presentation, an overview of all of the chapters in the book. The second symposium was about one of those chapters. It featured a focus on Latin American cities and what they're doing that we can learn from. This symposium is about two success stories, one in Oakland and one in Los Angeles. Two great stories that we can learn a lot from. The Sunset for All project is an example of in Los Angeles car culture, really effective and comprehensive community organizing, touching on a lot of concerns and a lot of issues managed to get a lot of support. And dare I say, now he on wood, leading to what's bound to be a successful campaign to take Sunset Boulevard and put in a protected bike lane on its entire length in the eastern portion of it. Super exciting and a lot to learn from there. In Oakland, Telegraph Avenue is a bike lane project, a protected bike lane project through the Koreatown neighborhood that was almost reversed due to a decision by the Oakland Department of Transportation to respond to a lot of complaints that the protected bike lanes weren't working as intended. And that was the first time I personally, that's my neighborhood, that's my street, and that's the first time that I personally did any door-to-door canvassing and any real local grassroots organizing for a bike project in a long time. And it was fantastic. I thoroughly enjoyed getting on the sidewalks and talking to people. And Bikies Bay under Dave Campbell's leadership made it easy to do and made me feel like my literal contribution was part of a big picture that was going to make a difference. And it worked. We made a difference, even though the Oakland DOT said they were going to reverse it. The city council overruled them. And Dave, I won't say anything more. Sorry to take your introduction there. And with that, I want to finish with a reminder about the California Bicycle Summit. That book that I referred to is available to everyone who comes to the summit. Buy a ticket, get the book. Really excited to be able to spread that book out there. And in fact, I'll go ahead and say right now that if you know of a policymaker or a decision maker an influential person who needs that book, just let us know. And we'll send it to them for free. Really generous donation that allows us to do that. So let us let us know. The California Bicycle Summit is April 6th through the 9th. I'm going to give you all a little bit of a sneak peek into the agenda, what that's going to look like. The Schedulatory Grants is what I'm looking for. It opens on Wednesday, April 6th with a reception and a little marketplace where we can support local bike-oriented business people. We'll have bike tours and then a really exciting movie night at the Parkway Theater. The main content is going to be on Thursday and Friday. It starts with an opening plenary. The California Secretary of Transportation will be there. That's Topes Omishakin, the mayor of Oakland will be there. We're likely to see the chair of the Assembly Transportation Committee, Assemblymember Laura Friedman there, the executive director of Bike East Bay, Ginger Jui, will be there to welcome us. And we're going to have not just the normal speeches, Mr. Omishakin from the Department of Transportation, the California State Transportation Agency. He will make a speech, but he said he likes to have ad hoc spontaneous conversation, which was great news to us because that's exactly what we want to do. So we're going to have a panel discussion with those people I just mentioned to talk about what's exciting to us and what they can do to make our cities more bike-friendly. We can ask them some challenging questions and see how they respond on the dot. So that's Thursday and Friday. Friday night will end with the East Bay Bike Party. The East Bay Bike Party is a monthly gala, rolling out tons of people on bikes. It's informal. They always have dance parties. We always have a dance party at the California Bicycle Summit this year. That dance party is going to be a part of the East Bay Bike Party. So I'm looking forward to that. And then finally, on Saturday, we're going to have some more bike tours. And I've talked too long. This is way too important of a session for me to have talked this long. Thank you so much for paying attention. You will want to hear this one last detail, though. And that is that everybody who is here at this session today can get a discounted ticket to the summit at the early bird price, which has already expired, but not for you. Normally, it'll be $425. We're making the tickets available for $295 until midnight tonight. And thank you, Stephanie, for putting the discount code in the chat. Use that discount code and reserve your spot at the California Bicycle Summit. And with that, we are going to roll right into the presentation. I want to thank very much the folks from LA County Bicycle Coalition and Bikie Spay for being here. From the LA County Bicycle Coalition, their executive director, Eli Akira Kauffman and Kevin Shin, will talk about what the LACBC's role and then the community leaders of this project, Avital Shavit, Terence Houston, and Derek Paul are here to talk about the Sunset for All project. And then we're going to hear from Bikie Spay to talk about telegraph. We're going to take questions after both presentations. You can ask clarifying questions in the chat, but we're going to have verbal questions and conversation after both presentations. So thank you so much. I'm going to ask Kevin our amazing, very able tech support and development associate, Kevin Claxton, to pass us off to the LACBC. So Kevin, take it away. He's muted. Yeah, maybe the Eli, you should have the ability to share your screen if you're planning to do that. No, can you hear me right ahead? Yeah, I'll dive in. So I'll just say that Kevin, as you try to figure out your sound, maybe I'll just quickly say Kevin Claxton is a former employee of LACBC and a total advocate and partner to the work that we've done locally in LA. And we love Kevin Claxton. And the other Kevin Shin actually got pulled away on a pressing call that he had to really take on behalf of the org. So I just put that in the chat. But I'm happy to introduce myself and kick it off to Derrick. Or to Terrence and Avi Tal who will then kick it off to Derrick. So yeah, so hello, everyone. My name is Eli Kirkoff and I'm the executive director of the LA County Bicycle Coalition. And it's nice to speak to a community that doesn't need too much of an introduction, but I'll still share that our aim is to improve the quality of life for everyone in LA by advocating for a safe, equitable, and joyous region to bicycle. For us, making LA more bikeable will improve everyone's quality of life because we believe that bicycle itself is a vehicle for progress that is accessible, healthy, affordable, sustainable, and fun. So that's why LACBC is so thrilled to serve as the fiscal sponsor and thought partner to Sunset for All, which is, as you'll find out, an amazing community-led active transportation project that's going to transform one of LA's most iconic streets from a car thoroughfare into a destination for walkers, for transit users, for bicyclists, and for drivers to get where they need to go with ease and safely. Our long-term goal and why LACBC is really invested in this project is to develop a street advocacy playbook and training series that will empower other local neighborhood leaders to develop the next active transportation projects ready to democratize the design implementation and stewardship of LA streets. So I think with that, I'm here to answer any questions in terms of our role at the end of the presentation and in the Q&A. But mostly, we're just honored to be a part of this. And I think you're going to be excited by the community leadership and thoughtfulness of this group. And it'll become very clear why LACBC had to be a major support. And in any way we could. So I guess with that, I'll kick it over to Terrence and Avital to introduce themselves and set the stage for Derek. Thanks, everyone. Hi. I'm not sure if I'm on screen yet. But I'm Terrence Houston. And I'm from Sunset for All. And I'm going to hand it on off to Avital since Derek's going to give the presentation. And I'll see you for the talk back. And hi, everyone. I'm Avital Shavit. And I'm with Sunset for All. And really excited to hear how you guys hear the story. I got involved with Sunset for All when I got hit by a car riding my bike on an unprotected bike lane that exists on Sunset Boulevard today. I was heading to work from Hollywood to downtown LA. And so this project really is for everyone to be able to have a place where they feel safe and protected to bike to the store to work to get some ice cream and to have a more livable community and neighborhood. And with that, I'll turn it over to my colleague on this project, Derek. Derek, take it away. All right, guys. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen. OK, can you see that? Cool. All right. So I'll be talking about Sunset for All. It's a grassroots group that formed out of the LACBC's Neighborhood Ambassador Program. And we all basically had experience biking in LA, which kind of gave us a perspective of how difficult it can be to navigate our city streets on a bike. And so we all sort of converged on wanting to organize to make Sunset Boulevard a better place to walk, to bike, to drive, to shop, or to dine, all these elements that make a main street the center of the community. So I'll be talking about why Sunset for All is important and what makes this campaign somewhat unique, including some really great lessons that we've learned from crowdfunding for safe streets. So here's a picture of a pretty prominent section of Sunset Boulevard. It's a pretty wide road. About 40,000 cars pass through Sunset Boulevard on an average day. Historically, it was a part of Route 66. But you can also see it's not just an arterial road. It's also filled with businesses, lots of pedestrian activity, people are biking. There's restaurants and grocery stores and public schools along Sunset Boulevard. So really, it is the main street of our neighborhoods. Unfortunately, these two things coupled together, a high activity, but also this major road, it's kind of in conflict. There's a high incident of injury on Sunset Boulevard. And in the last 10 years alone, there's been 1,000 injuries and deaths on just a 3.2 mile span of the street. And so the street doesn't really work that well for anyone. Cars get stuck behind buses, bikes are in conflict with parked cars. It can be precarious across the street on foot. And so what we want to do is not just make it possible to use the street in this way, but make it safe and comfortable. Because if it's not safe and comfortable, then it's unlikely you're going to want to do it. In consultation with some transportation professionals, we came up with a better vision. If we could just move the parking, we could squeeze in these parking protected bike lanes onto the street that are bi-directional and provide a way for people who are not driving, who might be scootering, who might be bicycling, skateboarding, rollerblading, whatever it may be, a safe and comfortable way to travel the street. It would also provide a buffer for pedestrians who are making use of the businesses and just visiting all the amenities on Sunset Boulevard. This is something that should also be holistic. So it should also include crosswalks and bus stop upgrades and safe routes to schools and pedestrian amenities and pocket parks, all those elements that make a street more human, more catered towards a human scale. There would be regional implications to this as well. If Sunset Boulevard was implemented as proposed, it would provide 3.2 miles of a safe walking and biking trail for around 100,000 residents of the community. And as you can see on the left, that red line is the metro subway. And so it would connect all these people of the city to the wider region of the county. And we know that 50% of neighborhood trips are less than 3 miles, which is well within reasonable biking distance. There's also some geographic obstacles here. Sunset Boulevard is a mountain pass, basically. And there's not really a viable parallel option if you want to get from downtown LA to, for example, any neighborhood north of Korea town. So that includes Hollywood, East Hollywood, Los Filos, Burbank, Igorok, Pasadena. If you want to get to downtown LA or the West Side, this is the best way to do it. And so Sunset Boulevard is really crucial if we hope to implement a calm, connected, safe bike network in the city of LA. And the city really agrees with this. The city's bike plan calls for protected bike lanes on Sunset Boulevard. The city's Mobility Plan 2835, produced in 2015, calls for protected bike lanes on Sunset Boulevard. A metro, the city's transportation authority has identified Sunset Boulevard as a priority for first-model, last-model active transportation. And it's even on the city's Vision Zero high-endury network, which is basically the 6% of city streets, where 70% of severe pedestrian injuries and deaths are secured. So everyone really agrees that this is a priority. Sunset Boulevard has been organizing to turn this priority into reality. We've given dozens of presentations to local groups. We've gathered signatures of local schools, syclovia, farmers markets, and other community events. We've worked to earn multiple letters of support, receiving them from local elementary schools. We received them from a Semin woman, Laura Friedman. Three local neighborhood councils have written unanimous letters of support. In more recent days, during the pandemic, we organized support for local businesses through our hashtag Bikes Me Business campaign, which basically called on Sunset for all supporters to patronize small businesses on certain days. More recently, also, we started hosting monthly coffee walks to connect residents with local businesses to talk about Sunset for all. So though we have a lot of support, Sunset for all is not currently on the city's agenda. And we have a bit of a chicken and egg problem, which many of you maybe can relate to. So to implement Sunset for all, we need preliminary engineering to be done by the LA Department of Transportation. But council members must formally ask the LA dot on the Department of Transportation to create those plans. However, council members don't want to do this unless there's already overwhelming community support on the table. But it's difficult to get this community support without the preliminary engineering because there's no details. The community doesn't know what they would be supporting. And so we managed to overcome this obstacle in partnership with the LACPC by crowdfunding the cost of this crucial step in the process. And here's basically what happened. Individual LACPC board members pledged almost half of our goal as an angel donor match campaign. And this would be unlocked if we could raise the other half of the funds from the community. And we were able to do it. We raised $60,000 for the first leg of this process. And at the end of the day, 360 local donors donated to this match campaign. And Super Pedestrian at Scooter Ad Share Company helped get us over the final bump. They even threw us a party to celebrate the milestone. And so with this funding, we were able to hire an engineering team. This is Rock Miller and GTS Engineering. And it's really shown us what a fruitful model, crowdfunding this engineering could be for community organizing. And there's been some unexpected implications from this. This has really helped us with our business outreach because now we have 360 donors. More than 360 donors who have donated to the campaign. And this is more of a tangible metric for community support than, say, a petition, for example. And so now the Sunset For All proposal is not simply an idea that some community members have in their heads, but this is actually a plan that is materializing. And beyond that, it's propelled by community support and initiative. This has really shifted the power structure because now when we do our business outreach and we try to connect with all the businesses on Sunset Boulevard, we're saying over 360 of your customers have donated to reimagine our community's main streets. We have an engineer making plans. It's already happening. So you don't want to miss out on this opportunity to be a part of the vision. Community groups that might have been lukewarm or skeptical, even though protected bike lanes, now they want to participate. And so we formed an advisory community, which is basically helping oversee the engineering contracts and collaborating with engineers to redesign the corridor. And this has really helped us involve more community members. It's brought residents, business owners, leaders of community orgs, school PTA moms, and a local council office into one room to produce a community-led vision for what Sunset For All could be. And so we really feel like we have a lot of momentum going forward. And a lot of consciousness has been raised. And this has been reflected more recently in a city council candidate debate. We have an election coming up. Sunset For All was mentioned in name, and all candidates supported it, expressed their support. The current council member praised Sunset For All as amazing and a model of successful community outreach. And so our current campaign is really trying to focus on the business outreach aspect of this. And we have these beautiful materials that we produced. This is our brochure, which really illustrates how Sunset For All, as proposed, would integrate into the larger community. It also emphasizes how this is about inclusivity, making the center of our community a main street for everyone, regardless of age, ability, or choice of mobility. This is a window sticker that we're currently producing. We're hoping that businesses that are in support will display it. And maybe inspire other businesses to learn more about Sunset For All, maybe raise awareness amongst their customers, and really just raise the consciousness about this proposal in the larger community. We really hope to inspire other communities, learning from our successes and some of the obstacles that we've had to overcome, just to hopefully they can see that their streets are not set in stone, and that really people have agency over the environments in their neighborhoods. And so lastly, I'll leave you with this video of what a Viking in the city of Velay could look like. Now, this is not Amsterdam or Copenhagen or New York City or Davis, California, any of those typical cities we think about when it comes to bicycling. This is LA during the sick Libya event. And it really shows that the demand for bicycling is there, but our infrastructure does not necessarily welcome people to do it. And so at Sunset For All, we're really hoping to change that in the near future. And thank you for listening. Thanks a lot. That was fantastic. Really excited to see Sunset Boulevard become a place that is safe so that Agatel doesn't have to worry about getting hit anymore. Thank you, Derek, very much. Next, we're going to move to Bike East Bay's Dave Campbell and Chris Wang, who is the board president of Walk Oakland, Bike Oakland. Those are two of the organizational leaders. And they can tell you a lot more about all the other leaders, people they brought in to score this important victory. Take it away. Thanks, Dave. Dave Campbell, advocacy director with Bike East Bay, joined by Chris Wang. Walk Oakland, Bike Oakland to talk about Telegraph Ave. What Dave Schneider didn't tell you is the Cal Bike Summit is going to be largely centered around insights that are on Telegraph Avenue right next to this project. So if you have some follow-up questions or detailed questions you want to learn more about, you may get the opportunity to actually experience them at the Cal Bike Summit on Telegraph Ave. Chris, thanks for joining us. If you want to say hello, I'll get the slides going. All right, while Chris gets unmuted, let's get started. This is Telegraph Avenue. It's a photo taken from downtown Oakland, kind of looking north towards Berkeley. And based on the presentation from Derek that we just heard, I think Telegraph is a very similar street in width, perhaps also an intense activity on the street. But what you can see, what the city of Oakland did here is this is the project shortly after it went in, phase one, if you will. Telegraph was two lanes in each direction with a center turn lane, parking on either side and no bike facilities. So they took out a travel lane and made it a one lane in each direction street, keeping the center turn lane. And then the parking was moved out from the curb, protected bike lanes. And you can't quite see it here, but you'll see a slide soon. Bus boarding islands were put in. So the buses stay in the travel lane and move along the street a little bit quicker. But this is it. And again, the Cal Bike Summit is largely centered on sites right around this street right here. And so this is phase one. This is a story, Chris, you can give me your perspective here. This is, we're checking in on this story, probably in chapter seven of maybe an eight or nine chapter story, we hope to get to the finish line on this later this year. Bike East Bay and Walk Oakland, Bike Oakland have worked on this project for many, many, many, many years. But what you just saw a photo of and what you're seeing a photo here is kind of the end of phase one. Oakland repaved the street and put in the protected bike lanes, took out that travel lane, put in the bus boarding islands. And that was the result of a lot of outreach that we did to the businesses, working with the business district. We even had a couple of business owners who were so supportive of the project that they took our business petition and they took it around to 10 other businesses to get those 10 other businesses to support trying this out as a pilot project, if you will. And this was the first street safety change project that I've been involved in for 20-something years doing this where the business district said and their board of directors said, we wanna make this change. It was somewhat of a struggling business district. It certainly is still struggling in the pandemic right now. And they're ready to try something new and different. And so the business district passed a resolution in support of this project. And this was back in 2015, 2016 when that happened. So we got out there, we celebrated the mayor who's gonna be speaking at the Cal Bike Summit, cut the ribbon on the project. You can see Chris in the background on her phone tweeting about what an exciting project this is. And we got out there to celebrate the brand new protected bike lanes on Telegraph Avenue. And the city did a six-month follow-up study which all projects that are super important should do to see how the project is working, compare the data from before. And we learned a lot of things. One, more people are by the street, more people are walking on the street. Safety has improved significantly. Traffic is flowing fine. And it's also flowing much slower. The average speed on this street, this is a street, like I said, probably similar to Sunset Boulevard in many ways. The average speed is 17 miles an hour. Raise your hand if you live on a major arterial street in the state of California, where the average speed is eight miles per hour below the speed limit. It's a much safer street. And the good news is sales of the businesses went up. They went up because of the bike lane, right? Actually, we don't know that, but sales went up. And at times they went up even more than sales went up in other business districts in Oakland. So overall sales went up. At least for the three years after the project went in and then the pandemic hit and things did change at that point, but the news was good. But the news wasn't all good. We had cars parking in the protected bike lanes because the protected bike lanes were largely painted as you see here. There wasn't a curb put in the physical changes to keep the cars out of the bike lane. Trucks were parking in the bike lane. The city did come back and put in these really flimsy flex posts, if you will, that you see there. And those immediately got annihilated. And then they came in and put in planter boxes, these dark gray planter boxes. They put one at the beginning and ended each block on both sides of the street. They didn't attach them to the street. So cars actually learned, drivers learned they could with their car move these things out of the way and they ended up in the parking spaces. They ended up in the bike lanes and they were kind of a mess. And the city just took them out and moved them over to another project. And then they put in the Zecla boarding islands with the repaving project. And those proved to be a little problematic. It was the East Bay's first Zecla boarding islands. And we learned a lot about Zecla boarding islands. We learned and Berkeley also learned this as well. We're not gonna do any more Zecla boarding islands. No offense to Zecla, but we're gonna do what you see on the right here is the city is just gonna build the bus boarding island using cement. Berkeley made the same decision. So the photo on the right is Telegraph Avenue further up the street towards Berkeley and the Temescal district. It was a later project that came on and they built these bus boarding islands that perhaps many of your cities have. But the Zeclas were problematic for many reasons. So cars were parking in the bike lanes. There was no physical protection. The Zeclas weren't working. And the district was getting very frustrated because the bike lanes weren't working as intended. And pedestrians were reporting, they weren't comfortable crossing the street. Many pedestrians still weren't comfortable crossing the street because of the floating parking that's in the street. And right about the end of 2019, three and a half years into the project, sales in the district started going down and they started attributing that to the change in the street. And they wanted the street put back the way it was. We managed to push back against that at least initially and got the city to put in the fatter bollards that you see here. The city was gonna paint some more striping on the street to make it clear. And they were gonna paint purple as well to kind of make it clear where you define the parking bays. But they ended up not doing the purple part. But they did this part and the district it even infuriated the district even more because they hold an event first Fridays beginning of every month and vendors are out in the street and you can see these posts that got put in and you can see the curb stops that also got put in to help keep the parked cars in place. They were concerned that this event wouldn't be able to happen successfully with all these things in the street. I think it's turned out then that we've learned that it's fine these posts are out there today and the car stops are there and people are setting up and things are fine. But at the time the business district was very upset that these posts went in to mess up their first Fridays. So the council member and Chris this is where I'll turn things over to you to provide some update. The council member then said I've had it with this project, the district has had it with the project. We want the protective bike lanes removed and to go back to buffer bike lanes. And we want the community to thoroughly redesign this project as they see fit not as the bike walk advocates see fit. And so that started a total review of the project with the goal to make it an equitable project. Kono has all kinds of businesses but they have a lot of family owned businesses less successful businesses and they wanted to make sure this project was working for all businesses not just some of the businesses are not just for the business leadership. And so that's when Chris and I got re-engaged in the project, if you will to work with the community to figure out what can make this project an equitable project. And it was the first time in my experience where the city was very intentional. We want this project to be equitable. What should it look like? And Bikie span walk open bike open we welcome to that opportunity because it's not always how we think about our projects. So Chris, let me turn it over to you and then I'll just wrap up after a couple of minutes and we'll take some questions. Sure, thanks Dave. That was a great summary of the project to date. I think that what was important was really significant was that the city already had commitments towards equitable implementation of walking and bicycling and transportation infrastructure. So it wasn't hard to get the conversation to that level. The harder part of the conversation was dispelling any sense that really walking and bicycling advocates were not from the community. I think that was the first thing that we needed to dispel. And granted, there are lots of walking and bicycling advocates who are not going to be from the community but we have a commitment to be the megaphone for our community members. And that actually took on a life of its own because it was really important for us to demonstrate that we were speaking from the truth that we were hearing on the ground. The other aspect was working with the city's department of recent equity, formulating some sort of survey that would yield meaningful information. And this is where I would say things kind of fell apart. We really sat around the table having very intentional conversations about whose voices need to be elevated the most. They're usually not the same people who are around the table talking about walking or bicycling. They're usually not people who have time to have meetings in the middle of the day with the department of transportation. And none of us really had a comprehensive pulse on what our most important stakeholders actually had, what their concerns really were about. And we spent a lot of time developing surveys actually didn't really deploy those surveys at all because we actually were starting to see splinter groups of surveys and businesses putting up their own surveys and data collection of commentary here and there. It wasn't going to help push the conversation to the level where we felt comfortable about what was being represented by responses from the various surveys. So we can go into great detail on that but I won't do too much but what ended up happening, I would say that the council members actually stepped up and they really started to question what, who are the vulnerable populations that we really need to focus on? And actually there were very, very meaningful conversations that actually happened at the council level that was, I would say it was really important for every council member's district resident to reach out to them to tell them directly what their concerns were. It couldn't come directly from walking or bicycling advocates. And that is part of the role of advocacy groups like Wobo and Bikie Space. Like we need to really empower our community members to reach out to some of the decision makers on their own and really sort of building a wider base of conversation than what was actually happening on the ground. And I would say the council members were really pointed. They picked up on the fact that the most vulnerable community members are also the ones who take transit. And transit was the surprise, I would say element of this conversation that I actually didn't expect to be so significant, but really having a focus on vulnerable populations being the ones who probably take transit the most. And community members also came out and recorded videos of themselves using the bikeways and talking about how their kids use the roadways. And I thought that that contributed a higher quality and more impactful story for our council members to use to make their ultimate decision to keep the project with protected bike lanes. So, Dave, I'll hand that back to you after that. Yeah, hello. Thanks, Chris. So just to wrap up, we hope to have a better understanding of what makes an equitable street safety project. And we did learn a lot, but we're certainly not in a position to tell you, here's how Oakland does equitable street safety projects. We didn't learn that from this project. Our volunteers were able to raise some issues about who's using the street, who's walking, who's biking. We did, our volunteers did go talk to businesses. Dave Schneider actually was one of those volunteers to learn that many of them actually supported the bikeway and safe bikeways. They just had other issues about either parking or access for their vehicles or loading that from our perspective, it could be worked out with the protected bike lanes. So we've got, and you can see here, some of our volunteers shopping at local businesses, going to talk to businesses that support the project. And like Chris said, the council did vote to install the protected bike lanes permanently. And that project is actually gonna be happening this year with concrete curves and concrete bus porting islands fully funded. But we've got other projects coming up on Oakland, like 14th Street downtown and the Grand Avenue Mobility Plan. And Oakland's very much intentionally looking at how to make these equitable projects. And we do wish we would have learned more from Telegraph than we did. We learned some things and some good things and raised some good questions, but we do have a race and equity department that provides leadership on this. And so we are looking forward to working with them more closely on future projects. With that Dave, I'll wrap up and eager to take questions. Fantastic, thank you. We have just like 10 minutes is about it. So I would encourage you to put your questions in the chat and hopefully some of the presenters will be able to get to them, if not within the hour afterward. If you have a question that is best expressed verbally, raise your hand and I will try to see that. That's under the reactions button at the bottom of your screen. There's a button called raise hand. Aida, you're first. I will, you will have to unmute. Hi, thank you. I just came back. I live in LA and I just came back from a trip to Berkeley and I was really pleased with all the safety features for bicycling up there. And I saw some kind of bicycling advocacy group and I just wanna know having been a native to LA and seeing Sunset for all having to do all their own groundwork to do these activities. What have you seen as being in the Bay, the most effective advocacy strategy as it been like producing like an organization, getting people on the ground, showing interest because I feel like in LA, there's just so much pushback from the community. It's kind of hard to do both, but and also getting the attention from council members in terms of instigating change, especially when people are getting injured or killed. So we'd like to know like what are the strategies you've seen most effective for advocacy? Thanks. And Dave, happy to start that one, Chris. I'll hand it over to you as well. Two strategies. One is Bikes Bay does work very intentionally with business districts and we don't often go up against the business district for a street safety change project. Kono became a little bit, Telegraph became a little bit problematic there at the end where we were going up against the business district, but we got their support initially for that project and we're working with other business districts for their support too. So we don't often go against them. And I know that's not the same story with other walk bike coalitions around the country. Sometimes you just wanna outnumber them and make the safety improvements. The other thing we've done, I'll say the other thing that's happened is we've gotten a lot of supportive city council members elected and a lot of them, and we're 501c3, we're not doing that, but it's happening. And aside from our 501c3 status, we're trying to support that type of thing, but get walk bike transit advocates on city councils. It makes a huge difference. It's making a huge difference in Berkeley. It's making a huge difference in Emeryville and Alameda. It's not working everywhere because we don't have supportive council members everywhere. But that's one of the go-to strategies here in the East Bay is become the decision maker that can make the change that you wanna see. Chris? I'll just add that events like Scluvia and other open streets events are a really great way to bring people, decision makers to the site to have them really experience what things can be like. I think that's one thing. The other thing I would notice, and Dave, you didn't put this in your presentation about Telegraph, but we actually did a pop-up bike lane on a bike to work day with then Mayor Jean Kwan to show her what this protected bike lane could be like. And I would say that that sort of changed people's perspective a little bit in terms of just being able to imagine what things could be like rather than theoretically, this is what it would feel like. And I think that those are really important experiences to put out there and getting people in elected offices or commissions. We have a bicyclist and pedestrian advisory commission that plays a fairly important role in our world. And don't forget the electives on transportation or transit commissions because they are equally, I mean, they can move a lot of mountains if you have, you build a coalition that is bigger and broader than something that is very, very specific to walking and bicycling. And so we have until 1.30, I was mistaken to say that this ends at one o'clock and that's a relief because this is a great conversation. So please keep the questions coming. I'll see if you put your hand up. I wanna address a question from Sharon Bikarski. She asks how these projects are funded. And I think I can answer on behalf of Telegraph Avenue, which is to say it's an active transportation program grant. But LA is different. So can you explain to us how you are funding that project? Shockingly, actually, I remember from your presentation a minute ago that you're funding a piece of it, the initial design, it's through private money. But how is it gonna be built? I'll just take that question quickly. So the initial engineering, so like what's 30% design is crowdsourced and is in progress right now. If anybody's interested, we have a slide on all of the state and federal funds that are now available for active transportation. A big one, like Dave said, is the active transportation program at the state level, as well as there's some other funding that's available potentially through Metro and also potentially through the new federal competitive grant program that will be soon, hopefully soon available from the latest infrastructure package, which is for Safe Streets, for a Safe Street project. But yeah, I think that the funding, I like to say that the funding actually, I think for Los Angeles, getting to everybody agreeing that we should go after grant funding is a challenge. I don't think it's this project we think kind of scores off the charts in terms of all the eligibility that all these grant programs have. But I think the challenge is getting everybody, the community and politicians kind of aligned to say, yes, we wanna go after these grants, we want this project. Great, thank you. Does anybody, I don't see, how can nobody be raising their hand right now? I saw a few in the comments or in the chat. Here's a question from Shulam in Sunset for All, how is bike parking incorporated? That's right. Yeah, question for Derek returns. Bike parking at the moment, we have not incorporated it. So that will be a part of the overall vision with the engineer once we get to the point that right now he's redrawing the corridor of what is possible within the streets and then we'll be able to focus on things that can say that through doing presentations to local businesses and local developers and all of these things. And I also just really wanna quickly make a point about equity is that due to what the local council member metric is for approving this project, it's about the businesses trading parking for protected bike lanes. They'd only be losing about keeping spaces over 3.2 miles. So it's very minimal parking loss, but that's the metric that's been put in front of us. So you keep hearing us talking about businesses because that's what this portion of the campaign is about. But we are also trying to do equitable outreach simultaneously, but in one of our business presentations developer along the route that just had a seven-story building approved actually just added a ton of bike parking. I was so excited about our project and went back to his partners and said there's gonna be a major bike corridor here. We wanna have as much bike parking as possible. And we want to get behind this group because and they've been introducing us to other businesses because people are very excited about it. Here's another question from the chat. Christine Schindler asks, how have you energized and grown your bike walk groups? We have a sturdy core group but need more perspectives, younger folks, et cetera. I'll answer it for Sunset For All. This is Avi Tal. I'm with Sunset For All again. Really, I actually met Terrence and Derek because I went to, I got hit riding to work and I was like, this sucks. There must be a better way. And I found Los Angeles Bicycle Coalition is a community group meeting. And there was this program at the time that was for bike ambassadors, community bike ambassadors. It was actually led by a really amazing facilitator, Jesse, that worked for LACBC at the time. And that's where I met my two colleagues that are on the call, but also a whole host of other people who were there, like me, who had walking or biking in Los Angeles and thought it could be better. And they wanted to do something about it. And we kind of, a bunch of us got together and we continued actually meeting, even after the group kind of, the LACBC actually wasn't leaving anymore. We actually met in a coffee shop once a month on the first Monday. And we met for, what Terrence and Derek, like two years? I think like two years every Monday at a coffee shop, kind of working this idea through how working our strategy, bringing new people into the fold. So it really is about, I think the bike coalition kind of set the stage of creating these groups that they help facilitate community members who want to make a difference, but also let those community members say, okay, this is for a central Los Angeles bike ambassador group. And so we came together saying, hey, we all live in this central area in Los Angeles. We all want to improve biking and walking. What is the project we think kind of rises to the top that will have the biggest impact? And that's how we, we kind of actually made a long laundry list of projects and since that kind of rose the top, there were other projects on the list as well. So I think that figuring out how you kind of, how bike coalitions kind of help facilitate, like RADCAD community groups to kind of rise up and organize. So, and that, I think is, I don't know, Eli, if you want to talk a little bit about kind of the thought of how you duplicate this process kind of moving forward. Sure, happy to jump in. And I think, you know, what's so exciting about Sensible All is that it really was an organic movement of community leaders, community members who from their lived experience decided this is, this shall not stand. And so we were just essentially trying to set the, like Avi Tal said, set the context for these conversations to happen. And we're all too excited to see that this conversation continued to flow even long after Jesse went back to grad school. And so we actually re-entered the conversation later on when it was time for actual fundraising to take place. And that's why we are serving as the fiscal sponsor to help manage the bank accounts and make sure that all the support is there from our coalition to support these community leaders. But really it's led by the community. And I think, you know, again, as I mentioned my opening remarks, our theory of change is to somehow create a playbook and a training series to capture the lessons of Sensible All and not in a cut and paste type of way but sort of understand what are the ingredients necessary? What are the lessons that we've learned along the way with Sensible All that will be easily portable to other community led projects throughout the county? So it is in LA, it's definitely like a radical innovative approach. But as Derek talked about in his presentation, we got so many people donating small dollars. I think the average donation was less than 50 bucks to show that folks really want to vote with their pocketbooks that this mattered. And that was a validation of our process. And so again, we are the wind in the sails of this amazing group of community organizers. And I think the lessons that we were learning from Bike East Bay in terms of how to make sure that we reach beyond the business leaders and we make sure that we create the same sort of safe spaces for community members, residents, people who use the corridor for commuting, that their voices are also very much heard in an equitable way is a thing that I think LACBC will also bring that layer of support to make sure that that happens. So our model is really to listen to the community members who have raised this issue up and this specific street up and then to arm them with the tools that they need to succeed. Thanks, Eli. Question from JCO about how the driving public in Oakland reacted to the loss of a traffic lane on Telegraph. I mean, I see the usual whining, but I'm curious if you, Chris or Dave have some insights that we can learn from. Yeah, it was large and non-issue Dave. This part of Telegraph, it's coming into downtown Oakland and the end of it is actually more of a plaza type space. You'll get to see that at the Compike Summit. So the traffic volumes are super low. It's a busy arterial as you get further north and head into Berkeley. And so we chose this stretch because the volumes were lower and it wasn't going to create congestion issues. And so we've heard very little. Chris, you can share your feedback you've heard on congestion. We've definitely heard from drivers who have to park out in the street away from the curb. They hate that.  And we've heard it on other streets and other projects as well. And so one thing Bikie's Bay is looking for is how are other cities doing their first or doing protected bike lanes on the cheap and not making drivers feel like they're out in the street as vulnerable as you may feel bicycling out on the street, parking out on the street. That's been our big pushback on Telegraph F. I don't have much to add to that other than the fact that I actually thought we would have just a storm of complaints about the lack of parking because that's usually what stalls some of our projects. But honestly, I don't think it's about parking at all. At the end of the day, it's more, I think drivers who are confused. And this is where I would just put in a plug for go whole hog on the best infrastructure and do it quickly because as we were piloting little things, doing paint and flex posts instead of the real concrete stuff and the longer the pilot project goes, people think that that's the real deal and that's what they're gonna get in perpetuity. And I think that the lesser form of the project always, it disincentivizes, it lets people down. And people are like, this is what I just advocated for. And then it also confuses drivers. So that was probably what I heard more of rather than I can't find any parking, because who knows, there wasn't that much parking to begin with on Telegraph. So yeah. Yeah, Chris, I'll just add the business district when they wanted the protected bike lanes removed, they wanted to keep the road diet. They wanted to go to buffered bike lanes. They weren't asking that the bike lanes to be removed entirely. So that was something of a success. And so the road diet was really never kind of in question. Thanks, Al. I see we've got Warren Wells had his hand raised patiently there. I want to go ahead and chime in, Warren. Sure, thanks a lot and great presentations to everybody. A couple of questions about the Sunset for All project. I'd love to hear a little bit more about the process of finding a consultant to do the engineering designs, I assume it's like 30% conceptual designs Did you have someone lined up before you raised the money? How did you get a cost estimate and set the amount of the budget for that crowdfunding process? And did all the money that you raised go toward that or did some of the money raised go toward helping with outreach and stuff? I'm just kind of interested in that process around that. Thanks a bunch.  Do you want me to take this one, Derek? I'll just go with it. So back at the beginning of the process, we didn't want to be making recommendations about what the design of the street should be. We've wanted professionals to be doing that. And so from the first coffee meetings, we were shaking the trees of the Los Angeles Department of Transportation to find out what is possible. And we were also lucky that CD13, in this council district, I swear like every transportation planner and a half the engineers in town live in this council district because it's like former streetcar suburbs, just three miles from downtown. It's like tailor-made for every single urban planner who wants to live here. And so we were able to talk to various transportation professionals to be like, what is possible with 76 feet? And then once we found out that there would have to be a road diet if we were going to put protective lanes on both sides, it was only possible talking to political leaders, talking to members of the community. There's just no support for that, for road dieting, Sunset Boulevard, especially outside Dodger Stadium. We just don't have the political support for that. So that made it about a bi-directional parking protected bike lane. And we actually, Rock Miller, who is this incredible sweetheart, I don't know if I know, those of you who don't know, I know this is a group. Whenever we talked to like, people at Caltrans and at LA Dot, they were all like, you should talk to Rock Miller. You should talk to Rock Miller. And he's the former president of the Institute of Transportation Engineers. He's designed some of the best bikeways in North America. Everybody said he got to talk to Rock Miller. And so I was like very nervous when we reached out to Rock Miller that he wasn't going to talk to us. And he couldn't have been sweeter or mobile. He shared so much and was so generous with his knowledge about what is possible and what might be possible. Then after the two years of COVID, we did outreach during COVID, but it's very hard to talk about bikes when small businesses are struggling to stay alive. And we didn't want to be insensitive to that. So we just tried to support the business community instead of asking them to support us. And that was the bike meeting where we would just, we would just choose a business along the corridor, send out a hashtag, support these people on this day. And we'd usually have about, two to four dozen customers show up for them that day. So during that, at the end of this two years, we had lost a lot of the momentum in that we had going prior to COVID. So then the decision amongst the leadership of Sunset for All was like, how do we regain the momentum? And how do we get over this political obstacle, which is the city controls the carrot of, we were talking about, I'm sorry, excuse me, the chicken and the egg, the city controls when LA Dot is gonna make those engineering plans, how do we maybe get around that? And at the same time, people who donate are then going to be that much more motivated to be volunteering and talking to businesses and walking the corridor. And so that's where this decision to crowdfund was, we reached out to rock to get a number. And we also reached out to like a couple other people informally and rock is semi-retired now. So he's doing it for free. His partners at GTS Engineering or his colleagues at GTS Engineering are doing the literal plans, rock is designing it, they're putting the plans to paper and they're doing it their cost because it's such an incredibly important corridor. Everybody says it's the most, we call it the existential gap in the mobility network. Without Sunset, that there's no mobility network. So rock was excited about the possibility of having a legacy project. Everyone else recognized that it was one of the most important corridors in the entire region. And so everybody pulled together to get this done. We raised a little bit more than $60,000 and we have used some of those funds towards outreach materials such as those really fancy business brochures that we have and our flat appies. I'm thinking of making a little bit of T-shirts and some of that is the LA County Bicycle Coalition pitching in to also add extra resources on top because they're just freaking awesome. Very cool, thanks so much. Really appreciate it all. And as a former resident of LA, I appreciate all the work you guys are doing there and making it. I left LA because it was too hard to get back there. So appreciate all the work you guys are doing. Well, when we come back war and hopefully we'll be able to take a ride along the corridor. And I just say, so in terms of like a little bit of mechanics, Sunset for All is a fiscal sponsory or we're the fiscal sponsors. So we do take an admin fee. It's nominal and it's, but it's just a way for us to make sure that we cover some of our costs. And so that's just part of the deal. But I would say that, you know, it really in terms of attracting Rockmiller it had everything to do with the tenacity and the passion of the community led process. I mean, it really had to do with Abital speaking from the lived experience and the crash that she suffered. It had to do with Terrence being a bike dad LA, you know, going out and riding with his kids fearlessly, but realizing that it was not really enough of an opportunity or an option for most people that has swayed all these great leaders to come in and these designers to come in and then be a part of the movement. Thanks, Al. We've got a question from Rich Overlater in the chat. His question is if there are any updates on the status of public events such as pedal fest, Sunday open streets, social rides, rock the bike, music festivals for the year 2022. And Rich, if you're still on the call, maybe if you had any other clarifying questions or more info, you could chime in. Well, basically with things as they are, a lot of public events have been closing down. And I think the thing that propels a lot of our projects really is bike culture and getting more seats, more people on bikes of all ages and all abilities. Once that happens, then we can get more of an impetus for methane, basically Copenhagenized California, if you know what I mean by that. Denmark and all these great international possibilities, but the American mindset is still car oriented. And I guess one thing will feed another, but there used to be some very great, you might say, events and festivals that bring out a lot of young people or people of all ages to the possibility of cycling, like pedal fest in Jaclyn and Square and rock the bike events and bike music festivals and bike movies and so on and so forth, really generating an impetus in bike culture and the fun and fitness and the freedom of what cycling is about. And what I'm hearing, this is all great, these projects. I love them. And I know many of us that are continuous cyclists really rely on it, but we're still a minority. And it would be great to become a majority and maybe e-bikes and senior trikes might add on to that. But I guess what I'm asking now in this year, are there things slated to really promote cycling in California and in our areas, like open streets, like the Wobo movements that we had here in the Bay Area, the fantastic, even the bike parties are great, but linking up a little bit more of the possibility of politics to these events and press so that not everybody just gets an enjoyment on the whole thing and then forgets about it for a year, but actually sees, wow, we can have this more coming together and cycling and really enjoying the whole experience of it and making those streets safer in telegraph and in LA and so on and so forth. Big question, I know, big thing, but I'm curious if those events are slated and if there's any movement to those projects. If so, I'd like to get involved in personally as well. Thank you. Thanks, Rich. I'll put a plug in. May 20th is bike to wear every day. And Wobo in coordination with the city's Oak Dot, we're trying to plan for a pretty significant event that is gonna be a little bit different than the traditional bike to work day kind of event. I'll have more to announce, but I would say these kinds of events that you just mentioned, Rich, are very expensive. And for small organizations to play host to it is very difficult. But Oak Dot has actually put in their neighborhood bike plan a commitment to supporting more of these types of events. Now, the question is how and for whom and where and when and the implementation part, but so there's some planning yet to be done. But I would say during COVID, I saw more on social media, informal group rides than any other time that I've experienced. And there are kid-oriented rides. The mini-flyers are out there covering West Oakland. Scraper bikes are still doing their weekly thing. So it's not, I would say that it doesn't take formal events to energize the grassroots because people are already doing that. But I think the missing piece, the missing link is the conversation that connects people from what they're enjoying out there as a group to what can be done every day. And that is where maybe some of the less visible work is happening on the ground with Bikespe and Wobo. But I personally have done Siklavia a couple of times and I've lived in Los Angeles and it's incredible. And I can't imagine like any other kind of event that could have as much of a, I guess, advocacy energy than something like that. Maybe I'll just jump in and I put something in the chat to where Chris just shared. I think we've also been following public health guidelines in LA to make sure that we're in accordance with just keeping people healthy and safe during the pandemic. We instituted a virtual self-guided community rides that we converted all our Sunday-Funday rides to those types of rides. Had pretty good participation. I agree with Chris that folks were riding on their own and riding in community in small ways but totally also recognized at something the scale of Siklavia as really a car holiday in LA is a pretty compelling thing that just captures people's imagination as only the lived experience of getting on a bike in community can do. They haven't actually released their schedule for this year which is late. Usually Siklavia announces like, I mean, right at the beginning of the year. So we're still waiting knowing that they're working hard to put together their slate of rides. But it's tough right now to organize at that scale as important as it is. So I'll just add one other thing just to give credit to Sunset For All. I just need to mention that Avital and Karens and Derek mentioned our coffee walks which are by design walks and not rides because we wanna really show the multimodal impact of something like Sunset For All. And so those coffee walks are an opportunity for people to come out, walk the corridor, envision the potential future or the future that we're gonna make real. So we're doing our small levels sort of in-person events. We're starting to like scale them up. But again, we wanna make sure that we're doing it responsibly and thoughtfully depending on what's going on with the community health due to the pandemic. So look out for our coffee walk service. They're more coming up. Great, thank you everyone. We've only got a few minutes left here. I see one more hand raised. So we'll go ahead and call on Eric's question and then I'll pass it over to Dave. Thanks, it's good to be here. I'm on Sunset For All. So I'm a volunteer with them. So it's good to be here. Thanks for the presentation. So this comes to my question. I wanna piggyback on what Rich was kind of wrestling with about how do we get kind of more of this done quicker? So my question to everyone here is outreach is about outreach and creating a critical need. So I was studying a lot about what they did in Europe around the children murder or the children death with fatalities. And I was wanting to ask the group, are we all reaching out to like organize labor, especially teacher unions because there's a lot of schools. So there's an overcross between kid fatalities and teachers at schools. Are we reaching out to the sunrise movement because there's an overlap between reducing carbon and doing this and so many other groups that would be on our side.  I live in the community and that little movie that was shown about that bike, that's my bike route every day to work. I work at Kaiser, so there you go. So yeah, that's my question about this engagement and how deep are we getting and how can we start to like imagine other types of coalitions we can work with? Thanks. Eric, maybe I'll quickly respond. And I see that one or more people from Transformer on the call, we've been working with labor, a lot of the groups that we work with are working with labor to support transit right now, more transit funding, more support for transit. Transit's facing some serious issues in the next couple of years. And so I think in terms of bringing labor into our advocacy work right now, it's right now, bikey space priority is to support transit. And we really, we do look to transform in their leadership on that issue here in the Bay Area. And we haven't connected with labor, although I'd love to. And I think the sunrise movement is a great idea. We've been going mostly through supporters introducing us to other orgs, such as the bike kitchen this morning, just introducing me to the head library and a Coenga library. We have done presentations for local schools, but each school has its own ecosystem. So it's just time consuming, get an introduction from a parent. And then we go from there and we try to make them aware of the safety, the safety aspects of the campaign. And we also have a great letter of support from the Safe Routes partnership, which really helps us with schools. And that might be a good tip. So the Safe Routes partnership, California, is the premier Safe Routes to school organization in California. And they wrote us this incredible letter that's really useful with school outreach, because as soon as you can say like the number one, you know, Safe Routes to school organization in the state says this is about the project, it's very easy to get parents on board PTAs and local principals. Thanks. Well, one more question. I think we have enough time.  Hey, y'all, thanks for really great presentations. I'm calling in from Santa Rosa in the North Bay. And we're really a bit behind you, bigger cities, and we're just getting started. And I'm just wondering for advice, is it better to try to start pushing for a complete network right from the beginning or to pick a few marquee stretches like Sunset or, you know, a particular street and try to get that done and then build a network out from there? Does any insight on that? I definitely have some insights on that. It's hard to build a network. If you can do that, yeah, I would say do that, but we haven't been able to do that in the East Bay. We don't have a single city and really not even a single community in the East Bay that has a network yet. And I've been doing this now for 25 years. So if you can do it, great, that would be my advice. But I would start with where people are walking and biking. So whatever you do, you have the highest chance of having a successful project that people will see and go, okay, yes, that's good, that's better. I support that. The challenge there is it's gotta connect to something or people aren't gonna use it. So what is that right balance? But I would definitely start where people are walking and biking. Typically, here in the Bay Area, that's transit or schools are two of the places that we usually start and take it from there. But I love your vision of a network. We're just not, I don't think here in the Bay Area, we're ready to commit to building a network just like that. I would join in what is Dave's sharing. I mean, in our circumstance, we have a mobility plan 2035 that was passed almost unanimously by the council members back in 2015. To date, I think the number is only 7% of it or 3% of it has been created in the last seven years. So it's like 90-some-odd miles that have over 3,000 miles that's in the plan. And you can look it up if you want, the mobility plan 2035 for Los Angeles. So yeah, I think, I totally agree that we, it's ideal to have a coherent systems-wide plan in place. But I do think you gotta go where the people are and really leverage that lived experience with a project like Telegraph or Sunset for All. So that's kind of our sense of it as well. Yeah. I would, I agree with both sentiments. Although, I would say every town, every city is a little different. If it makes sense and to have some sort of network and you can get a captive group of supporters from the outset, it might not be a bad idea. And for people to understand, well, this is just this little three block area. What does this really mean in the greater scheme of things? But I don't know Santa Rosa as well. So it is very contextual. Very quickly, I'll just add that I think at the end of the day, the neighborhood network is gonna be the backbone of much of LA for a long time to come. And that's why we're trying to choose those really important strategic gaps where the neighborhood network can't take care of it. And I'm just gonna add one more thing, which is as most of you know me as LA Bike Dad, if you know me at all, if you aren't designing your neighborhood network for nine year olds, then you're not designing a neighborhood network. And so if these lanes can't be used, and there isn't traffic calming in the neighborhood network, I don't think it's gonna be successful. There has to be traffic calming and we're working very hard with LA Dot to push them because they think simply calling something a neighborhood network and then adding a stoplight to get you across an arterial does it. But because ways, I don't know about you, ways is claimed most of our usable neighborhood network streets, there needs to be diversion and traffic. Okay, thank you so much everyone. With that, I'm gonna pass it over to Dave Snyder for a quick wrap up. Great, thank you Kevin. Especially thank you, Kevin. You have struggled with unusual technical challenge today and you've calmly led us through. I appreciate that. So I've used Stephanie Alfaro in the background. Thank you to the Cal Bike team for everything that you do, making these awesome symposia. And the speakers, you all inspire me, Derrick, Terrence, Abital. You are why that I have been involved with Bike Advocacy for so long. It's so inspiring to see that kind of work also here in my hometown of Oakland with Dave and Kristen, the many others that have worked on that. So thank you and Eli, the support of the Sunset for All project and the role that the LACBC plays in being leaders and supporters, but also supporting leadership is a great model I think for the whole state. And thank you to everyone who's on this call, about a hundred people have joined this call. You hopefully will take these lessons and these stories and be inspired by them. Hopefully you will consider coming to the summit. Like I said, today and today only, there's the discount, the early bird discount of 295 bucks, use that code. Stephanie, could you please, I just add that back to the chat so people can see that code. I hope you can come to the summit and I hope I get to see you in about seven weeks. So with that, I'll say thank you to everyone for your support of Bike Advocacy. Thanks everybody. Thank you all, have a great day.


Hey welcome back to my channel guys. Today we're going to talk about housing. I'm getting this question all the time about what are the houses like here in New Zealand. So today I'm going to overview some of the things that I have noticed over the last seven years as to the differences between the housing in New Zealand compared to the US. Here we go. So if you don't know me we are a family of six that have moved to New Zealand from the US and have been in New Zealand for seven years. If you are thinking about moving or traveling or spending any sort of significant time in New Zealand reach out to me at KiwiAmericans.com because I help people move here and get settled. I have an amazing training hub that teaches you everything you need to know about engaging this culture and then also you can meet one-on-one with me if you just have questions so check it out if that's helpful to you. Today we're going to talk about housing in New Zealand compared to the US. So the first thing that I'm gonna need to touch on and we're just gonna get this out of the bag to begin with is the housing in New Zealand is expensive. But the good news is is that the prices are definitely going down. In fact I have been renting my entire time here in New Zealand but now I'm looking for housing. So I am recording all of that information and I will do a video on what it's like buying house here because let me tell you it's different. I'm talking to agents all the time I have no idea what these words are what this means so I will be doing a video to help you with this once I've gone through the entire process and let you know. So it is expensive prices have gone up really a lot in New Zealand actually let me get my notes because I wrote down the average price for a house in New Zealand right now is 991,000 which is just under a million dollars but that's in New Zealand dollars so in US dollars it's like 550,000. In the US though the average price is 348,000 that's total in the US obviously there's cheaper parts and more expensive parts but in New Zealand dollars that's 618,000 so there is quite a discrepancy in terms of you know how expensive a house is but just like in the US or New Zealand you can buy a cheaper property you can buy more expensive properties but in general that's going to be your biggest expense here in New Zealand. But what I've talked to a lot of my clients about is that there are some interesting ways of which you can reduce your housing costs and so there are ways because it is a different culture here like having a border is very normal a lot of the houses have outbuildings where you could rent out and then that helps on the cost of your mortgage every month and so there's there are definitely some options that make it cheaper which I have done myself I have Airbnb to room or I've had a border stay with me I've had a lot of things and it helps really reduce the price and you can so you can still have a bigger house nicer house but keep your costs down so there's lots of options but the number one thing I just wanted to get that out there the difference is it's quite expensive to buy a house here in New Zealand. The second thing I want to talk about is the heating now I know I've said this in so many videos but we just have to put out like the big ones so the biggest difference I think for an American coming and buying a house or renting a house in New Zealand is the heating so the way that they heat their house here heat pumps gas heating fireplace wood burning electric heat so it's very different now the U.S. is a big place so how houses are heated is different across the country I'm from the Midwest so we are in like below zero weather in the winter and so we all have furnaces like there's no way you could ever get away with I mean I guess I did have a house in the U.S. I had in the Midwest that had electric heat but it was not good and was very expensive but so yeah so in general you're going to notice that people are more comfortable living cold in the winter like compared to what you're used to in like the U.S. or Canada but yeah so be aware of the heating system so when you're coming here and you're looking for a house you're renting a house you're buying a house pay attention to the heating look for central heat now New Zealand is improving immensely they're putting in rules for landlords in terms of insulation levels and some other requirements in terms of heating so it's much better all the newer homes are much better but you know it's gonna take a while to get there because there's still a lot of houses that the heating is you know in my opinion no thank you you know especially with more people like working from home or being home a lot more often like that's really gonna matter because it's just you don't want to be cold like when you're typing and like having I used to have like gloves on that had my fingers coming out to type because it was so cold so yeah and then I mean there's ways around it you can have personal heat they have those hot water things like rubber things that they put on your lap or in your bed and so they have all the things or we could just heat our houses you know where it's more so yeah they're getting here in New Zealand but I just wanted to point out heating is a big difference in addition to the heating another difference is air conditioning like I've never seen an air conditioner here in the US you know we have it really cold in the winter in the Midwest and really hot in the summer and so everybody has an air conditioner at least a window air conditioner in a room so I'm sure that there's parts of New Zealand that would have air conditioning so maybe comment below if you do because I actually don't know this but it's not a common thing because it's just not it's not a tropical climate so it's it's not that hot you know like in the Wellington region you're not gonna get hotter than say 75 78 Fahrenheit here during the summer like you're not getting that 88 90 you know 100 degrees Fahrenheit in New Zealand and so you know so there's no need for the air conditioning so I just want to point out that's another difference air conditioning another difference is screens in windows in New Zealand they don't have all of the bugs so there's no screens in the windows so that was like one thing I really noticed or like a screened-in porch I mean I think I've seen that a little bit but like yeah they don't have like all the but they have bugs but it's not the same level it's not as many bugs so can just imagine living without the screens like people say oh there's annoying you know sand flies and different bugs here in New Zealand it doesn't compare to where I'm from in terms of mosquitoes and just all of the flies and just everything no need for screens in New Zealand so it's really nice you can open your window and it's just like actually you know no screen and having to deal with that so that's a big difference for me another big difference between the housing in New Zealand compared to the US what I've noticed is like the roofing material so in the Midwest anyway in the US I think it's different like in California is asphalt shingles is what generally people use you know and they last 30 years or whatever but here like if I look I'm up on a hill if I look out my window I'm gonna see tile I'm gonna see a lot of the roof tiles clay sheet metal you know more roofing that's more sustainable for a longer period of time and it looks really nice you are gonna see asphalt shingles here in New Zealand not sure that's what you call them here actually but they do have them here but I'm just saying I see them very not very common I don't know I'm just looking down and I'm seeing like a lot of flat roofs and metal roofs and clay tiles and so that's interesting just noticing that the roofing material is quite different another big difference between the housing in US compared to New Zealand is that every house in the neighborhood is a different style like you'll find in the US that they just decide to design a whole development and all the houses look the same and they all maybe have a couple different colors or some of them have an extra bathroom or but essentially when you're driving around that neighborhood it's cookie cutter like they're all the same and that's one of the things I hate about the US and it's not everywhere but there's a lot of big developments everybody has the same exact house or that you know with some small variations and here that's not the case like in my neighborhood every you go walk by every single house not one thing is the same different siding different roofing different style different size different look to it and so totally varies so I can see why you know doing the cookie cutter makes sense for efficiency and getting a lot out very quickly and I'm seeing that more with the new home builds here in New Zealand but like yeah yeah it's everybody was like everything's like a custom design everything is different so I mean you do have things that are more cookie cutter but it's not common like I can just look through the whole family right now and every house is different all right let's talk about basements so in the Midwest basements are a big thing basements are like if you're in a ranch style house which is one story house and you have a basement so you basically double the size of your house so you have a basement underground that is just as big as you know the top and it's like you know people make romp rooms and you know bars and like huge it just adds a lot of square footage to your house now I know that there's states Texas they don't have basements you know there's all the different weather reasons why people do or do not have basements but it's not really a thing here in New Zealand there's a lot of houses that you will enter on you know on the ground floor but then you go down and then like the bedrooms are underneath or you know like that but it's not like talked about like a basement or an extra room and I've seen I've walked through a couple houses that have like extra rooms below but like basements aren't a thing like it's like a whole industry in the US like let me build you your entertainment basement and your man cave and and whatever and so it's not quite the same here now this one isn't totally related to housing the kind of what I really like about New Zealand because we don't have the harsh winters like I'm used to you have blooms all year now I'm sure parts of the US that's the case as well but like for me like I'm not a gardener let's be honest but I do like to have some and then the US in the middle excuse me in the Midwest it didn't always make a lot of sense because you'd the summer would start you would get all your blooms out and then they would all you know just get buried under the snow and you'd have to start all over again in the spring and it just was beautiful I thought like this is a waste of time but here like all year you're popping up other beautiful flowers and and you know things in season fruit trees everywhere and it's just really nice and it's to me way more worth it and so like gardening is a huge thing in New Zealand people are very passionate about gardening there's garden tours gone on them they're amazing what people are doing and it's because it's something that they can develop all year I used to live in a house where the garden was amazing and it was he designed it in a way where like every month every couple weeks all new blooms were coming up in season so you always had something it was just amazing so I appreciate that about New Zealand another thing that you will see in New Zealand homes that aren't as common in the US are clothes lines like almost every house that I've moved into that I've been to have a clothes line because most people hang their clothes outside and that dryers aren't as big of a thing people do have them you know it's just not as common like it just isn't common like even when you go to airbnb is that give you you know some pegs to hang your clothes because like that's where people try their clothes and so in the US there's lots of like subdivisions that don't even allow you to have those because they don't like the look of people's clothes hanging outside or you know that sort of thing so but then there's places that do have it I'm just saying way more common in New Zealand compared to the US and the last big difference that I'm going to mention today is the appliances so like the houses are just going to be smaller in general and so are the appliances people don't buy food in bulk they don't have the need for these huge refrigerators people kind of just buy week to week or day to day and so just smaller refrigerators smaller ovens and it's all fine you know we don't need bigger isn't always better right this is what we're learning and so they just have everything just a scale down a bit very efficient you will always have a electric kettle in a New Zealand home which isn't always popular in the US they do have them a lot of people will boil water in the kettle on the stove as opposed to an electric one in the US but you always will have an electric kettle in a New Zealand home so that's a distinguishing feature but yeah so everything is just a little bit smaller and but still really nice you can still get a really nice house here and it's a different style and a different feel but still really good well I hope you enjoyed the video this week please comment below and let me know some of the differences you've noticed or things that you were like I wish they had this that I'm used to in the US or things that you really have come to appreciate about homes in New Zealand I would love to hear it I will see you guys next week


Good morning, John. You are not eating a credit card's worth of microplastics a week. Now, you might not have been worried about that, but a lot of people are. And that makes sense, because a lot of very credible news organizations have run stories saying that you are eating a credit card's worth of microplastics every week. The fact that this definitely untrue statement was spread in so many legitimate news organizations has been quite annoying to me, but it's also been something of a curiosity to me. Like, these places do fact check. They don't just publish whatever comes across their desk itself. Knowing that it is almost always better to lean into curiosity than frustration, I did that, and what I found is remarkable. This was an 11-step process. Step one, the World Wildlife Fund is worried about plastics, and they should be. There are too many, way too many single-use plastics, and we need to stop this. So, step two, the WWF commissioned a study from the University of Newcastle to do a literature review. Basically, look at a bunch of different studies that measured how plastics might enter people and then add all of those sources up. Every study that they reviewed had a different range. They added all those ranges up, and they came to their own range of 0.1 grams to 5 grams of plastic ingested every week. And this isn't useful data to the average person. It's just too imprecise. It's like saying that the average person eats between 1 pound and 50 pounds of food per day. The WWF then did a normal thing. They used the study they commissioned to create a talking point. People could be consuming 5 grams of microplastics per week. This is not a lie, but it's kind of a misrepresentation. It's kind of misleading. All this happened in 2019, and none of it reached very far, because headlines that said you could be eating a credit card of plastic per week is like, well, I could be eating a thousand spiders per night. Tell me when you're sure. No one wrote that people definitely were eating a credit card's worth of plastic per week until 2022. Why? Step number four, scientists at the Medical University of Vienna were among those who were misled. They took the upper bound of the estimate, the 5 grams, and used it as just a background stat in the introduction to their paper. And when they did that, they removed the context of the lower bound. They didn't say 0.1 grams to 5 grams. They just said 5 grams. It didn't have anything to do with their methodology or what they were studying. It was just a background stat, and that's not really what people paid the most attention to when they're doing peer review. So step six, peer review didn't catch it. Step number seven, that publication then got run through the University PR team, which is tasked with presenting research in ways that might be interesting to the average person and to the press. And unsurprisingly, the very first sentence in that press release was, 5 grams of plastic particles on average entered the human gastrointestinal tract per person per week. Because indeed, if that were true, it would be a very interesting statistic, so you're gonna put it at the beginning of your press release. So now we have a press release of a peer reviewed paper that says that people on average eat a credit card's worth of plastic every week. Step number eight, less than a week later, gutnews.com had found that press release and published a headline containing the claim. Step number nine, that article spread fast enough that the very next day, the New York Post published an article with the claim in the headline. Step number 10, legitimate news outlets saw the New York Post article and they were like, well, we can't just publish that because the New York Post lies for a living, but we will do a fact check, and they did. And they found a peer reviewed paper that contained the claim. Peer reviewed article plus a really great headline, that's gonna be good enough for them. Step number 11, it was a really good headline, so lots of people clicked on it and lots of people shared it, meaning it wasn't just published, it spread. When I first saw this headline, I was super lucky because it was in the New York Post, and I know to be skeptical of the New York Post. But if you saw it first at USA Today, or ABC News, or Nautilus, all totally legitimate news organizations, and if you're like primed by this world to believe that everything is as bad as it could possibly be, I totally understand not being skeptical of that headline. It is kind of wild to me how many steps and how many mistakes were made along the way in order for this false fact to get published in mainstream news outlets. Every person in their own way is trying to make sense of the world, and we would like the sense that we make of the world to be based on reality. But even though we've built up many systems for doing that as individuals and as a society, our own very normal biases and the realities of what it takes to capture people's attention these days makes sense making a monster of a challenge. John, I'll see you on Tuesday.