Central Valley

City engineer Michael Sacuskie took these photos of the construction on the new buffered bike lanes and road diet in Modesto, and as you can see people are already using them, even though they won't be finished for another month or so. The project includes a road diet on College Avenue and buffered bike lanes that will connect two campuses of Modesto Junior College to the rest of Modesto's growing bike network.

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.

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.

The California central valley town of Modesto is not usually high on anyone's list of cities embracing cutting-edge pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure. But that may change soon.

“It’s morally right to correct the blight in this community,” said pastor Richard Daniels, who leads the Baptist Fellowship church, as he introduced the evening’s program.