are charged at home regularly, that takes care of almost all of one's daily driving needs without burning a drop of gasoline. (Be cognizant that gasoline for hybrids is not eternal—the future is fully electric.) If you own an e-bike, you could leave the car at home for the majority of your local travel needs. Or in El Cerrit...

  Bike Parking at Peet's Coffee Most municipal bicycle parking standards—including El Cerrito’s San Pablo Avenue Specific Plan —say bike racks must be placed no more than 50 feet from a business’s entrance.The bike racks outside the entrance to Peet’s Coffee exemplify that standard. Nobody going in or out of Peet’s front door will miss seeing the two bike racks on the sidewalk, and being on the sidewalk in front of big shop front windows means your bike has good surveillance. (That beats surveillance of a parked car out of sight in the back!)

Steve Eisner with his ETrikeCo three-wheel vehicle. Steve Eisner of Albany doesn't own a full-size personal car. He owns something a quarter that size . . . and it’s electric. He doesn't experience range anxiety because he knows almost all his travel needs are local; he never goes so far that he has to worry about the availability of charging stations. Because his vehicle is so small, he can charge it overnight at his house just using a standard wall plug. Steve’s ETrikeCo three-wheel vehicle has a top speed of 28 miles per hour and goes 65 miles on a charge (ETrikeCo also has two four-wheel models). Located in Clearwater, Florida, ETrikeCo started in Oakland in 2018 and was tested locally, including ascending the East Bay hills. This neighborhood electric vehicle, or NEV, is not freeway-worthy but it does just fine on all local streets. Steve's vehicle can take him grocery shopping, to medical appointments, and to almost everywhere he needs to go. In his younger years, S...