As a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, the Sonoma County Bicycle Coalition cannot endorse candidates for public office, but we are able to share information so that you can arrive at your own conclusion. Below are responses from candidates for state office to our questionnaire on bicycling in Sonoma County. Thanks to the candidates for their time and thoughtful answers!
DAMON CONNOLLY, State Senate District 2
Do you ride a bicycle in Sonoma County for transportation or recreation? How would you characterize the experience of cycling here? Yes. I ride for both transportation and recreation, and biking has long been one of my favorite ways to get around and spend time outdoors. Sonoma County offers exceptional riding, from neighborhood trips to longer recreational routes, but the experience is uneven. Some communities have strong trails and bike facilities, while other corridors still have dangerous gaps, difficult crossings, high-speed traffic, or limited connections to transit. The goal should be a connected network where people of different ages and abilities can feel comfortable riding for everyday trips as well as recreation.
What are your community’s/Sonoma County’s biggest transportation challenges, and how does bicycling fit into your vision of future development? Sonoma County’s biggest transportation challenges include traffic congestion, long travel distances, incomplete connections between communities, limited transit frequency in some areas, and roads that are not always designed safely for people walking or biking. Bicycling should be treated as part of the transportation system, not an afterthought. I support building connected low-stress bike networks, improving safe routes to schools and transit, and making it easier to combine biking with SMART and local bus service so more trips can be made without a car.
If elected, what will you do to improve cycling safety and encourage more people in the county to ride? I would continue prioritizing funding for safe bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, especially projects that close dangerous gaps and connect people to schools, jobs, downtowns, and transit. In the Assembly, I fought proposed cuts to the Active Transportation Program, California’s primary source of funding for walking and biking projects. I also support safer intersection design, protected facilities where appropriate, better maintenance, traffic calming, and focusing resources on high-injury corridors. Encouraging more people to ride starts with making them feel safe.
Our visions and goals are often tempered by available budgets, staff time and public focus. How will you seek to balance improving bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure and safety with your other policy priorities? I do not view bicycle and pedestrian safety as separate from our other priorities. Safer streets can reduce injuries, improve public health, cut emissions, connect people to jobs and transit, and make communities more livable. Given limited resources, I would prioritize projects with the greatest safety and connectivity benefits, pursue state and federal funding aggressively, and look for opportunities to incorporate bike and pedestrian improvements into road maintenance and other transportation projects rather than treating them as stand-alone extras.
Are there any specific projects in your jurisdiction – either planned or imagined – that you are particularly excited to see implemented? I am particularly interested in completing the SMART multi-use pathway so communities along the rail corridor have a continuous north-south bicycle and pedestrian connection. I also want to see projects such as the bicycle and pedestrian overcrossing of Highway 101 near Santa Rosa Junior College, the Southeast Greenway multi-use path, and other gap-closing projects move forward. These are the kinds of investments that can turn individual facilities into a true countywide network.
TIEF GIBBS, State Senate District 2
MICHAEL GREER, State Assembly District 2
CHRIS ROGERS, State Assembly District 2
CECILIA AGUIAR-CURRY, State Assembly District 4
JACKIE ELWARD, State Assembly District 12
Do you ride a bicycle in Sonoma County for transportation or recreation? How would you characterize the experience of cycling here? Like many families in Sonoma County, I rely on a car for most day-to-day trips, especially commuting and family responsibilities. I do bike recreationally, and my family and I regularly walk in our neighborhoods and along local pathways.
Sonoma County has some wonderful places to bike, but the experience can vary dramatically depending on where you are. We have communities with good trails and bicycle infrastructure, but we also have significant gaps where a bike lane or pathway suddenly ends or where people are forced onto roads that do not feel safe for riders of all ages and abilities. That lack of connectivity is one of the biggest barriers to making bicycling a practical transportation option for more people.
I also use transit when it works for the trip, including SMART. Those experiences reinforce something simple for me: when transportation options are safe, connected, and convenient, people use them. Our challenge is making those options available to more people and connecting them into a system that works.
What are your community’s/Sonoma County’s biggest transportation challenges, and how does bicycling fit into your vision of future development? One of Sonoma County’s biggest transportation challenges is that too many people have no practical alternative to driving. Our communities are spread out, many people commute significant distances for work, and gaps in transit, bicycle, and pedestrian infrastructure make it difficult to get between communities without a car, along with safety challenges.
My vision is to give people real choices. That means maintaining the roads and infrastructure we already have while investing more in reliable transit, complete streets, protected bicycle infrastructure, safer routes to schools, and connected walking and biking networks.
SMART provides an important backbone for that system. Completing the SMART pathway and improving safe bicycle and pedestrian connections to stations can make both transit and bicycling more useful. We also need to close gaps between existing local networks so that a person can safely travel beyond an individual neighborhood or city.
At the state level, I support increasing funding for active transportation and shifting our focus away from continually expanding highway capacity and toward maintaining and enhancing existing infrastructure and providing practical alternatives to driving. Bicycling will not replace every car trip in Sonoma County, but if we make it safe and convenient, it can replace many shorter trips and connect more people to transit.
If elected, what will you do to improve cycling safety and encourage more people in the county to ride? If elected, one of my priorities will be helping local communities secure the resources they need to build safer and more connected bicycle infrastructure. I strongly support increasing state funding for the Active Transportation Program, where demand for safety projects has consistently exceeded available funding.
We should prioritize protected bicycle infrastructure where appropriate, safer intersections, complete streets, safe routes to schools, and closing gaps between existing trails and bicycle networks. I also want to strengthen connections to SMART stations so that bicycling and transit work together as a practical alternative to driving.
Safety also requires addressing the changing ways people use our roads and pathways. E-bikes are allowing older adults, commuters, young people, and people who might not otherwise bike longer distances to ride. We should support that while establishing clear and consistent safety standards, particularly for higher-powered devices that fall outside traditional e-bike classifications.
Ultimately, the best way to encourage more people to ride is to make them feel safe doing it. Parents should feel comfortable letting their children bike to school, older residents should feel comfortable using an e-bike, and someone commuting to work should be able to complete the trip without suddenly finding themselves in an unsafe gap in the network.
Our visions and goals are often tempered by available budgets, staff time and public focus. How will you seek to balance improving bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure and safety with your other policy priorities? I do not view bicycle and pedestrian safety as competing with our other priorities. Done well, these investments advance several goals at once. Safer streets protect people, improve access to schools and businesses, connect residents to public transit, reduce emissions, improve health outcomes, and give families more affordable transportation options.
I also recognize that local governments have limited budgets and staff capacity. As a local elected official, I understand the importance of setting priorities and leveraging outside resources. The state can help by providing reliable funding, simplifying access to transportation grants, and helping local governments compete for state and federal dollars rather than leaving communities to shoulder these investments alone.
I strongly support increasing funding for the Active Transportation Program. I also believe we should take a hard look at transportation spending overall. Before spending billions to add highway capacity, we should ask whether some of those resources could produce greater benefits by maintaining what we already have, improving safety, strengthening transit, and completing bicycle and pedestrian networks.
This is ultimately about making smart investments. We should prioritize projects that address documented safety needs, close important gaps, connect people to schools, jobs and transit, and allow limited public dollars to accomplish multiple goals.
Are there any specific projects in your jurisdiction – either planned or imagined – that you are particularly excited to see implemented? Completing the SMART pathway is one of the projects I am most excited about because it has the potential to become a true regional transportation corridor rather than a collection of disconnected segments. Closing the remaining gaps would give residents a safer, more continuous north-south route while also connecting communities directly to SMART stations and transit.
I am also excited about Redwood Bikeshare and the opportunity to make biking a more accessible part of our transportation system. Bikeshare can help solve that first and last mile challenge, especially when bikes are available near SMART stations, downtowns, schools, jobs, and other destinations. Programs like this work best when they are supported by safe infrastructure and connected to the larger transit network.
More broadly, I would like to see us continue closing the gaps between existing bicycle and pedestrian routes throughout Sonoma County. We already have important pieces of the network in place. The next step is connecting them so that someone does not need to be a confident or experienced cyclist to use a bicycle for an everyday trip.
As an Assemblymember, I would work with Sonoma County, local cities, SMART, and regional transportation agencies to help bring state resources back to our district and move these projects from plans on paper to infrastructure people can actually use.
ERIC LUCAN, State Assembly District 12
Do you ride a bicycle in Sonoma County for transportation or recreation? How would you characterize the experience of cycling here? Yes! I ride for recreation, with the family, and for short trips. I used to ride to work too, but that has become more challenging with young kids and school drop-offs.
I also worked in the bike industry for 8 years as the Chief Marketing Officer for Mike’s Bikes. I consciously chose Mike’s Bikes as a place to build a career because it reflected my values and it provided me the opportunity to market and promote the most efficient form of transportation ever created–the bicycle. I remained in that role until my election to Marin County Supervisor.
Sonoma County, much like Marin County, is great for riding (weather, natural beauty, etc), but also provides a first hand view of how the experience can be and should be better.
What are your community’s/Sonoma County’s biggest transportation challenges, and how does bicycling fit into your vision of future development? Emissions, traffic, and cost are 3 of the biggest transportation challenges in Sonoma County and the North Bay–all of which can be addressed through bicycling.
If elected, what will you do to improve cycling safety and encourage more people in the county to ride? California, for all of its leadership on climate change, must do more! In addition to increasing the Active Transportation Program, we also need more requirements for multimodal projects in the first place. Too many times, reducing travel times for cars takes precedence over safety, and separated bike and pedestrian pathways get slated as phase II projects for another day.
We should apply more resources to supporting programs that promote non-fossil transportation options. Nearly 40% of trips in the Netherlands are by bike and that didn’t just happen by accident. There was a concerted effort starting in the 1960’s to prioritize active transportation and it changed a way of life.
50% of greenhouse gas emissions come from the transportation sector. At the same time, many car trips in our communities are 3 miles or less. We must invest in infrastructure to make biking safer and more accessible.
Our visions and goals are often tempered by available budgets, staff time and public focus. How will you seek to balance improving bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure and safety with your other policy priorities? It starts with prioritization of where we want to be in the future, not just the present. Walking and biking accounts for roughly 18% of trips, but the Active Transportation Program is only 1.6% of California’s transportation budget.
Yes, there will continue to be competing interests, but I look forward to bringing my 15 years of experience in local government (Novato City Council, 2011-2022 & Marin County Supervisor, 2022-present) as well as my experience in transportation planning and transit (Current Board Member and past Chair for SMART, Transportation Authority of Marin, and Marin Transit) to the State Assembly. I also come to the table as a cyclist representing a cycling community.
Counties like Marin and Sonoma have been very successful as self-help counties in getting projects shovel ready with local dollars and then competing for state grants like the Active Transportation Program.
Are there any specific projects in your jurisdiction – either planned or imagined – that you are particularly excited to see implemented? Yes – I am most excited about the completion and continued expansion of the SMART Pathway. Along with my board colleagues on SMART, we have prioritized the pathway as one of our 4 pillars and have funded the preliminary design for the remaining gaps in the pathway to position SMART to compete for grants to construct the segments.