Governor Newsom has signed AB 1976 into law, and it's one of the biggest wins yet for safe streets in California.
What you need to know:
AB 1976 (Wicks) is now law. The Safe Streets Streamlining Act, a Streets For All-sponsored bill, was signed on September 27, 2026, and goes into effect on Jan 1, 2027.
Last-minute cancellations now require a real reason. Once a bike or pedestrian project is headed to construction, a city can only cancel it, or remove one that's already built, at a public meeting and with a formal finding explaining why.
Community input moves earlier, where it belongs. Once an approved project reaches 90% design, cities can no longer hold meetings designed solely to delay or stop it.
Safe streets changes no longer need a supermajority resident support. AB 1976 caps traffic-calming petition requirements at a simple majority of people living nearby, a more reasonable standard for getting these projects on the ground.
Pedestrian malls get an exemption from CEQA review.
The problem: death by process
California cities adopt plans that promise safer streets. Residents weigh in at public meetings, and that input shapes the projects that move forward. Then cities award design contracts, pay for the designs, put construction out to bid, and review the bids that come back.
But too often, after years of work, public money, and community input, a project gets reopened at the very last step, and it disappears.
Sometimes it's worse: the project gets built and then torn out. In 2025, Vista installed protected bike lanes across the city, then started ripping out the barriers just a few months later, spending about $200,000 to undo part of a $1.5 million safety project.
And it happens all over the state. These are the kinds of decisions AB 1976 is designed to make harder:
Culver City voted in 2023 to remove bus and bike lanes it had already built.
Encinitas scaled back a $4 million bike lane project after complaints.
Sausalito turned down a half-million-dollar grant for bike lanes on Bridgeway.
Capitola rejected a bike path on Park Avenue.
South El Monte tabled its vote on safer bike lanes.
In West Hollywood, a petition tried to get city council to reverse a project to install bike lanes on Fountain Avenue.
As Urbanism Speakeasy put it, public input can be a death sentence. AB 1976 is how we start changing that.
Cancellations now require a real reason
Under AB 1976, if a city wants to cancel a bike or pedestrian project at the last moment, or remove one that's already built, it has to do it at a public meeting, and make one of two formal findings:
The project's public health impacts or conflicts with other plans outweigh its safety benefits, or
The project can't be funded because of budget constraints.
By the time a project reaches construction, it has been approved into the city's plans, discussed at public meetings, designed under contract, and put out for construction bids. All of that work shouldn't be thrown out at the last step without a good reason.
Cities can still cancel projects. They just have to say why, out loud, at a public meeting.
Community input, at the right time
Community input is essential to good projects. It works best early, when residents' ideas can still shape the design, rather than at the very end, after a project is already moving forward.
In Santa Ana, bikeway improvement plans took three years and 17 separate community meetings. In Los Angeles, the Ohio Avenue bike lanes have spent years in community outreach meetings.
Under AB 1976, once a project reaches 90% design, a city can't hold a town hall or community meeting designed solely to delay or stop it. Cities can still hold meetings about design and implementation details, like construction timing or access for local businesses. They just can't keep reopening the question of whether an approved safety project should exist at all.
Speed humps shouldn't need a supermajority
Many California cities require a supermajority of residents to sign off on safe streets infrastructure before it's installed, and the bar can be quite high:
Laguna Niguel mails every household a ballot, requires 50% turnout, and then requires 67% approval.
Buena Park requires 51% just to submit a request. It then requires approval from 71% of property owners, including 100% of adjacent owners, followed by a study and a final City Council vote.
San Gabriel charges thousands of dollars in application fees on top of requiring 75% approval.
It's hard enough that some residents have tried installing DIY speed bumps in Oakland. The city promptly removed them. The LA Times editorial board and the Sacramento Bee have both covered how broken this system is. Some cities are starting to move in the right direction. Vista has approved resident-requested speed humps, for example.
We don't put airplane safety up for a petition vote. Why do we do it for traffic safety, which kills far more people every year? Even Caltrans' own Traffic Calming Guide points to engineering need, not petition counts: "Based on engineering judgment, traffic calming strategies should be considered whenever there is a need to reduce vehicle speeds and/or traffic volumes on a roadway or roadway network."
Under AB 1976, if a city uses a petition process for traffic calming, it can't require signatures from more than a simple majority of people who live within 1,000 feet of the project. By limiting the threshold to a simple majority, AB 1976 sets a more reasonable standard for getting these projects on the ground. A speed hump shouldn't need sign-off from the whole city, just from the people it actually affects.
Making room for people: pedestrian malls
AB 1976 replaces California's previous pedestrian mall law with a modern version. It also exempts the creation or expansion of pedestrian malls from CEQA review, the state's environmental review process for development projects, which can significantly speed up these projects. From an environmental standpoint, giving street space to people rather than cars is a net positive, and it shouldn't take years of review to make the switch.
When pedestrian malls work, they become some of a city's most beloved places. Take Santa Monica's Third Street Promenade and First Court Promenade, or Mariachi Plaza in Los Angeles. More cities are catching on too. San Mateo voted to make its B Street closure permanent, Santa Barbara permanently pedestrianized State St, Mountain View extended its Castro Street closure with an eye toward keeping it for good, and San Carlos backed closing Laurel Street. Redwood City is now looking at doing the same on Broadway.
And the idea works at every scale, from downtown main streets like Main Street in Riverside, Murphy Avenue in Sunnyvale, and Post Street in San Jose, to neighborhood spaces like the green alley near Avalon and 51st in Los Angeles. Sacramento's K Street is part of that story too, even though parts of it were later reopened to cars.
When they get stuck in process, they stall. Ventura's Main Street Moves has been tied up in legal challenges, including a court effort to bring cars back downtown, and the City Council has taken up reconsidering the project. Plans for a Westwood Village pedestrian mall died decades ago. AB 1976 gives cities a clearer, faster path to make car-free streets permanent.
Thank you to Assemblymember Buffy Wicks for championing this bill, and to every one of you who spoke up for it. Now the work moves to city halls.
Got a bill idea you want to see happen for safe streets in Sacramento? We’re preparing our 2027 bills now, and we’d love to hear from you!