Alameda recently celebrated earning gold status as a bike-friendly city—but if you spend any time riding here, you know we still have plenty of work to do. Case in point: we just took second place in March Bike Lane Obstruction Madness, the annual bracket run by Bike Lane Uprising.
Alameda shot past UC Davis, San Jose, Fort Collins, Denver, and Boston before ultimately losing to Moreno Valley in the final round. Not exactly a podium finish we should be proud of.
And the uncomfortable truth? It wasn’t hard.
Many of us were new to the Bike Lane Uprising app—but once we downloaded it, the process was straightforward. Finding violations was even easier. Most of us know where the hotspots are in Alameda. In fact, Bike Walk Alameda did counts earlier this year along Park Street and found that between 5:30 and 7:00pm, there were on average 15+ obstructions every 30 minutes! Other times of the day aren’t as ’productive’, but still see many violations.
Here’s a subset: the reports on Park Street at Park Street Station, with one of the submissions highlighted to show details, a handy feature of the app:
Why Keep Reporting?
Even though the competition is over, the work isn’t. We strongly encourage everyone to keep using the Bike Lane Uprising app.
SeeClickFix is the tool to use for reporting things like potholes, signal issues, and near misses. But when it comes specifically to bike lane obstructions, Bike Lane Uprising offers some clear advantages:
- Built for bike lane issues: Bike Lane Uprising is designed specifically for documenting bike lane obstructions. Everything—from submission flow to data visualization—is tailored to this problem.
- Richer, more actionable data: Users can upload photos, license plates, timestamps, and even company affiliations. This enables the creation of heatmaps, trend analyses, and identification of repeat offenders—turning isolated reports into meaningful patterns that support advocacy and enforcement.
- A centralized, nationwide database: Every report contributes to a shared dataset spanning cities across North America. That broader view helps advocates and planners demonstrate the scale of the issue and push for better infrastructure and policies.
- Real advocacy impact: This data doesn’t just sit in a queue. It’s actively used to engage companies, inform city agencies, influence elected officials, support enforcement efforts and even legal action. One notable initiative involves notifying companies whose vehicles are reported, helping educate fleet drivers and reduce repeat violations.
- Simple and fast to use: The app automatically extracts key metadata like location and time from a photo—meaning you can submit a report in seconds whenever and wherever you want, as long as you have a photo.
Looking Ahead
Bike Lane Uprising has built something genuinely powerful. Last month, we were fortunate to host its founder, Christina Whitehouse, here in Alameda, to hear her speak about the organization’s scrappy origins and ambitious future.
Let’s give her a better reason to come back!
If, a year from now, our bike lanes are clearer and safer, maybe we can trade our “almost champions” status for something really worth celebrating—and show off a city that better lives up to its bike-friendly reputation.
