This was provided about a special meeting of the Calif Traffic Control Devices Committee, an important advisory body to Caltrans. The meeting was about potential trials at expanding experiments at allowing Neighborhood Electric Vehicles (NEV) to operate in Bike Lanes. NEVs are road legal small vehicles resembling gold carts.

Roberta:

I enjoyed the opportunity to provide to the CTCDC the CBAC, CABO and CBC perspectives regarding NEV use that are quite different from those apparently held and promoted by NEV proponents in Lincoln. We are supportive of encouraging the lawful use of NEVs and other clean/green travel modes, but, I hope I successfully made the points that:
1) Allowing motorized vehicles (NEVs) as regular users of bike lanes or worse of shared use bike paths and/or providing additional special lanes for NEV use will contribute to conflicts among all users reducing safety and efficient travel for bicyclists, motorists, pedestrians AND NEV users;
2) Unlike NEV users, slow moving (all) bicyclists are allowed on all roads except some roads (freeways) with limited access. In order to encourage expanded capabilities for use of NEVs it would seem more productive to remove or modify the restrictions on where NEVs may be used so that more roads (all roads?) are open to their use.
So, I understand that you cannot attend the February CBAC meeting to comment but could you provide, perhaps through Ken, any update to where, when, how, who and/or what we can expect in the moving forward of the efforts of the Lincoln and other NEV supporters?
Thanks

Jim Baross

Vice Chair, Calif Bicycle Advisory Committee