El Cerrito/Richmond Annex Walk & Roll blog

If the car-lite lifestyle is to grow in popularity, it will need to be augmented with easily accessible rental cars, so you will not be deprived of out-of-town excursions or prevent you from running errands that require generous cargo space. But how can this need be satisfied in El Cerrito? A game changer is the arrival of GIG Car Share to El Cerrito! An affiliate service of AAA, GIG cars are distributed on streets throughout a service area such as El Cerrito. (In addition to the Bay Area, Sacramento and Seattle also have them). In El Cerrito you can now download the GIG app on your smartphone, view a map showing where cars are located in your neighborhood. You can select a car on the map, reserve it by pressing a button, walk to it, open it with your smartphone, and drive away. How to use GIG Car Share You'll pay with your credit card linked to the GIG app, based on the number of minutes, hours, or days that you rent the car for; rates are currently about 59 cents per minute, $1...

America is stressed by high costs of living: housing, health care, education, and, with the decline of progressive taxation, a rising tax burden for the lower and middle classes. Meanwhile, for most American workers the purchasing power of wages has barely budged for 40 years. Transportation is one more straw breaking the camel's back. The American Automobile Association (AAA) says that in 2022 the average cost of car-ownership was $10,728 per year. That's a little over $894 per month. Forgoing ownership of a car by using GIG car rental as needed can be a huge cost savings. (Rates vary so check with GIG for current prices.) Since many people can commute by transit or bicycling and local errands can be done by foot or bicycle, GIG cars could be used for just those trips best done with a car. Let's add up a conceptual month using GIG instead of owning a car (prices are estimates): a weekend trip out of town ($240), a day-hike on Mt. Tam ($80), a shopping trip to Best Buy to ...

It's a frequent refrain: Older people don’t ride bicycles. But evidence throughout the world shows that is simply untrue. One needn't go further than the Ohlone Greenway to see plenty of bicycling seniors, with a growing percentage riding e-bikes. According to federal census data, a primary measure of mobility is commuting to work, but since retired seniors are not showing up as commuters, their mobility habits remain poorly understood. While we know that seniors are in fact bicycling, their safety needs are being ignored. Seniors' reflexes are slower, which makes safe bicycling infrastructure all the more critical to their mobility. But don't doubt that seniors ride bicycles! The photographs below show older people bicycling in Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Japan, and here in California.

Studies from around the world find that merchants underestimate and undervalue walk-in, bicycle, and transit access to their businesses.  It's true that motorists can buy more on a single store visit, but pedestrians and bicycle riders (when they can get there safely) often patronize nearby businesses more frequently .  Why is this? A motorist with a tank of gas will not think twice about going to a favorite hair-cutting salon two cities away while passing four salons on the way out of town. The pedestrian or bicycle rider is more aware of and loyal to local businesses because freeway travel is not an option and they only have so many calories to burn—they don't want to travel far. San Pablo Avenue is where many, if not most, of El Cerrito’s retail and services are located. Not surprisingly, that’s where pedestrians and bicycle riders would like to shop if possible.  In our survey of new members, bicyclists and walkers overwhelmingly cited San Pablo as the most challengin...

Most businesses in El Cerrito make no provision to park electric cargo bikes that can cost $1,500 to $8,000 . The explosive sales of e-bikes as popular consumer products has started in just the last ten years. Between 2020 and 2023, 130 million electric bicycles are expected to be sold worldwide. Compounded annual growth rate in sales is at 7.49%. In El Cerrito, where most residents live within easy bicycling distance to local businesses, the potential for bicycling access to retail and services is high. People in our area are buying electric cargo bikes at accelerating rates. But to a consumer who purchased an e-bike hoping it would replace car trips, it is a rude awakening to find little acknowledgement from businesses that their business is valued. Whatever the cost of a bicycle—powerful electric cargo bike or old beater bike—businesses are leaving money on the table by ignoring patrons who arrive on bicycles. These photos show valuable shopping destinations in El Cerrito that have ...

Anybody who rides a bike knows the story. You ride a bike to a destination and find one or more bike racks that fulfill some kind of mandate or shows a good intention, but offers no real certainty that your bike is parked securely in a visible location. Everywhere in America car-parking spaces are dimensioned and arranged similarly—books are written on best practices for parking automobiles— but no similar agreed upon best practices exist for standardizing the number, form, and placement for parking bicycles. Individual cities have adopted standards that vary widely in their quality. El Cerrito Municipal Code 19.24.090—Required bicycle parking offers hope, yet falls short in details and is all text, lacking illustrations for a subject matter that begs for illustrations. The standards in the code usually aren't invoked except for new construction; owners of existing properties and businesses have little incentive to dive into the municipal code if they are not building anything. E...

Most motorists know enough not to park on sidewalks. Yet there is a creeping encroachment by many motorists on what used to be safe space for pedestrians. On this particular street most parked cars are on the roadway and not creeping over the curb nor crowding ADA ramps. Their good etiquette is not worthy of a photograph. The car owners in the photographs below are probably otherwise nice people, but as enforcement of roadway etiquette recedes in city priorities, motorists are adopting new habits at the expense of pedestrian safety. The motorists might think the roadway is too narrow to park on, yet if cars are driven at safe speeds, cars can be safely parked without invading sidewalks. (Some jurisdictions are removing centerlines on problem streets because they are seen as encouraging faster speeds.) Who uses sidewalks? It is children, seniors, people in wheelchairs, and people who enjoy safely exploring their community for their health and their love of the neighborhood. Motorists wh...