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Car Lite San Mateo

@carlitesanmateo.com
204 followers 440 following 498 posts

Getting around the suburbs of San Francisco with one car and too many electric bikes www.carlitesanmateo.com

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Reposted by Car Lite San Mateo
CalBike @calbike.bsky.social · 22h
Good news: Governor Newsom signed SB 1167! Authored by Senator Catherine Blakespear and co-sponsored by CalBike, the new law draws a clear line between legal e-bikes and high-powered electric devices too often marketed as e-bikes.
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Car Lite San Mateo @carlitesanmateo.com · 16h
This bill was just signed by the Governor! "Expanding the Speed Safety System Pilot to include PCH in Long Beach is a commonsense way to improve road safety on a corridor that represents an outsized number of serious crashes but was not included in the pilot." sd33.senate.ca.gov/news/senator...
sd33.senate.ca.gov
Senator Lena Gonzalez’s Bill to Improve Safety on the Pacific Coast Highway in Long Beach Signed Into Law
Senator Lena A. Gonzalez represents the Southeast Los Angeles County cities of California's 33rd Senate District.
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Car Lite San Mateo @carlitesanmateo.com · 21h
The first protected intersection I know of in San Mateo is out to bid this morning! It connects to unprotected lanes and sharrows for now, but it's a good step. The intersection has a stop sign today, so it's promising to see the city use a signal upgrade project to add quality bike infrastructure.
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Reposted by Car Lite San Mateo
Streets For All @streetsforall.org · 22h
Breaking news: SB 1167 has been signed into law! 🎉 This bill draws a clear line between legal e-bikes and faster, more powerful motor vehicles, and makes it harder for companies to market motorcycles and mopeds as “e-bikes.”
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Car Lite San Mateo @carlitesanmateo.com · 29/09/2026
The case for the 76ers forcing LeBron to take the train is pretty strong. 165x the fatal crash risk to save ~20 minutes a trip. Not sure if these commute times are perfect, lots of assumptions here. Still, it's wild how unsafe helicopters are yet they seem common for ultra-wealthy folks.
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Reposted by Car Lite San Mateo
mmautner @maxmautner.com · 29/09/2026
As I was writing this blogpost, I was thinking about how drastically I am underestimating the average American's experience with traffic violence--I knew several dead by the time I was 18: maxmautner.com/2026/09/28/w...
maxmautner.com
When we talk about traffic violence
By 40, ~79% of Americans have lost someone they know to a crash. Most would trade faster driving for safer streets if someone asked them.
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Car Lite San Mateo @carlitesanmateo.com · 28/09/2026
Be careful out there on your bike. If you're riding a legal e-bike and hit by a car you might be blamed for anything after that point. This framing will continue to be repeated and it's maddening. The ND comment is wild in general but especially wild to blame a child for riding their bike legally.
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Car Lite San Mateo @carlitesanmateo.com · 26/09/2026
Walk to your local post office, you might see a new mail truck!
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Car Lite San Mateo @carlitesanmateo.com · 26/09/2026
This is one of the paths that enables me to efficiently walk from my neighborhood to the local post office. I really wish pedestrian connectivity was a higher priority around here. Every few months these get “fixed” by the property owner and then it gets re-fixed to look like this.
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Car Lite San Mateo @carlitesanmateo.com · 25/09/2026
@samtrans.com these would help a bunch in speeding up the ECR!
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Reposted by Car Lite San Mateo
jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 21/09/2026
this is a bit of an obsession of mine especially here in charlottesville. the cost of commercial real estate is prohibitive if you want to experiment and the city seems categorically opposed to small lots and small units that could allow people to start businesses without a huge capital investment
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Reposted by Car Lite San Mateo
Ben Raderstorf @raders.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
This year legislators introduced a slate of 17 bills intended to close California’s “license to kill” system of loopholes for dangerous driving and repeat offenders. Almost all of them failed: calmatters.org/tag/license-... @calmatters.org
calmatters.org
License to Kill
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Reposted by Car Lite San Mateo
mmautner @maxmautner.com · 18/09/2026
The story: maxmautner.com/2026/09/17/s...
maxmautner.com
A stop sign for $1,000
3 crashes at one intersection, photographed on my way to work. The all-way stop went in 178 days after I sent the city a notice of dangerous condition.
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Reposted by Car Lite San Mateo
David Weiskopf believes in you @dave.bzky.team · 14/09/2026
A statistic that haunts me because it is 100% true and shocking and useless in advocacy precisely because it is true and shocking: Policy that enables a 1-car lifestyle rather than 2 is equivalent to giving a family a $25,000 annual pay raise.
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Car Lite San Mateo @carlitesanmateo.com · 15/09/2026
There was a San Mateo grand jury report calling this type of behavior out specifically and the City of San Mateo responded that it wasn’t an issue. It’s super frustrating when this plays out and the police refuse to report anything 🤬
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Car Lite San Mateo @carlitesanmateo.com · 09/09/2026
Great example of the effectiveness of raised crosswalks. Wish this was a more common solution in California. I do see them around but they need to be more common with how effective they are.
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Reposted by Car Lite San Mateo
Brandon @bedubble.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Honestly if most households just had *a* family car and relied on anything else (walking, bike, bus, train) for their other mode we’d be in a much better world. The issue is where we have a 1:1 ratio of cars to household members 16+
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Car Lite San Mateo @carlitesanmateo.com · 09/09/2026
I’m a firm believer in the huge upside of e-bikes enabling families to drop a car. Going from two to one car or three to two is much more possible for the average family than going car free.
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Car Lite San Mateo @carlitesanmateo.com · 09/09/2026
This is not the parking reform we need. I can’t believe this made it into a real discussion about parking 🤦‍♂️
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Reposted by Car Lite San Mateo
mmautner @maxmautner.com · 03/09/2026
Only 5-6% of Californians blame roadway collisions on roadway design as most important factor. Human error & lack of enforcement is the majority choice (source is CA office of transportation safety, 2005 survey). The reality is that the electorate are not traffic engineers:
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Reposted by Car Lite San Mateo
Streets For All @streetsforall.org · 29/08/2026
✅ SENT TO THE GOVERNOR: SB 1167 by Sen Blakespear that cracks down on high-powered “e-motos” being sold as e-bikes, changes ebike labelling, and makes sellers disclose when a vehicle is in fact an actual a motor vehicle.
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Reposted by Car Lite San Mateo
Gravel Influencer @gravelinfluencer.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Once again, the "difference of opinion" is that one side wants to be able to bike without dying and the other side wants to park wherever they want. It's incredible to reference the Civil Rights Movement while fighting to uphold the oppression of car dependency.
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Reposted by Car Lite San Mateo
Patrick Siegman @siegman.biz · 27/08/2026
New York City could fix this by adopting three reforms. Doing so would make curb parking readily available on every block, and raise millions of dollars to improve public services.
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Car Lite San Mateo @carlitesanmateo.com · 26/08/2026
More safety coming to more places soon! www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/b...
nbclosangeles.com
Bill allowing speed cameras on PCH in Long Beach heads to governor
Legislation that would allow Long Beach to install two speed cameras along Pacific Coast Highway is headed to Gov. Gavin Newsom.
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Car Lite San Mateo @carlitesanmateo.com · 26/08/2026
Curious to see how this all plays out in practice. Making small traffic calming changes and then iterating and hardening can be so impactful and cheap. I hope Seattle is setting a new normal that other cities can follow! southseattleemerald.org/news/2026/08...
southseattleemerald.org
Wilson Speeds Up Safety Projects on Some of South Seattle's Most Dangerous Streets
After years of community pressure, Seattle is accelerating traffic-calming projects in South Seattle — and promising safer streets, better crossings, and more equitable investments.
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Reposted by Car Lite San Mateo
Dr Grace S Peng @gspeng.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Why are ebikes blamed, & that teens be banned from riding ebikes? A teen driving a SUV killed the small child! Why not propose banning teens from driving SUVs? If the SUV teen was riding an ebike, it would have been a minor injury between two ebike riders. All 3 children would be alive & well today
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Reposted by Car Lite San Mateo
Dr Grace S Peng @gspeng.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
@calmatters.org You need to retract this story, apologize and write another story explaining the real facts with data. That road deaths doubled in 15 years, with the increase in prevalence of SUVs, taller/blunter hoods, fatter A pillars, faster acceleration. Interview real road safety experts
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Car Lite San Mateo @carlitesanmateo.com · 22/08/2026
Watched some Premier League matches this morning and the ability of English announcer to weave together phrasing like “He plays like a possessed hamster in the middle” in a positive and interesting way is so fun to listen to. They must have a sports poet society that we’re missing in the US.
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Car Lite San Mateo @carlitesanmateo.com · 22/08/2026
The connection of this 11-yr-old to this tragic incident is so unfair. They were legally riding a legal e-bike, hit by a car, and now are repeatedly accused of being the cause of this tragedy. Shameful reporting by @calmatters.org. I hope this kid has a good support system to work through this.
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Reposted by Car Lite San Mateo
Gravel Influencer @gravelinfluencer.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
A common rebuttal to speed cameras is that we should just redesign streets to slow people down. We should! But roads in cities across the US have been built to allow suburban commuters to drive as fast as possible. It will take time to undo that damage, and we know cameras work to slow down drivers.
Rowan said part of the reason for that is that many of Oakland’s streets are built in a way that encourages speeding.

“ In Oakland we have a lot of local streets that are built to highway standards. They’re wide, straight and fast,” he added.

Rowan’s theory is that Oakland is a “through” city: “that people use to get from point a to point b.” So his discovery that a majority of speeders have a registered address outside Oakland was an “aha” moment for him.Cameras issued nearly 200,000 citations — and more than half were mailed to an address outside of Oakland — the six-month progress report on the program revealed.

The report finds that the number of vehicles traveling 11 miles per hour or more over the speed limit dropped by an average of 70% across all 18 camera locations — which fall in the city’s high injury network — compared to speed data collected before the cameras were installed.
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Car Lite San Mateo @carlitesanmateo.com · 20/08/2026
I wish we could have these nice things in San Mateo
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Reposted by Car Lite San Mateo
Jeffrey Tumlin 🏳️‍🌈 🌁 @jeffreytumlin.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
"Motorists going at least 11 mph over the speed limit fell by 70%" Most cited motorists received a single citation then stopped speeding. Speed safety cameras work. www.sfchronicle.com/eastbay/arti...
sfchronicle.com
Oakland installed new automated speed cameras. Drivers’ behavior changed dramatically
A new report shows that drivers are slowing down significantly on what have been some of the city’s most dangerous roads.
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Car Lite San Mateo @carlitesanmateo.com · 19/08/2026
This stance is common on Nextdoor but isn’t backed by studies or the eye test. I asked the city for anonymized sales tax data to compare our ped mall to the parking-heavy 25th and 42nd Ave areas. No luck yet, but hopefully someday.
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Car Lite San Mateo @carlitesanmateo.com · 17/08/2026
Zooming in on San Mateo, this story doesn't change. The city has published GHG data since 2005, and its own plan states "in all years, the on-road transportation sector is the largest source of emissions." Yet the city keeps compromising its Bike Master Plan for parking and vehicle access.
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Car Lite San Mateo @carlitesanmateo.com · 17/08/2026
San Mateo's residential parking permit program has no price, no cap, and no way to adjust when a street fills up. I laid out my thoughts on where it fails and why. Check it out! www.carlitesanmateo.com/blog/residen...
carlitesanmateo.com
Free Permits, Full Streets
The city's permit program has no price, no cap, and no way to respond when a street fills up
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Car Lite San Mateo @carlitesanmateo.com · 16/08/2026
A bill to put speed cameras on Long Beach's most dangerous stretch is moving forward. SF saw speeding fall ~72% under the same pilot. Every CA city council that wants safer streets should be pushing their state legislators for this. www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/b...
nbclosangeles.com
Bill to allow speed cameras on PCH in Long Beach advances
Legislation that would allow Long Beach to install speed cameras along Pacific Coast Highway cleared a key Assembly committee and is headed to the Assembly floor for a vote, it was announced today.
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Reposted by Car Lite San Mateo
Parking Reform Network @parkingreform.org · 12/08/2026
Myth: Parking minimums just make sure there is “enough parking.” Reality: Required parking is never free. It shows up in higher rents, higher construction costs, bigger lots, longer walks, and less room for homes, shops, trees, sidewalks, and public life.
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Car Lite San Mateo @carlitesanmateo.com · 12/08/2026
The Burlingame PD determined the e-bike was being operated legally and the vehicle pulled out in front of them without space for the e-bike to react. Seems like an important detail that is missing here @rwcpulse.com www.rwcpulse.com/san-mateo-co...
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Car Lite San Mateo @carlitesanmateo.com · 12/08/2026
Meanwhile the City of San Mateo is pending a proposal from staff on where they need to RAISE speed limits so SMPD can legally write tickets. Well done, Emeryville!
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Car Lite San Mateo @carlitesanmateo.com · 12/08/2026
A 19 year old confused the brake for the gas on their 4,000 lb SUV and killed a 4-year old playing on the sidewalk. Because there was a legal e-bike riding legally in the street the county has decided to regulate e-bikes. www.smdailyjournal.com/news/local/s...
smdailyjournal.com
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Reposted by Car Lite San Mateo
mmautner @maxmautner.com · 10/08/2026
A sober appraisal of a 50-year trend: maxmautner.com/2026/08/08/w...
maxmautner.com
If there’s a war on cars in the USA then the cars have won
American vehicles have grown heavier, faster, and wider every decade since 1982 — and federal fuel economy rules reward the growth. Evidence from 50 years of EPA data.
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Car Lite San Mateo @carlitesanmateo.com · 09/08/2026
The local Nextdoor discussion of "slower traffic keep right" equaling "anyone driving under 80 get out of my way" is a wild exploration of how normalized breaking the law is when driving. "I have places to be so I'm allowed to break the law. Also, it's fun!"
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Car Lite San Mateo @carlitesanmateo.com · 07/08/2026
We've found the fix for road safety. Drive faster and stay out of the way of important people like this.
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Car Lite San Mateo @carlitesanmateo.com · 07/08/2026
Santa Ana wants speed cameras to make their streets safer. A councilmember asked: "Why would we hesitate to bring those sorts of results to the streets here?" Every CA councilmember should be asking this given results in cities already allowed to roll this out. www.ocregister.com/2026/08/06/s...
ocregister.com
Santa Ana will ask state for OK to launch speed camera pilot
Santa Ana will ask California lawmakers to amend AB 645 so the city can join six other cities participating in a speed safety camera pilot program.
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Reposted by Car Lite San Mateo
Robert Prinz @prinzrob.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
This is the way, crack down on manufacturers & distributors to take already illegal e-devices off the market entirely. Here in CA @robbonta.bsky.social has started w Amazon, but we need to go further.
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Car Lite San Mateo @carlitesanmateo.com · 04/08/2026
Roundabouts can’t catch a break. Investigation into why a helicopter was on the Cabela’s parking lot determined it was "just a unique way to make a shopping trip to avoid all the roundabouts in front of Cabela's." www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/w...
nbcchicago.com
Wisconsin man flies helicopter to Cabela's, because the drive was 'too long'
Sheriff's deputies in one Wisconsin community recently responded to a one-of-a-kind parking complaint.
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Car Lite San Mateo @carlitesanmateo.com · 04/08/2026
Great report from @calbike.bsky.social on electric mobility in CA Highlights: - E-Bikes belong on our roads - The core problem is e-motos (and equivalent scooters/one-wheels) - Manufacturer accountability is the most promising lever Give the full report a read here: www.calbike.org/ciemc/
calbike.org
California Independent Electric Mobility Council
E-bikes can make longer trips, hills, cargo hauling, and riding with children possible for people who might not otherwise use a bicycle. They also provide an affordable transportation option for Calif...
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Car Lite San Mateo @carlitesanmateo.com · 29/07/2026
Not sure which post to highlight more so just read the whole thread.
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Gravel Influencer @gravelinfluencer.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
This is one of the best things I've read in a while about the psychology of car supremacy, and how those of us who even *question* it are viewed as heretics. Thanks to @pflax1.bsky.social for sending this my way.
medium.com
We Don’t Have a Culture of Convenience in North America. We Have a CULT of Convenience.
And you can tell the difference by what happens when you question it.
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Car Lite San Mateo @carlitesanmateo.com · 29/07/2026
Not a lot going on tonight so obviously spending my free time listening to a Berkely council meeting on implementing protected bike lanes and I'm shocked that sharrows are being discussed in a serious manner. This is exhausting.
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