REGION — State Sen. Catherine Blakespear’s “gut-and-amend” bike infrastructure bill is drawing both praise and pushback, with supporters touting safer cycling routes and critics calling it a state intrusion into local decision-making.
Blakespear, who served as Encinitas mayor from 2016 to 2022, amended Senate Bill 569 on June 11 through a controversial legislative process known as “gut-and-amend,” replacing the bill’s contents with a subject unrelated to the original contents of the bill.
The original version of SB 569, which the Encinitas City Council voted to support, initially required Caltrans to work more closely with cities to help speed up the removal of homeless encampments. Under the amended bill, infrastructure separating bikeways from vehicle traffic could not be removed without a public review overseen by a licensed engineer and an evaluation of safety and connectivity.
Blakespear told The Coast News the bill would fill a gap in state code by requiring the same level of analysis to remove bicycle infrastructure that was required to build it in the first place.
Encinitas Mayor Bruce Ehlers, who advocates for local control, told The Coast News the bill is a “one-size-fits-all Sacramento solution” that would make it harder for cities to improve bicycle infrastructure, including overhauling recently completed improvements along Santa Fe Drive and changes to Coast Highway 101 near the Encinitas-Solana Beach border.
SB 569 is scheduled to be heard by the Assembly Transportation Committee on June 29.
Ehlers said he would likely travel to the state Capitol to testify against the bill.
“It’s that important,” he said. “This is crazy.”
Support for SB 569
Kendra Ramsey, executive director of the California Bicycle Coalition, authored a letter signed by 34 transportation, land-use, bicycle safety and community organizations supporting the bill.
The letter cited projects in Culver City, San Mateo and Vista, arguing the legislation would improve safety statewide “by establishing a clear and transparent process for any local agency that may decide to remove a bikeway after it has been installed.”
Some signatories, including Ecology Action and Streets For All, take a statewide approach, while others, such as SanDiego350 and the San Diego County Bicycle Coalition, have a more local focus.
Ramsey told The Coast News the California Bicycle Coalition has worked with Blakespear on several bicycle safety measures, including SB 1167, which applies to e-bikes.
Ramsey said the proposed legislation is intended to prevent bikeway projects from being removed “due to either changes in leadership over time or political backlash.”
She said physical barriers improve safety and help ensure roadway users feel protected.
“I am much less comfortable being close to fast-moving traffic,” Ramsey said. “We all deserve to feel safe and to have a facility that helps us feel that we’re safe on the roadway. The goal of putting in better, safer bike facilities is always to make sure that we are all making it home safe.”
She added that experienced cyclists who prefer riding with traffic are free to do so under state law, but that infrastructure separating cyclists from automobile traffic improves safety for a large segment of the cycling community.
“We’re not designing for NASCAR drivers,” Ramsey said. “We’re designing for the everyday person who’s riding a bicycle for transportation.”
Ramsey said the “gut and amend” process was “not anyone’s first solution,” but argued the Santa Fe Drive project could not wait until the next legislative session. Blakespear helped secure $3 million in state funding for the current roadway configuration in front of San Dieguito Academy and has lobbied local officials to pursue smaller modifications rather than a complete redesign.
When asked about the Santa Fe Drive project, Blakespear said she had seen plans “to move forward with an expensive removal of safe bicycle infrastructure outside of the city’s largest public high school,” but said the “gut and amend” approach was used to address what she described as an urgent statewide issue.
Blakespear said that “bills take a while to develop,” so “if you have a problem and you can figure out a solution, and you have support for it, time is of the essence.”
“There’s no reason to wait,” she said.
She added that the gap in current law could be filled by establishing a uniform safety standard for changes to bikeway infrastructure. The bill, she said, would require professional public review — “expertise matters” — to prioritize safety over emotion.
“The bill requires that a licensed engineer find that any proposed changes won’t increase crash risk or reduce safe connectivity,” Blakespear said. “And that’s a standard that I think everybody should agree and would agree is a good one for designing public roads. The process needs to be more robust. There needs to be a safety review and public notice of the consequences.”
She said the added review would “not add substantially” to project costs and would bring removals up to the same standards required for installation.
“Right now we have a system where anybody can claim anything,” Blakespear said. “The idea that because a city council member says it and it’s their opinion, and they did their own back-of-the-napkin design of a road, that’s just not a legitimate way to design a public road.”
Opposition to SB 569
Local organizations and elected officials have pushed back on both the policy and the process used to introduce the bill, which many have expressed is targeted at the Santa Fe Drive Improvements Project in Encinitas.
In November 2025, the Encinitas City Council voted to remove controversial features along a stretch of Santa Fe Drive, redoing a completed overhaul at an estimated cost of more than $3 million.
Earlier this year, the City Council approved a $459,398 design contract with Michael Baker International for the planned redo of the infrastructure project, including converting some separated bike lanes into Class II lanes.
A letter submitted to the Assembly Transportation Committee by the Carlsbad-based Equitable Land Use Alliance argued that while the bill is “presumably well-intentioned,” it “would actually endanger many cyclists and be an inappropriate overreach of the state into the affairs of all local agencies.”
ELUA argued that removing bike lanes is an issue specific to Encinitas and that “there is no evidence that there is a statewide emergency arising from local agencies removing or reducing physical bikeway separations.”
The letter, authored by Steve Linke, contends the legislation would create “onerous requirements” that prevent cities from pursuing solutions tailored to local conditions and could encourage jurisdictions to remove physical infrastructure before the bill takes effect.
It also questioned the methodology of a study cited in the bill’s fact sheet that found a more than 50% reduction in crashes after physical separators were installed.
According to the letter, the analysis excluded all crashes involving vehicles occurring within 250 feet of intersections, leading to “the very limited conclusion” regarding “mid-block crashes with vehicles” in a single city rather than broader findings applicable elsewhere.
The California Association of Bicycling Organizations, or CABO, also issued a statement advocating for “local control over local issues” rather than a statewide mandate, citing the unique and complex nature of municipal roadway design decisions and noting injuries to cyclists on South Coast Highway 101.
“SB 569 creates unnecessary and costly hurdles for local governments, forcing them to overcome significant bureaucratic obstacles to remove infrastructure elements they have determined cause more problems than they solve,” writes Serge Issakov, CABO secretary.
Issakov added that proving safety, as required in the bill, can be “prohibitively difficult, and probably impossible, to determine” because “too many factors and variables are at play.”
“No methodology predicted the carnage — at least 40 crashes, including one death — that resulted from the Class IV bikeway built on south Cardiff 101 in 2020. No such methodology exists. CABO opposes requiring anyone to prove something that is likely impossible.”
Issakov said local officials should retain the ability to remove bikeways that show little safety benefit while creating negative community impacts, including reduced parking and traffic delays.
“SB 569 would take away that option,” Issakov wrote.
Ehlers signed a letter on behalf of the Encinitas City Council stating that while the city supported the bill’s previous version addressing homeless encampments, the current “gut and amended” version “would add new obstacles that slow or even stop the improvements our community is seeking.”
The letter specifically cited the Santa Fe Drive Corridor Improvements Project as one that could be negatively affected if the legislation becomes law.
Ehlers told The Coast News that city staff routinely monitor state and federal legislation that could undermine local control. He said roadway safety remains a “highly, highly complex” issue best addressed by local elected officials who can be held accountable by voters if policies fail.
“The subjective question is, ‘What is safe?’” Ehlers said. “Absolute safety is multi-variable in nature.”
He said SB 569 “will not stop us from making Santa Fe or the 101 safer” and is “too prescriptive in nature.”
Deputy Mayor Jim O’Hara said he believes the bill is “a last-ditch effort” by Blakespear to preserve the current Santa Fe Drive configuration.
“It’s very disappointing to see a senator put a pet project ahead of public safety,” O’Hara said.
He added that plans reflecting the current council’s vision for the roadway will return to a future meeting for public discussion.
“This bill won’t only affect Santa Fe in town,” he said. “It’ll affect any bollard, so it’ll affect Leucadia, where we’ve had fatality. It will also affect the 101, where we’ve had a fatality, and our ability to adjust the infrastructure there. So it’s a legitimate safety concern.”
O’Hara said he believes the bill would create a chilling effect on bicycle infrastructure projects by discouraging the iterative process of testing and refining designs to determine what works best in specific locations.
Ultimately, O’Hara said, a bill that was gutted and amended to preserve a stretch of Santa Fe Drive could end up “negatively affecting the entire state over 300 yards of pavement.”
