California Bill to Ensure that Traffic Devices are Useful to all Road Users

A current bill (AB345) from San Diego Assemblymember, Toni Atkins, is moving through the California Legislature that will require the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) to create an advisory committee that will be the voice of all non-motorized road users, prior to implementing new regulations that affect traffic control devices. Traffic control devices refers to traffic signs, road surface markings, and signals and so forth. From the text of the bill,

(e) The Department of Transportation shall ensure that an advisory
committee or group organized for the purposes of this section includes representatives from groups that represent nonmotorizing interests of users of streets, roads, and highways.
(f) For the purposes of this section, “users of streets, roads, and highways” means bicyclists, children, persons with disabilities, motorists, movers of commercial goods, pedestrians, users of public transportation, and seniors.

San Francisco’s Streetsblog has a very good writeup on the bill and its implications. The bill has currently worked its way into the California Senate where the San Diego member is Senator Christine Kehoe (Councilmember Todd Gloria‘s predecessor), who has pledged support to bicyclists in the past.

This is in line with the California Bicycle Coalition’s new “Relaunch” campaign (pdf link) to get an additional one million Californians riding a bicycle within the next year. Getting AB345 passed is the first of three steps to accomplish this goal. By giving non-motorized users a voice in the transportation committee and its policies that affects them, all Californians can now look forward to using roads designed for people.

California has typically been the vanguard of innovative policies and the fact that it is the only state in the country to have its own manual for traffic control devices is indicative of that fact. Despite the fear that more innovation on our roadways would open up a Pandora’s box to liability, continuing to only target the fastest moving and dangerous mode of transportation is more likely to be the death knell of our standard of living and our continuing budgetary woes. By allowing the voice of all road users to determine how Californians will move, California can continue to be a leader in determining how the nation will transport itself in the coming millennium.