March Legislative Action Update
The SAFE Legislative Advocacy Team is hard at work advancing policies to create safer streets for all road users. On Monday, March 7, Faith for SAFEr Streets Co-Founder, Pastor Patricia Fargas, and SAFE Director of Policy and Legislation, Justin Hager, were among a group of special guests at a signing ceremony celebrating successful efforts to reduce speed limits on more than 177 miles of Los Angeles city streets. Made possible by last year’s AB 43 (Friedman), the Los Angeles City Council unanimously approved an ordinance two weeks ago to cut speed limits on city streets with a history of fatal and severe injury collisions.
Outside of Los Angeles, SAFE is also hard at work on legislation and regulatory changes in Sacramento to address statewide traffic and street safety, including organizing and leading a task force of street safety and equity organizations examining policy proposals around driver-behavior-based insurance pricing. The task force’s aim is to craft policy proposals that incentivize safer driving habits and thus safer streets while eliminating social and economic bias from insurance pricing in California. SAFE organized the task force in November 2021. Since then, its members have considered dozens of policy proposals for their ability to promote safer streets and social justice for all road users.
Other legislative and policy proposals SAFE is working on include:
Senate Bill 932 (Portantino)
SAFE is a co-sponsor of SB 932, a bill crafted by a coalition of street safety advocacy organizations, including SAFE, and introduced by Senator Anthony Portantino (D - La Canada Flintridge). The bill has the potential to transform both politics and public safety by requiring that city and county officials move beyond just talking about street safety and actually identify, map, and implement safety improvements within a 15-year span after adopting a new circulation or mobility plan. The bill has been referred to the Senate Committee on Governance and Finance and the Senate Committee on Transportation.
Senate Bill 1472 (Stern)
Another bill crafted with direct input from SAFE is Senator Henry Stern’s (D-Los Angeles) SB 1472, which proposes enhanced penalties for reckless driving, including street racing and side-shows, that have taken the lives of multiple innocent pedestrians, cyclists, and bystanders in California.
Assembly Bill 2336 (Friedman)
Building on the success of last year’s AB 43, SAFE is supporting Assemblymember Laura Friedman (D-Glendale) and Assemblymember Phil Ting (D - San Francisco) in their efforts to create safer streets by allowing cities to use a proven tool to cut down on speeding: speed safety cameras. AB 2336 creates a five-year pilot program authorizing the cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, and two unspecified cities to use speed cameras to enforce speed limits on their highest injury streets, in school zones, and on streets with a history of speed contests and motor vehicle exhibitions of speed. The bill has been recently passed by the Assembly Committee on Transportation.
Assembly Bill 1909 (Friedman)
Another Friedman bill that SAFE is working to pass is AB 1909, the bicycle omnibus bill. As an omnibus bill, AB 1909 addresses a number of different policy issues related to bicycle and street safety, including electric bikes on bike paths, “pedestrian lead intervals” at signals, passing distances, and bicycle licensing. SAFE’s friends over at StreetsBlog wrote a nice summary of the legislation HERE.
Any individual or organization may submit letters of support for all of these bills through the California Legislative Position Letter Portal at HTTP://calegislation.lc.ca.gov/Advocates/.
More updates to come…