El Cerrito/Richmond Annex Walk & Roll blog

ECS&R members share their car-lite adventures By Steve Price and Janet Byron El Cerrito is the perfect launching pad for myriad adventures that don't require cranking up a personal car! We walked the San Francisco Crosstown Trail starting with a walk to El Cerrito Plaza BART. Our trailhead starts at the Glen Park BART station in San Francisco and continues 5.2 miles to the Inner Sunset neighborhood.  The trail is the work of volunteers. As their website describes it, "The full length of the trail is just under 17 miles . . . The trail is a mix of about 45% roads and sidewalks, 15% paved off-road paths, and 40% trails." It is composed of five segments — walk as many segments as you want.  Along the way are several connections to public transportation if you tire and want to head home. Janet and Steve walked the second and third segments, which have lots of surprising trails through nature, spectacular views, diverse neighborhoods, and beautiful decorated stairways. T...

What are sustainable and safe alternatives for people who are not big on walking and can’t or won’t ride a bike? Even in Amsterdam and Copenhagen, known for growing numbers of people riding bicycles, plenty of cars are still on the street. Getting everyone to give up driving cars is not realistic or necessary. As the chart below shows — confirmed by surveys in recent years — about a third of Americans will not get on a bicycle. Some of them fulfill most of their mobility needs by walking and riding transit, using neither a bicycle or car. But most of that third are wedded to using cars for all mobility needs, either out of necessity, habit, lack of interest in the alternatives, or the belief that cars provide them with safety. Since automobiles compromise the safety of people on the street who are not enclosed in a car, perhaps the solution is to consider safer, self-propelled alternatives to the standard 2- or 3-ton automobile — vehicles that can provide the satisfactions of the car w...

People around the world are no more physically energetic than Americans, but many can't afford the luxury of a full-size car. That's where mopeds come in. There is no pedaling; you turn a throttle and the moped moves forward. Although mopeds look very similar to sit-down scooters, they are lower speed and intended for local travel. There aren't as many mopeds as bicycles in Amsterdam and Copenhagen, but there are a lot. Electrified mopeds are growing in popularity in Europe and Asia. As they get electrified, mopeds offer local green transportation for people who can’t afford to purchase a car. These are good reasons for El Cerritans to consider this form of local mobility. In addition, topography is a challenge in El Cerrito; mopeds will get you going uphill with ease. Hillside dwellers can use mopeds as a second vehicle for local travel and keep the family car for out-of-town excursions. Most electric mopeds have removable batteries that can be charged at a standard wall o...

Bicycles and mopeds may have a lot going for them, yet a lot of people still want the comfort of traveling in an enclosed space with heating, a radio, an upholstered seat, and lockable doors. Electric microcars are gaining popularity in Asia and Europe, with some nascent manufacturing popping up in the United States. They are not designed for freeway speeds, but rather are intended for local travel at up to 25 to 30 miles per hour. These vehicles are a half or third the size of a standard automobile and much less expensive. And being much lighter weight, they impose less wear and tear on street pavement, thus saving cities street maintenance costs. Because they are narrower than cars and pickup trucks, microcars leave more room on streets for bicycle riders, and their excellent visibility makes them much safer to pedestrians. Will microcars eventually start showing up on the streets of El Cerrito? McKinsey & Company, the global management consultancy firm, predicts that they will b...

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.