Virginia Legislation Action Thread

[Mark Blacknell]

Hi, all. I thought it would be helpful to start a new thread that summarizes the state of play for the various bits of legislation working its way through the General Assembly in Richmond. I’ll lead off with WABA’s Action Alert for today’s items, and then follow up with a post about other pending items.

Today:

Please Act Now to Support SB 1060 and Oppose SB 731 in the Virginia Senate

The Virginia Senate Transportation Committee will consider two bicycle-related bills on Wednesday afternoon (1/23/13). We need you to respectfully ask the Senate Transportation Committee members to:

1) Support SB 1060, Reeves, which would prohibit motorists from rear-ending or side-swiping bicyclists (i.e., following bicyclists too closely or passing bicyclists with less than a 3-foot gap).

2) Oppose SB 731, Carrico, which would prohibit riding mopeds on highways with speed limits above 35 MPH. If moped riding is banned, bicycling may be next!
You can identify and contact your state legislators from the Who’s My Legislator page.
If your Senator is listed below, call or email them directly – constituent calls really matter. Otherwise, you may call or email all three committee members from NoVA or bulk email the entire 14-member committee by simply copying the email addresses on this page and pasting them into your email’s To: field.

Senate Transportation Committee Members from NoVA

* Sen. Barbara Favola (D-31st District), [URL=”tel:804-698-7531″]804-698-7531[/URL], <district31@senate.virginia.gov>
* Sen. Dave Marsden (D-37th District), [URL=”tel:804-698-7537″]804-698-7537[/URL], <district37@senate.virginia.gov>
* Sen. Chuck Colgan (D-29th District), [URL=”tel:804-698-7529″]804-698-7529[/URL], <district29@senate.virginia.gov>

Thank you for acting on very short notice to improve bicycling in Virginia. Unfortunately, bills move swiftly at the Virginia General Assembly, and we only learned yesterday afternoon that these bill would be heard today. If the Senate Transportation Committee reports these bill today, they will be considered by the full Senate in just a few days. Please check our blog for regular updates – we’ll try not too email you too frequently.

Due to the response to our recent action alerts, the Virginia Senate has already passed SB 736 (prohibits dooring), whereas the House Transportation Committee has passed HB 1950 (prohibits rear-ending bicyclists) with a 20-1 vote.

I cannot emphasize enough now much of a difference actual constituent contact makes on these matters. We turned some votes last year with them, and have again this year. We need that to keep happening. Please feel free to cut, paste, and forward to your friends and relatives who don’t read the forum.

Finally, the General Assembly makes it difficult to get notice of what’s on the docket in a timely manner, unfortunately, so if communications/action alerts seem a bit rushed and disjointed, well . . . there are many things I’d like to fix about Richmond. But let’s start with getting better bike legislation out of them.

Topic

[Mark Blacknell]

It appears that SB1060 was stripped of its three foot passing provision, but the portion prohibiting a vehicle from following another vehicle (bikes included) too closely survived the House Transportation Subcommittee meeting this morning. I do not yet know the vote count. I believe that the next time SB1060 will be heard is in the full House Transportation committee *next* week.

Edit: the original version of this post passed along incorrect information about the exact nature of the amendment. The prohibition on following now reads to as vehicle v. vehicle. That is to say, it could be bike v. bike. Which, if left to the interpretation of a particularly aggressive LEO, could conceivably be read as prohibiting drafting. It is the opinion of one long-time VA House observer that one legislator very much plans to push that interpretation to his local law enforcement.

[Mark Blacknell]

@sjclaeys 43749 wrote:

Great, the anti-dooring law does not get passed and prospects for the 3 foot/following too closely bill do not look great, but Favola’s cycling harassment bill goes through. How does she defend sponsoring this ill considered legislation?

Not very well, I’d say. Her view is that it’s about safety, and Loudoun County told her it was needed for safety and that’s good enough for her. She was very well aware that “the bicyclists don’t like the bill.” Aside from suggesting that we all get in touch with Loudoun County (and every other jurisdiction that decides to act on this authority), she declined to substantively address or fix any of the other issues raised by us.

[eminva]

@Mark Blacknell 43772 wrote:

Not very well, I’d say. Her view is that it’s about safety, and Loudoun County told her it was needed for safety and that’s good enough for her. She was very well aware that “the bicyclists don’t like the bill.” Aside from suggesting that we all get in touch with Loudoun County (and every other jurisdiction that decides to act on this authority), she declined to substantively address or fix any of the other issues raised by us.

When I wrote to oppose the bill, I made note of the many flaws in the drafting of the legislation that will make it largely ineffective in solving the problem it purports to address. I suggested holding off at the present to craft something more finely tuned in the future. But bad statutory drafting is not a problem limited to the Commonwealth’s legislative bodies, so what should I expect.

A huge thanks to Mark for all his efforts, as well as our friendly legislators (Del. Lopez, Chap Peterson, others?) — and I might know some bike loving Republicans, so let me get them energized for the next go round.

Liz

[dasgeh]

I am extremely disappointed in Favola. What good is having her represent us in Richmond if she cow-tows to Loudon? I believe public statements are in order. Which would be more effective – Gazette? Patch?

[mstone]

@dasgeh 43782 wrote:

I am extremely disappointed in Favola. What good is having her represent us in Richmond if she cow-tows to Loudon? I believe public statements are in order. Which would be more effective – Gazette? Patch?

Look at her district map and blame the state legislature for gerrymandering. It probably started as her trying to find something to give the loudon end of her district to try to keep the seat that’s being attacked in richmond. We will get screwed and it won’t really help her because I can’t believe that sticking it to the cyclists will really buy her that many votes, but she figured it was worth a shot. She may even realize at this point that it’s stupid, but she’s gone too far to back down now.

[Mark Blacknell]

A couple of points:

1) To the best of my knowledge, Loudoun County brought this to her. It was something they wanted enough to have their lobbyist work on it (and they sent a deputy down as a (ultimately unused) witness, early on).

2) I believe that, at the start, she quite genuinely saw it as a fairly uncontroversial bill that could improve safety.

[mstone]

@Mark Blacknell 43788 wrote:

A couple of points:

1) To the best of my knowledge, Loudoun County brought this to her. It was something they wanted enough to have their lobbyist work on it (and they sent a deputy down as a (ultimately unused) witness, early on).

2) I believe that, at the start, she quite genuinely saw it as a fairly uncontroversial bill that could improve safety.

I am so incredibly frustrated that (AFAICT) there is no record of why the existing law is insufficient. If this is a safety issue, why isn’t Loudon issuing tickets for entering the crosswalk in disregard of traffic?

[Mark Blacknell]

@mstone 43790 wrote:

If this is a safety issue, why isn’t Loudon issuing tickets for entering the crosswalk in disregard of traffic?

This is an excellent question. When I asked this (several times, of a number of people) it was answered by noting that the Commonwealth’s Attorney in Loudoun is of the opinion that the trail-facing stop signs are not enforceable as regular stop signs, and that this needed to be fixed.

And if you noticed some gaps between the question and the response, well, yes.

~

There’s a longer post-mortem to be written on this, of course, but it’s just not something I can do right now.

[Mark Blacknell]

Please see my update above, correcting earlier misinformation about SB1060. (Can we do strike-through, here? I’d have preferred to do that over simply deleting the old stuff, but I didn’t want to leave any room for misunderstanding.)

[sjclaeys]

@Mark Blacknell 43792 wrote:

Please see my update above, correcting earlier misinformation about SB1060. (Can we do strike-through, here? I’d have preferred to do that over simply deleting the old stuff, but I didn’t want to leave any room for misunderstanding.)

If it is now the case that SB1060 will be used by law enforcement as an excuse to ticket cyclists drafting, then I do not see why it should get any support from the cycling community.

[mstone]

@sjclaeys 43793 wrote:

If it is now the case that SB1060 will be used by law enforcement as an excuse to ticket cyclists drafting, then I do not see why it should get any support from the cycling community.

I did say that fighting the stop sign thing was more important than trying to get something–because we’re not going to get anything from this legislature. The best we can hope for is to keep things from getting worse. (And it seems at this point that’s not going to happen this time.)

[Mark Blacknell]

@sjclaeys 43793 wrote:

If it is now the case that SB1060 will be used by law enforcement as an excuse to ticket cyclists drafting, then I do not see why it should get any support from the cycling community.

I invite more discussion of this point. On one hand, I’d personally welcome the opportunity to explain that there’s nothing about drafting that puts it outside of the “reasonable and prudent” language of the proposed law. On the other, we just made the argument that failing to precisely define “stop”, for fear of local and unreasonable interpretations, was one of (many) flaws for SB959.

[lordofthemark]

@sjclaeys 43793 wrote:

If it is now the case that SB1060 will be used by law enforcement as an excuse to ticket cyclists drafting, then I do not see why it should get any support from the cycling community.

well to be completely selfish A. I doubt that LE in Fairfax, Alex, or Arlington (the Va jurisdictions where I bike) will give tickets to cyclists for drafting B. The roads around where I live are pretty sparse in cyclists to begin with, its not like theres a lot of drafting anyway.

I’d gladly trade that for some due care by cars tailgating cyclists.

I understand that may well be different for other cyclistrs, in other parts of the Commonwealth.

And I certainly admit to having been over optimistic about getting something from this legislature. I thought the dooring bill had a pretty good chance, if only cause motorists who don’t like us to take the lane would rather we ride in the door zone.

[Mark Blacknell]

SB1060 was reported out of the House Transportation Committee this morning, with a 14-3 vote. Voting against were Dels. Cosgrove, Cox, and Rust. The bill will now face a vote by the full House.

Here’s a bit of Washington Post coverage about how SB736 went down, with a quote or two by yours truly.

[creadinger]

@Mark Blacknell 43865 wrote:

Here’s a bit of Washington Post coverage about how SB736 went down, with a quote or two by yours truly.

And as always – do NOT read the comments. The trolls are out in force today for some reason.

[Author]

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