Graham Wheat

Rounding out our trio of Active Transportation Grant success stories is Kern County's. The rural county that is home to Bakersfield snagged $5.7 million in state funds to improve access to bus stops, adding sidewalks where they are missing in the surrounding community. (For more on Active Transportation Success Stories: please read stories from Santa Ana and Fresno.)

Once a month, parts of the growing cycling movement in Bakersfield are lit by moonlight during the Full Moon Bike Ride, a six-mile night ride that winds along a dark and dusty bike path near the dried-out Kern River. Cyclists of all types gather to pedal with friends and family. It is an informal community event that brings cyclists closer together, connects old friends, and can give a rider in Bakersfield a chance to pause and reflect about some of the positive—and sometimes negative— opportunities this city and county have lying ahead.

Kern Transit, the transit system that serves rural Kern County, held two public meetings recently to present the findings of a fare study and survey of its users. This summer, the agency bought several new vehicles and overhauled its schedule. Now it is proposing a fare increase of fifty cents.

Bike Bakersfield has been the local bike advocacy group in Kern County since 1997. Executive director Jason Cater sat down with Streetsblog to discuss what's new for the group since it helped expand the Arvin Bike Kitchen last year. At the top of its agenda is adding new bicycle parking in Downtown Bakersfield.

Bakersfield-area cycling supporters have a chance to make an impact on the city's cycling infrastructure today by attending a unique fundraiser hosted by the California Bicycle Coalition.

Kern County, at the southern end of California’s Central Valley, is known for its small communities fostering the production of oil, agriculture, dairy, and beef, and more recently wind power. Spread across the county are small farming towns like Lamont, Wasco (rose capital California), and Mcfarland, all covering the ground with crops. Other communities like Buttonwillow and Taft, home of Elk Hills Oil Fields, once the U.S Navy’s largest petroleum reserve, are connected by fifty miles of freeway that are lined with oil derricks. Thirty miles over the mountains of Tehachapi, wind power is taking hold in the desert towns of  Mojave and California City. Crammed anywhere they can fit are dairies, even on the outskirts of Bakersfield.

Transit riders on Bakersfield’s Golden Empire Transit, better known as the GET bus, found their fares increased on August 1, but the increase will go towards rising operating costs rather than expansion of transit service.

Bakersfield is not known for its culinary delights or world class restaurants, but there is one kitchen that stands out.