Drew Eckhardt 

The Santa Clara County, San Mateo County, and San Francisco City/County orders allow recreational cycling. They appear identical suggesting the same is true in the other three counties.

Santa Clara: https://www.sccgov.org/sites/phd/Dis...er-031620.aspx
San Mateo https://cmo.smcgov.org/sites/cmo.smc...20200316_0.pdf
San Francisco https://www.sfdph.org/dph/alerts/fil...r-in-Place.pdf

2cam16

I hope San Mateo will allow this too.

79pmooney

I read that and didn't see anywhere that cycling will be permitted. Not mentioned where they mention walking, hiking or running; three activities that rarely have need of emergency services and hospital visits. Mow, maybe riding to the grocery store would be permitted. But group rides where a touch of wheels can be an ambulance ride?

Ben

Troul 

what if you are shelterless or live out of a van?

Troul 

Overcrowding jails might be happening..

Drew Eckhardt 

The text is searchable; the sections/subsections/paragraphs (e.g. iii.) are not.

Joe Bikerider

I never thought I would need to be a lawyer to go for a ride. Should I printout a list of valid reasons? Will anybody care? I’m 68 years old and riding is very important to me since I was a kid. I live in that same town and need to get out to be healthy.

Gyro

Crapping in the street will still be overlooked.

Lemond1985

(Reply moved to Politics and Restrooms Sub-Forum)

It's too bad that this one topic has taken over every single discussion, and completely sucked all of the air out of the room everywhere for the last couple weeks. We need a COVID-19-Free Zone, where no discussions of the topic are allowed, maybe the BMX or Living Car Free Forum or something.

tyrion

It would be crazy to disallow people contagion-safe exercise.

indyfabz

Can I get an amen?!?!

son_of_clyde

It's funny how they explicitly exempt all of the bum camps from these directives.

indyfabz

Not really. Makes total sense if you give it some actual thought.

pokecheck

to make it more confusing - this thread seems to have omitted the earlier part of the docs that says you cant ride:

5. All travel, including, but not limited to, travel on foot, bicycle, scooter, motorcycle, automobile, or public transit, except Essential Travel and Essential Activities as defined below in Section 10, is prohibited.

Digger Goreman

When the 1% get off their selfish, bloated backsides and learn to SHARE, the impoverished will disappear....

They already have enough stacked against them.... Extend sympathy from your relatively safe homes... they haven't one.

downhillmaster

Are you saying that if you can’t ride a bicycle recreationally for 2-4 weeks that you will be in danger?

Drew Eckhardt 

Note the exceptions in Section 10.

jgg3

Why should walking, running, and hiking be ok, but biking is not? Biking to the grocery store is ok (or Home Depot for that matter), but cycling around the same route my wife walks is not? These edicts don't have much rationale behind them. The likelihood of needing an ambulance is just as high if you are going to the grocery store as not, maybe higher. The rules should be about social distance if that is what they are concerned about.

livedarklions

Lawyer here--but the examples of the "outdoor activities" allowed without limitation do not include bicycling, and it appears that that exclusion might have been intentional (travel by bike is specifically mentioned in Section 5, but not 10 III, that doesn't look like an accident). Since the list in iii is "by example", it is not exclusive, which makes it at least ambiguous as to whether recreational bicycling is included.

Reading the way you have, the implication seems to be that riding a bike with any purpose (travel) is prohibited, but just riding around for its own sake is "essential". That''s a very weird interpretation.

Obviously, this was a rush job drafting, so it's not clear to me that this was hashed out.

chas58

I agreed, initially. But Spain makes a good point. I don't know how many people on average go to the hospital because they bike. I went 6 months ago because of a velodrome race crash, and they had never seen anything like me. Being in peak race form made my hospitalization 6 months ago short. But here is what Spain says:

Food for thought for us all. Be safe out there...



Reference: https://cycling.today/italy-and-spain...ym0hoRNGFqAA3w

pdlamb

Yeah, I'm just not sure how to travel by foot without walking, running, or hiking. Maybe travel by hopscotch is prohibited?

livedarklions

It's basically a "stay at home" order, so the answer is you aren't.

For ease of interpretation, here's the full list of exceptions. Basically, you can engage in any form of transport to carry out the purposive ones, but section iii is a bit ambiguous:

10. Definitions and Exemptions.
a. For purposes of this Order, individuals may leave their residence only to perform any of the following “Essential Activities.” But people at high risk of severe illness from COVID-19 and people who are sick are urged to stay in their residence to the extent possible except as necessary to seek medical care.

i. To engage in activities or perform tasks essential to their health and safety, or to the health and safety of their family or household members (including, but not limited to, pets), such as, by way of example only and without limitation, obtaining medical supplies or medication, visiting a health care professional, or obtaining supplies they need to work from home.

ii. To obtain necessary services or supplies for themselves and their family or household members, or to deliver those services or supplies to others, such as, by way of example only and without limitation, canned food, dry goods, fresh fruits and vegetables, pet supply, fresh meats, fish, and poultry, and any other household consumer products, and products necessary to maintain the safety, sanitation, and essential operation of residences.

iii. To engage in outdoor activity, provided the individuals comply with Social Distancing Requirements as defined in this Section, such as, by way of example and without limitation, walking, hiking, or running.

iv. To perform work providing essential products and services at an Essential Business or to otherwise carry out activities specifically permitted in this Order, including Minimum Basic Operations.

v.. To care for a family member or pet in another household.

daoswald

Bicycling is seen as a mode of transportation capable of taking a person between communities. Walking is generally within a community. Hiking is a gray area; you might drive to a trailhead and then hike, or you might hike local hills within your own community if you live near them.

The thing about bicycling, and the reason, I presume, that it is disallowed in areas where they have disallowed it, is that a person could hop on their bike in a safe community, ride to an infected community, visit someone who is sick, or visit a store in a hot-spot area, and then bring it back home with them to their safe community. It's the same reason travelling has been greatly restricted; not so that an individual avoids getting infected, but so that an individual avoids infecting a community that had previously been in the clear.

I am 100% certain that if you go do your 25 mile loop each day you stand no chance of spreading infection. And if that's your routine, it's unfortunate that the edict has restricted that safe activity. But the harm comes if someone uses their bike to get to and from a destination and transmits disease either from an infected community to a clean one, or vice versa. It's the stops along the way and at the destination that have the potential to cause harm. And this is probably the reason restrictions have been implemented. In the rush to implement well-intentioned restrictions, safe activities are being caught in the dragnet. This is an imprecise yet calculated response. Imprecise because it affects people doing things that are probably safe. Calculated because it's been decided that catching some safe activities is a worthwhile tradeoff in order to catch many unsafe ones at a time where the risk on the one side is you miss a month of training, and the risk on the other side is a community gets infected and some people die.

tagaproject6

I believe that is considered "essential activity"

wgscott

I've been spending a lot of time looking, and asked my attorney for his opinion (I haven't heard back). The problem is that it genuinely is ambiguous.

I would like to think (like you) that recreational cycling would be included, but since earlier in the document it explicitly excludes bicycles, I would have been more comfortable with them being explicitly included. Also, is driving to the mountain bike trail exempt?