Note: This transcript was exported from the video version of this episode, and it has not been copyedited

00:00:00:01 - 00:00:18:14
Gary Oddi
My friend and I decided to take a bike ride one day. He rides all bikes. He's had some injuries and used to be a bike rider, but he rides a knee but he rides a gazelle now and we decided to take a bike ride. So there's Dale and we we asked a friend on on his street to ride with us.

00:00:18:14 - 00:00:37:20
Gary Oddi
So we all went out on a ride and a few people saw us writing and started asking about their bikes. And it grew to four or five. Now there's a group of about 90 people who they call themselves Easy Riders, and they take a ride every Friday morning here.

00:00:37:20 - 00:00:59:23
John Simmerman
Everyone, welcome to the Active Towns Channel. My name is John Simmerman and that is Gary Oddi from the Temecula Valley Bicycle Coalition in Temecula, California. And we're going to be talking a little bit about the whole Temecula scene and how he and his group of advocates and community members are trying to make the area a little bit safer and more inviting for people walking and biking.

00:01:00:00 - 00:01:10:13
John Simmerman
Let's get right to it. Gary, Gary, thank you so much for joining me on the Active Towns podcast.

00:01:10:15 - 00:01:13:27
Gary Oddi
Well, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me, John.

00:01:14:00 - 00:01:22:02
John Simmerman
Absolutely. And hey, I love giving my guests the opportunity to just say a few words to introduce themselves. So, Gary, you have the floor.

00:01:22:05 - 00:01:57:27
Gary Oddi
Well, I am Gary Audy and I am the president of Bike Temecula Valley, which is an active transportation advocacy group. It does expand from being a bike advocacy group, as is typically this. This works into. But we started off as being a bike advocacy group, advocacy group. And as we've been progressing, we've become more of an active transportation advocacy group and we're real conscientious about being inclusive and trying to get some diversity going.

00:01:57:27 - 00:02:40:01
Gary Oddi
So we we want to cover all forms of active transportation. My wife and I moved to Temecula in 1989. We had been working in the education field before then, and we had our young family that we were growing at that time and moved down to Temecula from the Ontario, California area. We had lived previous to that in Ventura, California, and then back to Ontario and on to Temecula, where we felt like we had a pretty good opportunity with a small growing community to grow our family.

00:02:40:04 - 00:03:06:29
Gary Oddi
We now have three adult daughters and two grandchildren. One of the daughters currently lives here in Temecula with my two grandchildren, and then my other two daughters are in the San Diego area in Del Mar and North Park. And all three of my daughters are educators, just like my wife, Debbie and I. So we are a family of educators.

00:03:07:01 - 00:03:53:15
Gary Oddi
Most of my background in my career was teaching secondary school. I've been a elementary school principal, a secondary school administrator, an athletic director. My final and most favorite position was my last six or seven years. I went back into the classroom and taught higher level psychology courses at Great Oak School. So that's kind of my background. I'm currently, like I said, very busy with this advocacy group, nonprofit, and I am a commissioner for community services here in the city of Temecula and also the coordinator of the Marietta Creek Regional Trail.

00:03:53:18 - 00:03:59:06
Gary Oddi
So really able to keep busy, busy in the areas of my passion.

00:03:59:08 - 00:04:23:13
John Simmerman
Fantastic. That's great. Yeah. And before we hit the record button, we were reminiscing a little bit on several different things. And one of the one of the things that I had mentioned to you is that I do have family now in the Temecula area and I'm long overdue for a trip. I recently took the Active Towns tour through Temecula and I say recently it's not that reason.

00:04:23:13 - 00:04:59:26
John Simmerman
It was about 2017, I think is when it was. So it's I'm again, I'm long overdue for a visit there. But what's really interesting about your particular situation and that particular area is just how much it has changed since you moved there. Talk a little bit about that because this is one of the situations in Southern California where, you know, that whole area, the Temecula Valley, really sort of just blossom and blew up in terms of of a a community.

00:04:59:26 - 00:05:17:23
John Simmerman
It's it's you know, the term you know, the bedroom community of of where, you know, there was a lot of housing being built and there was an opportunity for for people to be able to find an affordable place to live. You know for instance, my sister I had mentioned that she lived there for a short period of time.

00:05:17:25 - 00:05:26:19
John Simmerman
And the whole reason why they moved out into that region, I think it was a little further away from you in Menifee was because it was an affordable place to live.

00:05:26:21 - 00:05:50:24
Gary Oddi
Well, absolutely. I think it sustained it still does, relatively speaking, to the communities around us. San Diego, North County, San Diego, Orange County, L.A. County. This is this is an inexpensive way to go for you really get the same thing you get in North County, San Diego, for a little less cost because we're just across the border in Riverside County.

00:05:50:26 - 00:06:31:25
Gary Oddi
But yeah, we we were a, you know, a country type area when we moved here. A lot of equestrian, a lot of agriculture. And of course, the wine industry was just starting to get going with our vineyards. But we've become of a pretty good example of sprawl and where we are now, a bedroom suburb community. The little bit of the history I in my introduction didn't say this, but I'm the son of a steel mill worker and my father was a steelworker at Kaiser Steel and Fontana, California.

00:06:31:27 - 00:06:52:00
Gary Oddi
So when I was a young child in the 1960s, I actually came out here with my father and my uncle, and we visited and there was nothing. It was just a a little town and a lot of ranches. But the reason I brought that up is that Kaiser Corporation had bought the land in this area and had a a general plan to develop it.

00:06:52:00 - 00:07:12:04
Gary Oddi
So that was the original developer. And and back then we thought it was a pretty nice plan. And when we moved here, the plan looked good and I was somewhat clueless on urban development at the time. I am still not an expert on it, but I've gotten a lot more in tuned to it being in an active transportation advocacy group.

00:07:12:04 - 00:07:40:10
Gary Oddi
So we we have a lot of the issues that any community that is dealing with sprawl and freeways running through the middle of the city. But at the same time, this community has kept its its small town appeal in that process. And that's one of the things that as a a leader in the city we keep talking about and people talk to us about in our surveys that yeah, it's it's a bigger town where we're over 100,000.

00:07:40:10 - 00:07:57:10
Gary Oddi
It's a mid-size city. You add myriad in and you're starting to approach a half a million. But the comments are always it's we want to maintain that small town feel. And so that's kind of in our our master plan to, to keep that going.

00:07:57:11 - 00:08:21:10
John Simmerman
Yeah and pull up the map here gives folks some bearing in terms of where Temecula actually is. And so we're sort of just looking at an overview of most of Southern California. And as I mentioned, a lot of my family was up in the the 210 corridor there up in Glendora and Pasadena in that whole neck of the woods.

00:08:21:10 - 00:08:48:12
John Simmerman
Originally, the family was in L.A. and then Highland Park area right around the turn of the century in 1900 and then in the 1950s started making their way towards Glendora and Pomona in that area. But yeah, if you take a look at, you know, so we're sort of where we're at here. Temecula is like inland, you know, sort of really as the crow flies just inland from where the the the military bases, the Camp Pendleton Marine base.

00:08:48:14 - 00:09:09:26
John Simmerman
And so that's on the other side of the mountains there. And you zoom in and you're right, you know, you see the interstate, you know, the sort of I-15, you know, rolling right through here, right on the edge. It looks like the western edge of the most of the development out for the city. And then, of course, you've got Highway 79, you know, poking through there as well.

00:09:09:28 - 00:09:41:01
John Simmerman
And you mentioned the magic word there, the vineyards. And you can see a lot of the wineries and the vineyards off in the distance here. That was really a development that sort of built over time. And I have some history with the wine country in northern California, some of my favorite bike rides and some of my favorite triathlons that I used to participate in were up in the LA Sonoma County area and, you know, through the vineyards.

00:09:41:03 - 00:09:47:25
John Simmerman
So that really kind of changed a lot of the dynamic of Temecula is the fact that the vineyards really took off.

00:09:48:02 - 00:10:24:08
Gary Oddi
Well, absolutely. I mean, in terms of tourism, it's one of our legs. And, you know, as an advocacy group for active transportation, we're we're hopeful that we we've we've talk about two legs of of tourism in Temecula. It's one of them has to do with drinking and the other has to do with gambling. So we we want to be the third leg that has to do with healthy, active lifestyle, you know, So I know when my wife and I travel, we love to do tours that involve hiking or riding bikes, and I think that would be something great to add here.

00:10:24:10 - 00:10:49:21
Gary Oddi
It was a great map you put up because it had a little bit of the topography and you brought, you know, to the forefront that as the crow flies at the westernmost point of Temecula, we're only 14 miles to the Pacific coast, right? So know now you can't get there because you do have the Marine base. You do have some preserves that you can't build, build roads on.

00:10:49:24 - 00:11:11:18
Gary Oddi
So you have to go around that. It puts us about an hour to get to the beach with with no traffic. But that 14 miles there's it's basically it's a little mountain range that there's a gap called the Rainbow Gap. And the sea breeze comes through there and cools us off at night and makes us a real California shopper.

00:11:11:21 - 00:11:36:14
Gary Oddi
California coastal Chaparral area. One of the myths is a lot of people have is they see how close Temecula is to, let's say, Palm Springs and they think, oh, Temecula is in the desert. But it is it's really a nice coastal chaparral. You can compare it to Tuscany or Provence in Europe, where they grow some pretty good grapes too.

00:11:36:14 - 00:11:58:19
Gary Oddi
And it's just really well set and now becoming a little more mature wine country where our wines are really starting to take hold and compete with some of the other other wine areas we went from when we moved here to eight wineries to now well over well over 50 wineries in the region.

00:11:58:22 - 00:12:19:26
John Simmerman
Very fast. And it's it's I'm always, you know, curious about how, you know, that sort of emerges. And you know, from a from an agricultural perspective, my family we left to the Southern California area in 1972 and moved up to Northern California. And so I grew up on a ranch in Northern California. And so I was in formation.

00:12:19:26 - 00:12:41:01
John Simmerman
FFA as a as a child, you know, growing up in my little town of Lincoln, California. And so I have that sort of angle of having grown up on a little ranch and having been agriculture and related. Whenever I see something like this where you start to see an industry sort of take off, you know, like vineyards and and you're like, oh, interesting.

00:12:41:01 - 00:12:55:22
John Simmerman
That's that's, that's cool. And we actually ended up seeing that happen up in Lincoln, too, is that many, many vineyards started popping up in, in areas that that used to be relatively unproductive cattle land.

00:12:55:24 - 00:13:24:20
Gary Oddi
So it was like Exactly. Yeah. And that's what we were we were Vail Ranch and the the Spanish Ranchos and, and now, you know, that's kind of gone away and we're mostly vineyards, some citrus, but most of the mostly vineyards. And I think, you know, I wanted to make kind of two points on the map. You showed two and you zoomed in on that map of Temecula and you could see kind of the circular neighborhoods.

00:13:24:20 - 00:13:50:25
Gary Oddi
We have a lot of small neighborhoods with loops around them and auto loops. And so it's kind of interesting if you were to go to my previous community, Ontario, which was at the turn of the 20th century, was built by the Chaffey brothers. It is a very grid oriented, planned out community with beautiful Euclid Avenue running right down the middle of it.

00:13:50:25 - 00:14:22:16
Gary Oddi
But you're looking at that map right now of Temecula, and you see these circular, which got a lot of accolades from a lot of city planning experts, some from the famous city planning at Cal Poly. San Luis Obispo made comments about how well-planned Temecula was and actually it has some benefits. But for the most part, when you talk about active transportation, the way it was set up in a sprawl format has created some issues with how we move about our community.

00:14:22:18 - 00:14:59:22
Gary Oddi
And then you go out to the wine country, which is is generally in the county of Riverside, known by the county and you have these rural roads that have now become more through Waze highways to get in because we're really packing them in in the summertime and on weekends. And even now on weekdays. I just was at a meeting last night for a group called Timeless Temecula Trails, which is a collaboration between equestrian biking and hiking to try to develop the County Trails program in wine country.

00:14:59:24 - 00:15:26:12
Gary Oddi
So right now we don't have a lot of trails. The trails we do have are not networked. We do have some safe routes, but folks don't really know about them. So we see a lot of folks riding bikes, whether they're road road riders or weekend e-bike rentals that happen out here. And the vineyards are riding on our busy streets and we've already had some pretty bad accidents.

00:15:26:12 - 00:15:38:10
Gary Oddi
And so one of our focuses as an advocacy group is to promote safe riding out in our vineyards because it is beautiful. It is a wonderful place to ride and be inspired.

00:15:38:12 - 00:16:06:16
John Simmerman
Yeah, and we'll go back to the safe routes in just a second. But you got me inspired, too, to zoom in on Ontario now so you can take a look at that grid. And you're absolutely right. Yeah. You know, here is your typical grid pattern that we're used to seeing. It's, you know, throughout human development, you know, a pretty standard grid format was what traditional neighborhoods and how traditional neighborhoods were designed.

00:16:06:18 - 00:16:36:14
John Simmerman
And quite frankly, you see this, you know, across most of the Southern California Valley. When you zoom in on the heart of Los Angeles, the that was platted out at the turn of the century, it's all in a very, very walkable type grid pattern. And it's one of the reasons why the city of Los Angeles actually has a pretty impressive density level is because the blocks were short and there was, you know, lots of them and it was all on a grid.

00:16:36:17 - 00:17:02:01
John Simmerman
It wasn't, as you mentioned, until later on where we started developing the suburban sort of context. In the end, the the loopy sort of cul de sac types of of developments. And so that really took off later, not so much what was planned, you know, plotted out, you know, through the 1930s, forties and fifties into the sixties. You really started to take off seventies, eighties and nineties.

00:17:02:01 - 00:17:03:22
John Simmerman
And then it got really crazy.

00:17:03:25 - 00:17:33:07
Gary Oddi
So yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it, it gives you a I know that many of the city planners right now and engineers are trying to fix you know what they broke as these grids became overwhelmed. But as you as you try to fix something that has this curvature circular air type plan to it it it makes it even more difficult then with the grids.

00:17:33:09 - 00:17:55:13
Gary Oddi
You know, I have my brother in law had been on the planning commission in Ontario for years, and he fought so much for, you know, getting their nice old downtown, just just beautiful with the train stop and everything, you know, to to try to get it to be a little, little car free and a little more, you know, accentuate the beauty of Euclid Avenue.

00:17:55:13 - 00:18:22:27
Gary Oddi
But, you know, fighting the battle and, you know, generally losing in many, many cases. So, yeah, I just think that that's kind of an interesting little issue. We have is as we're working through it. But, you know, it's just interesting, I think anyway, there are these nice little isolé gated neighborhoods, right? So when we moved down here, our first home was at the end of a cul de sac.

00:18:23:00 - 00:18:44:22
Gary Oddi
And so we had this nice quiet cul de sac. Our kids were able to go out and ride their bikes and street, play ball hockey, you know, whatever, right on the street. We go sit out on the front porch or open our garage door and sit inside in the shade and watch them play. And then our second house was also on a great cul de sac, which had very much the same thing.

00:18:44:24 - 00:19:07:06
Gary Oddi
My daughter, you know, lives on on the end of a cul de sac where her kids can do the same thing. But the problem is, is when those kids want to go to a friend's house and live in a different area, now you're dealing with, you know, some pretty dangerous intersections and roads. And that's a problem. My son in law just just bought a really nice cargo bike that fits both kids on the back.

00:19:07:06 - 00:19:35:03
Gary Oddi
The plan is, you know, to take them to the store and and ride them, ride them to school. But he just can't find a safe route to do it. So, you know, the cargo bike is stranded for a lot of time right there at the house because of that. So we have these nice little isolated places. But our our struggle is to how do we get them connected.

00:19:35:05 - 00:19:37:16
Gary Oddi
And that's what we're working on.

00:19:37:18 - 00:19:59:23
John Simmerman
And if we zoom back in on the map here of Temecula, we notice that there's a lot of green out there. And I do have the layer mode on Google Maps turned on for the Bicycle Network. And so we're able to see that there's a fair amount of green here, I suspect a fair amount of this green, though, is is probably no more than just a painted bike lane.

00:19:59:25 - 00:20:21:15
John Simmerman
And we'll talk a little bit more about, you know, the difference between a painted bike lane and an all ages and abilities and separated facility in a little bit. But I wanted to reflect on something that you just mentioned about you know, this concept of, you know, having a cul de sac sort of neighborhood and you have lots of curvy roads and all of this.

00:20:21:18 - 00:21:07:23
John Simmerman
I had the opportunity to live in a suburban, you know, cul de sac sort of neighborhood in Bria there in North Orange County for about five years. And it was before I was really thinking in these terms. I was still in my corporate fitness and health promotion realm of my career. This would have been back in the early nineties and I didn't realize at the time, but I happened to live in a neighborhood where all of these cul de sacs were were penetrated by walking and biking pathways, and then those walking and biking pathways through those cul de sacs connected to a green space which had a whole network of off street multi-use paths that

00:21:07:23 - 00:21:27:05
John Simmerman
connected to all of the other parks and all of the schools. And and I was like, Oh my gosh, I didn't realize. I knew I loved it because I was a runner at the time. And so I would go and run on those trails all the time, those pathways all the time. But I was like, Oh man, that was really brilliant.

00:21:27:11 - 00:22:06:21
John Simmerman
And it had to have been platted and built out probably in the early eighties because like I said, it was right around 1990 when we moved into, into that neighborhood. And it seems like that was something that was missed and lost with the subsequent neighborhoods that got built out, you know, out in Menifee and out in Temecula was to plan that out from the beginning is to have each of those cul de sacs be, you know, have a have a multi, you know, have a multi-use path, a a way for people walking and biking to be able to penetrate through and then get out and have a whole network of off street network of pathways

00:22:06:21 - 00:22:26:19
John Simmerman
that could help connect neighborhoods because to your point. Yeah, you can't get there from here if you're you know, a family, you know, and you're living with kids and they're like, yeah, right on the back side of our house over here is my best friend, but I can't get to them unless I climb over the fence. All right?

00:22:26:21 - 00:22:36:12
John Simmerman
I mean, seems like an opportunity lost, you know, especially since clearly the the the foresight was there, at least with some developments.

00:22:36:14 - 00:23:04:24
Gary Oddi
Abso absolutely. Yeah. And like I said, it was seen as a great plan, these small neighborhoods. But again, no services, right? Maybe maybe a school that kind of came in a little bit later actually after the plan. But there's one very circular community called Polonia del Sol, which has a couple of car loops on the outside, which is an inside.

00:23:04:24 - 00:23:37:14
Gary Oddi
It's a lot of green green belts. Yeah, I think you're looking at it right there. You can see that those are, you know, the green belt areas are concrete biking and walking trails. There they look like oversize sidewalks so you can ride your bike around in there, you know, quite, quite a bit. And you can you can fairly safely write it on the loop, which is 40 miles an hour on the loop on that outside and then single lane with a buffered buffered bike lane.

00:23:37:16 - 00:24:00:27
Gary Oddi
But then if you, if you, you know, extend out of that, you know you now you're dealing with some issues. So one of the things we've been doing is we've been ferreting out the calm, calm neighborhoods and we can go across town in all kinds of different directions by, you know, wondering about wandering into those trails and then on just some calm roads and so forth.

00:24:00:27 - 00:24:21:26
Gary Oddi
But I think when you say, you know, you you were in that neighborhood and then you realize, well, that was ingenious. I it's amazing to me, too, because I moved down here and we're just accepting. Well, they say it's a great plan and that's what they say. And I had a job at a school called Nicollet. The name was Nicholas Valley Elementary School.

00:24:21:26 - 00:24:39:18
Gary Oddi
It's up on the north side of town. I was the principal there. Our staff would, you know, about five or six of us would go out for a run, you know, once in a while after school just to, you know, have a little buffer before we got home. And we were right next to this trail, which is our main trail here in town right now.

00:24:39:18 - 00:25:16:22
Gary Oddi
It's called the Santa Gertrudis Trail. So it's a trail built along the creek. And it was done in 1991 by the Bay County flood control. And as I'm speaking there, the grand opening of our under crossing, and I'll get to that in a second. But this kind of ties in. So I was just thrilled. There was a four mile strip of trail and we would run, you know, out and back and have a nice run along the creek without not having to deal with cars.

00:25:16:27 - 00:25:46:13
Gary Oddi
But that sat from 1980 when I was principal at that school from 1993 to about four or five years ago, when we then started talking about finally extending the trail. So the city did a great job of putting money in their their CIP funds and getting a matching grant to go under our freeway. And there you go. That is going under Jefferson Avenue, which then it continues on under the I-15 Freeway.

00:25:46:15 - 00:26:08:21
Gary Oddi
If you if you go off to the left on that trail, this is when the trail was newly newly opened here about it's it's a little over a year now. The trail's been open going under the 15 freeway. So now we can actually use that trail. But I, I want to just wanted to make that point as what was I thinking?

00:26:08:23 - 00:26:26:04
Gary Oddi
You know, I, I loved it and I wanted more of it. But I guess back then I could go out and ride my bike. There was a lot of open space. There wasn't a lot. I didn't have to deal with traffic. And I'm thinking, you know, the talk was, well, we're going to have this loop trail that goes around the whole town 17 miles.

00:26:26:04 - 00:26:51:13
Gary Oddi
And you you know, you'll be on a separated trail the whole way. But anyway, this was big for our city. I was speaking there at the grand opening and our then mayor said that, you know what, Temecula can be bike town, Southern California. Any, any related to the fact that Davis, California is bike down California? Well, we do have the potential.

00:26:51:13 - 00:27:22:14
Gary Oddi
We definitely have the potential. We have the weather. We have the the amount of people riding bikes that we need. You know, we could use more, but we just don't have the ability to put up these types of class. One trails very quickly. We applied for a grant which we have matching funds for on the south side of town on the Temecula Creek, which would be the southern segment of our loop trail.

00:27:22:16 - 00:27:46:10
Gary Oddi
And we were denied that grant. So we were back in the pool again this year trying to get the funds to get that that segment done. Some great ideas, some great staff members in our city who understand and want to do well. It's really about them being stretched to do it. So, yeah, this is the Santa Gertrudis Trail.

00:27:46:10 - 00:28:10:19
Gary Oddi
This is the part of the segment that we adopted in our Adopt a Park program here in the city. And so this is where I'm doing some sweeping there on one of our clean up days. So one of the things, one of the activities our advocacy group does is to help maintain the trails and promote that, adopt a adopt a Trail program.

00:28:10:19 - 00:28:35:15
Gary Oddi
We have a couple other groups that do the same to keep those trails running. This this trail runs right right through the back side of Chaparral High School. On the other side of the creek is a community called Harvest and which is a nice, calm, calm community, too. So so kids do have the potential to walk and ride their bikes on a class one trail to this high school and to a couple of other options for middle school and elementary schools.

00:28:35:15 - 00:28:54:13
Gary Oddi
So that's the Santa Gertrudis Trail. You're going to be the northern segment of our Temecula Loop Trail when that gets finished. And we continue to advise on that as as we go along the our journey here too, to become a better bike community. So yeah, go ahead.

00:28:54:13 - 00:29:16:08
John Simmerman
One of the things I want to bring up on on this particular image, I went back to it simply to make the point that in it's incredibly important when cities are trying to build out their off street network of trails and pathways is to think beyond just recreation. And part of the way that you do that is ensuring that you have good connectivity into the neighborhood.

00:29:16:08 - 00:29:32:27
John Simmerman
And so this is a great example of of having, you know, being able to get on to the trail and off of the trail. And as you mentioned in this shot here, being able to get to the high school because there's nothing more frustrating than being on this trail and being able to see, hey, I could ride on this to get to school.

00:29:33:02 - 00:30:06:08
John Simmerman
Oh, but I can't get there from here because I've got a chain link fence here or I've got an impassable area here. So that's one of the things that's really, really important for cities to to think more broadly about their activity. Assets like these types of trails is to make sure that you plan in and in, create that connectivity to the neighborhoods and meaningful destinations like stores, like schools or like other meaningful destinations where people will want to get to.

00:30:06:10 - 00:30:30:23
Gary Oddi
Well, I think that this is this is an interesting plan. And I, I, I fortunately had a little bit of say in this a few years back. I was talking to the senior city planner about, well, you have this plan for a loop trail. My concept would be we have we still have it on the agenda to to build a bike park right in the middle of town.

00:30:30:23 - 00:31:01:09
Gary Oddi
We have a big park called Ronald Reagan Sports Park, which we have a pump track right now, but we want to do a mountain bike park right below our our public library up on a hill that's connected to this park and that's right in the center of the city. So my idea was to make the make that the hub of our transportation include busses, include, you know, trails that come in to that center as the spokes off of that loop, which, you know, makes it a big wheel.

00:31:01:12 - 00:31:29:02
Gary Oddi
And that said, I wanted to just share that there is great news with with that trail we already have, like I said, about seven miles of it now that go under the freeway onto there's a good picture of it as it's coming out from under the freeway toward our old town area. And then it connects to a trail called the Myriad, a Creek Regional Trail.

00:31:29:02 - 00:31:52:14
Gary Oddi
That's a trail that is ultimately going to go from Temecula all the way up to Lake Elsinore, and then potentially being connected to the Butterfield Stage Trail that runs up to the Santa Ana River Trail. So you could at some point, probably not when I'm still alive, but ride your bike on a class one trail all the way from Temecula to Huntington Beach.

00:31:52:14 - 00:32:17:16
Gary Oddi
So that that's that's in the making. But this this trail then goes to connect to our the myriad of Creek Trail. And that segment here in Temecula is called the Old Town Creek Walk Trail. And so you can travel a little over seven miles from our old town, which is a nice historical old town with shops and restaurants and our city hall all the way out.

00:32:17:16 - 00:32:48:15
Gary Oddi
Now, the construction is going on at the end of the Santa Gertrudis Trail on to Nicholas Road, which will extend to a community called Summers Bend still in Temecula. It'll be about at that point, about 11 miles. And when it does connect to Summer's bend, that community is very well planned. New development that has calm streets and miles of trails in the community itself.

00:32:48:18 - 00:33:09:16
Gary Oddi
Then it will open up into wine country so you can actually go from there. You could have breakfast in Old Town ride your bike out to wine country, have a glass of wine, and then let it sit for a while, maybe have some lunch and then ride all the way back to Old Town and have dinner in Old Town that night.

00:33:09:16 - 00:33:33:03
Gary Oddi
So, you know, a nice little 16 mile or so ride with some some of the best that Temecula has to offer so that that gets done you know, for for several reasons. We have many of the people in our advocacy group or on commissions, the public Safety Commission, the Community Service Commission. We also have some folks on our city council.

00:33:33:04 - 00:34:03:08
Gary Oddi
So we have a weak mayor system, right? But our weak mayor is a very strong mayor in that he was actually one of the first five members of bike. Temecula Valley says that Zach Schwenk is historically known for being a real bike advocate in our town. He was probably the one of the first bike advocates here in Temecula and has been fighting for this, you know, pretty much his his whole life here with his family and Temecula.

00:34:03:10 - 00:34:22:27
Gary Oddi
And so a lot of this gets done because we have those folks. We have people who work for the city staff who are bike riders and want this to come to fruition. They live here in town. They want to see it happen. So there are some things we don't have is people who are just focused on bikes and active transportation.

00:34:23:00 - 00:34:46:16
Gary Oddi
For example, in Austin, I know you have a an active Transportation department basically within your Transportation department. I know that in Fort Collins they have a person who works on staff for the city, who just works on bicycling. You know, those are the kinds of things that we are hopeful to get that we don't have right now.

00:34:46:18 - 00:35:10:11
John Simmerman
Yeah, And given the size of the city of Fort Collins as a great Pierce City to sort of, you know, look towards because you're about the same size in terms of population, give or take, probably the only major difference is the fact that they do have a pretty major university in the city there. And so there's a massive university student population.

00:35:10:14 - 00:35:42:21
John Simmerman
But yeah, from from a size perspective, that's a great a great example. And I think that both cities really exploded at about the same time. What they are also doing well, there is sort of what we were just talking about is those off street network of of pathways and trails. One thing that they do have a head start on because of course, I think you know that they are a platinum really ranked city in terms of their League of American Bicyclists ranking of bicycle friendliness.

00:35:42:28 - 00:36:04:17
John Simmerman
And so it's like a Davis in that they're very, very highly accomplished in terms of some of the stuff that they're doing on street. And so you do see them attacking some of the biggest challenging roads that they do have in place there. And with that in mind, let's talk about some of your challenging roads or more appropriately, strokes.

00:36:04:19 - 00:36:13:22
Gary Oddi
Let's do that, if you don't mind. Can you pull up the picture of my wife and I? It's a selfie on the computer, on the Powder River.

00:36:13:23 - 00:36:17:16
John Simmerman
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Because that is in Fort Collins. And.

00:36:17:17 - 00:36:19:07
Gary Oddi
Yeah, so we know.

00:36:19:09 - 00:36:21:12
John Simmerman
We were right here. Boom. Here you.

00:36:21:12 - 00:36:22:14
Gary Oddi
Are. Yeah.

00:36:22:20 - 00:36:24:24
John Simmerman
Pretty, pretty amazing place. Yeah.

00:36:24:27 - 00:37:06:07
Gary Oddi
Yeah. So, I mean, I. I'll go into some history and then get to these roads, you know, that I actually took some pictures out of my urban hike yesterday of some of those roads and situations. But yeah, this is us. I'm one of those great trails in Fort Collins on the Powder River. And we happened to the first thing I did when I sat in this is during the pandemic in 2020, and this is when myself and four other colleagues sat in the parking lot of our public library because you couldn't go indoors and decided we wanted to do a bike advocacy group.

00:37:06:09 - 00:37:30:26
Gary Oddi
And the first thing I did was I scheduled a trip to Fort Collins to visit with the one of the employees of Fort Collins. And so, you know, I got a good history with the hotel, and we were staying at had a couple of old petty goes with some skater helmets and we we took those out and did all of the trails of Fort Collins.

00:37:30:26 - 00:37:50:10
Gary Oddi
But, you know, there's two things we didn't the two main things we we didn't have and we're hopeful to have here in Temecula was, number one, they had a main sponsor with Fat Tire Brewing, which is a company that does quite well and is totally into cycling.

00:37:50:12 - 00:38:01:15
John Simmerman
I was going to say, in fact, a the New Belgium brewery is is just, you know, this trail will take you right basically to the big main brewery there.

00:38:01:17 - 00:38:36:26
Gary Oddi
Yeah. We remember riding by it and then and then having one that night. So we we feel that, you know, that main sponsor would be great. You know, talk about Benton, Arkansas has the Waltons. Fort Collins has has New Belgium flat tire and you know, that would be a great thing to have. And the other thing that I felt like they had that that I that I'm shooting for in our city, actually is working towards it is to have an employee who works for the district that is working on active transportation.

00:38:36:26 - 00:39:04:24
Gary Oddi
So then that brings us to, you know, I come back, you know, dreaming about what could be in Temecula after seeing that great stuff and, you know, esthetically pleasing, you know, a fantastic network, a lot of bridges and just some some great things in that. And then then, of course, the state of Colorado is, you know, as a state focus on active transportation and trails.

00:39:04:24 - 00:39:23:14
Gary Oddi
So I know some of your most recent guests have been speaking about that. But there's just that whole state focus. Even you go to Colorado Springs, which is pretty strode filled sprawl city is making some progress because of that state focus since we're.

00:39:23:17 - 00:39:50:02
John Simmerman
Since we were just by the that that wonderful Powder River setting there. I want to do a compare and contrast because this is something that jumps out on me for me when when we look at the way Southern California in particular handles their pathways, you know, these these class one bikeways and multi-use paths next to rivers is they end up looking like this.

00:39:50:04 - 00:40:00:26
John Simmerman
You know, you're like, wait a minute, didn't he just show us a different photo? You know, that was much more There's something different with these two photos.

00:40:00:29 - 00:40:17:06
Gary Oddi
Yeah, You and it is it's almost stamped concrete, you know, you can't see the trail there, but, you know, you can see the edge of it. It's just this wide stamped concrete, you know, grooved.

00:40:17:09 - 00:40:18:04
John Simmerman
In its and its.

00:40:18:11 - 00:40:41:08
Gary Oddi
Nature trail. Yeah. And it's yeah, it's, you know. Yeah. That was true. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. It's, it's behind an industrial complex I get it. Which, you know, and I think as we move along our Santa Gertrudis trail, it gets a little prettier. You know, than that. But going under the I-15 Freeway. Yes. It's, it's going to it's going to look more like what what you just showed.

00:40:41:08 - 00:40:43:11
Gary Oddi
And it does in many segments.

00:40:43:14 - 00:41:06:23
John Simmerman
And that is and that is a common theme, though, in general, because when people see the Los Angeles River, it's the same thing. It's been completely paved over. Now they're trying to rewild some of the Southern California rivers in many of those locations because, yes, originally they did all of this for flood control and and they were like, okay, we're going to channel it all in here.

00:41:06:26 - 00:41:14:10
John Simmerman
This is what we're going to doing without really realizing the unintended consequences of when you pave over literally everything. So.

00:41:14:11 - 00:41:40:15
Gary Oddi
Yes, right. Yeah, I see. I see that. So, yeah, as we get closer to looking at those roads, we have three major East-West roads. This is the one right in the middle of this is Rancho California Road, and I live in a golf community. So this is me yesterday walking out of the golf community. This is right when I that signal that you see in the background is brand new.

00:41:40:18 - 00:41:48:27
Gary Oddi
We're excited about it because you can see the 50 right there. That's why it's so shot.

00:41:48:27 - 00:41:53:15
John Simmerman
So that's that's pretty reasonable. 50 kilometers per hour.

00:41:53:18 - 00:42:09:20
Gary Oddi
Yeah, it is the United States, it's MPH. And there is that dotted line to turn into my community. They're suggesting for you to ride your bike in that bike lane. Wait, wait, wait.

00:42:09:23 - 00:42:13:25
John Simmerman
So what do you say? No, not that.

00:42:13:27 - 00:42:53:19
Gary Oddi
Yeah, that's the suggestion they painted those on there. Anyway, so it's an interesting shot because you look out, I can ride around my community. Actually, I do like a 12 mile mountain bike ride just in my golf community, which isn't that big, but I go through all the cul de sacs, right? And I can do that. But when I pop out onto Ranch California Road, it's nice now that I have the light still without my as you have cars approaching at 50 miles an hour and you have the sun setting or whatever, you know, you have to be very very cautious crossing that that crosswalk.

00:42:53:19 - 00:43:18:13
Gary Oddi
So the crosswalk is is back over where you can see the farthest car and it takes you to the other side where you can see that nice white fence. And that is a really nice multi-use, you know, equestrian type trail. But it's hard packed, hard packed granite. And so you can ride your mountain bike on it. You can with a lot of e bikes are going that are hybrids.

00:43:18:16 - 00:43:42:24
Gary Oddi
Not really good for road bikes, but they have miles of of those types of trails that are connected. But this one runs about three or four miles, three miles along Rancho, California Road. So I can take that if you go to the next some ranch, California road I think flipped around facing there. Yeah. So I can take that trail and you can kind of see the fence on the other side of the road to that stop sign.

00:43:42:27 - 00:44:10:27
Gary Oddi
Stop right now. I can just go across one sidewalk as before. I would have to ride on this sidewalk against traffic on a sidewalk to safely get to the intersection and then do two sidewalk crossings to get to our our little community market center. But now I can go on that trail and only cross at one point. And this is one of the this is one of our very dangerous intersections here in town.

00:44:10:27 - 00:44:22:13
Gary Oddi
You've got 50 miles an hour on this road, and then you have Meadows Parkway, which I guess is close to a Stroud. It's 40 miles an hour going north and south.

00:44:22:15 - 00:44:45:03
John Simmerman
You can call it a stroke, believe me. You know, if it's. Yeah, as as Chuck would say, it's a Stroud is a street road hybrid. And so a street is going to be, you know, something that, you know, you'd feel comfortable having your child or your grandchild, you know, roll walk across or roll across. In other words, it's it's a very low speed, slow environment.

00:44:45:03 - 00:44:47:06
John Simmerman
So, yeah, that's a stretch.

00:44:47:08 - 00:45:17:15
Gary Oddi
We have some some ideas. So if you go to that next slide, I think I put it up one more. Well, this is back. I'm at the end of my walk now and a guy just happened to come by me. So I went out into the bike lane so he could pass me. I turned around and took the picture, but he's riding with traffic on the sidewalk with this great buffered bike lane as buffered bike lanes go, you have a lot of room.

00:45:17:17 - 00:45:32:15
Gary Oddi
But he made the choice because it's 45. They're 40 and 45, which is it's also a school zone. But there wasn't any school that day. He chose to ride his mountain bike on the sidewalk and I just thought that was an interesting shot.

00:45:32:17 - 00:45:41:12
John Simmerman
And I can't blame him, you know, in the sense that, you know, as you well know, there ain't much protection of of paint.

00:45:41:14 - 00:46:05:07
Gary Oddi
And so all yeah, all, all ages and all levels and all ride on that bike lane on calm days and I'll bring my wife with me and she'll ride on the sidewalk also. She just doesn't feel safe. And then I just I don't know, John. I just. That happened right after I took that picture. Some guy just decided and there was a parking lot.

00:46:05:07 - 00:46:10:24
Gary Oddi
If you go a little farther up, just decided to park his truck with the body a little further there.

00:46:10:24 - 00:46:11:16
John Simmerman
Did a little.

00:46:11:16 - 00:46:22:13
Gary Oddi
Further. Yeah. But I guess that makes it that makes the statement. And you can take that any way you want that's that's about how good that bike lane is.

00:46:22:15 - 00:46:47:08
John Simmerman
So anyway and again I mean what we're really what we're really pointing out here is that you know for Gary and John, you know, we're dedicated bike riders. You know, some might even call us mammals. You know, sometimes we're wearing our Lycra and we're out there and we're middle aged and we're confident and and hey, just give us a shoulder.

00:46:47:11 - 00:47:12:25
John Simmerman
We're fine. But that's not what all ages and all abilities is all about. And what we're talking about in terms of trying to get more people feeling comfortable riding on their bikes to meaningful destinations, wearing their normal clothes is you have to make it truly safe and inviting. And if somebody can just easily do that, then clearly it's not safe enough and it's not separated enough.

00:47:12:27 - 00:47:40:25
Gary Oddi
Yeah. Yeah, I'm not. Yeah. So that, you know, that was just a close up of what I was talking about. That's the trailhead, you know, I think that. So one of the things that bike Temecula Valley tries to do so I have that nice safe out that I talked about this is I took that picture this is probably the it's right up there ranked in the top five most dangerous intersections in Temecula.

00:47:40:25 - 00:48:03:27
Gary Oddi
It's across from what we call our duck pond. We do a lot of events there for the city. And then there's a rest restaurants on two sides and then in a shopping mall on the other side and some some affordable housing, if you would. If you turned around and looked the other way there, you would see the affordable housing on the left side.

00:48:03:27 - 00:48:36:02
Gary Oddi
There's a big a huge lot where we're putting in some affordable housing right now, high density, and they have a road expansion going on with that. But this is a situation where you're putting affordable housing and people will walk to the shopping center because it's only about 400 yards from where they live. They'll go through the duck pond, maybe to get there, but then they have to deal with this intersection or a couple other high speed light crossings to get pedestrian crossings to get across, which are very, very dangerous.

00:48:36:02 - 00:49:00:24
Gary Oddi
I think most people will get in their car and drive to the shopping center because they're not going to feel safe, especially if they're taking their children or elderly person that's living with them. They're going to put them in the car and they're not going to have them walk. So we we continue to comment with our city planners about when we do these high density construction.

00:49:00:27 - 00:49:27:10
Gary Oddi
We need to think about active transportation along with it. And the city is doing a much better job. On the north side. They do have a new project that's called Uptown Temecula, which will be high density, multi-use buildings. With all of those things taken into consideration to try not to have to try to have people not drive when they're going to services or school or whatever.

00:49:27:12 - 00:49:55:05
Gary Oddi
So one of the things we do as an advocacy group is we try to map out some safe routes, continue to advocate for infrastructure, of course, and treatments. But we feel like we can we can ride safely through our city and we try to promote those routes. So if you want, you can probably play on that. Yeah, there is the myriad Myriad a creek walk.

00:49:55:07 - 00:50:14:26
Gary Oddi
One of the things we do to promote it is we have quarterly rides. We'll have a theme like we'll do a farmer's market ride, will ride from one side of the senator to this trail to Old Town, where we have our farmer's market. That's the right. There is a dirt portion and then there's a paved portion of the myriad, a creek regional trail.

00:50:14:29 - 00:50:36:29
Gary Oddi
We call it the rail trail, because we had a lot of breweries along it for quite some time. And then these are some of those, again, nice multi-use trails that go that were put in by developments but not connected. So we have a lot of a lot of those nice spots where we connect them through some calm neighborhoods.

00:50:37:01 - 00:51:05:29
Gary Oddi
This is just a picture of my my mountain bike that I ride around town because you you're working with different surfaces a lot. So it's the best way to do it. I had a little clip of safe rides that I that I put out to promote these these different rides that that are safe rides through our community. And basically what we do is we combine our trails and our calm neighborhoods.

00:51:05:29 - 00:51:36:21
Gary Oddi
You might have to take a couple extra miles to get where you're going, but you're going to at least get there and do it safely. And it is possible. I mentioned to you that I was an educator. I still am a substitute administer later for the district. And oftentimes I'll try to find a safe route to whatever school I'm working at and make it you know, make it my my goal to ride my bike to that school once in a while to promote riding bikes.

00:51:36:23 - 00:52:03:06
Gary Oddi
One of the wonderful things we're doing right now in collaboration with the school district and the city and our trust traffic enforcement, we are starting a bicycle education program, so we are right now going to all of our assembly, all of the elementary school assemblies. They do weekly assemblies, and we're we're trying to get to every elementary school to give them some some safety tips as they kick off.

00:52:03:09 - 00:52:27:21
Gary Oddi
One of the next things we're hoping to do as a school district is to develop a permit program so that students have to apply for a permit before they can ride their bike to school so they know the rules of the road. A lot of the concern in the community right now is for mostly our adults and two young adult groups who are riding souped up e-bikes and and not following the rules of the road or the rules of the trail.

00:52:27:24 - 00:52:38:22
John Simmerman
So it's been very, very interesting to see, especially the middle schoolers discovering freedom and mobility of of the E-bike.

00:52:38:24 - 00:52:44:15
Gary Oddi
Yes, they're definitely free ranging. But yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. It's a disaster ready to happen.

00:52:44:20 - 00:53:18:05
John Simmerman
Oh, yeah. Oh, sure. Yeah. It's yeah, there's there's a few people that are actively working on it. Megan Ramey out of Hood River, Oregon, who will be on the podcast once again. She's part of the Safe Routes Program up there in Hood River, and she's also a safety instructor with the League of American Bicyclists. But she's really, you know, talking about how empowering and how important it is that they these kids are having more free range and actually working on this.

00:53:18:08 - 00:53:45:24
John Simmerman
But we do need to, you know, help them out to understand a safer way to go about it. And it's it's unfortunate that the way that this played out in in the United States in particular, especially compared to like the Netherlands, the Netherlands, you see that same level of independence and especially with the girls riding their bikes in packs and being able to to meet up and go places.

00:53:45:24 - 00:54:15:14
John Simmerman
And it's so wonderful and encouraging to see the main difference is, is they're not on e-bikes, they're just on on normal bikes and wearing their normal clothes and going about and having a grand old time. And of course nobody wears helmets there because it's much safer environment. And that's, you know, what you do. I mean, you don't wear a helmet in that situation unless you are doing something like you're on a racing bike or you're on a mountain bike and you're doing something, you know, that's quote unquote, dangerous.

00:54:15:17 - 00:54:44:15
John Simmerman
But it is interesting to see that level of traction that that mobility, you know, has had we saw a little glimmer of it in the few years ago when the e the, you know, e-scooters, you know, were dropped down into our cities and we saw the the youth, you know, flock to them because they're like, oh, heck, we've been, you know, since we were yay tall, we were on razors and, and scooters and whatnot, push scooters.

00:54:44:15 - 00:54:58:24
John Simmerman
So they were like, Oh yeah, this is fun, is cool, and it's mobility. And so it's not surprising to me now that in hindsight to see these things explode. But yeah, the throttle, the throttle e-bike situation is rather concerning.

00:54:58:26 - 00:55:20:14
Gary Oddi
Right know. And I think, you know, I like the way she's taking that positive approach, you know, because it is it's getting more people on bikes. I mean, one on one side of our advocacy group, we we have a group that developed a little side group. My my friend and I decided to take a bike ride one day.

00:55:20:14 - 00:55:43:05
Gary Oddi
He he rides all e-bikes. He's had some injuries and used to be a bike rider, but he rides a knee but he rides a gazelle now and we decided to take a bike ride. So there's Dale and we we asked a friend on on his street to ride with us. So we all went out on a ride and a few people saw us writing and started asking about their bikes.

00:55:43:05 - 00:56:07:03
Gary Oddi
And it grew to four or five. Now there's a group of about 90 people who they call themselves Easy Riders, and they take a ride every Friday morning. So I mean, that's the the real positive side, especially in a community like Temecula with all these hills, people who would want to ride a bike wouldn't do it because of the hills.

00:56:07:03 - 00:56:34:10
Gary Oddi
Now they're out and they have that assist to do it on the the and the bright side for kids is getting more kids on bikes. It's more interesting to them is the technology involved and it gets them out riding a little bit. We really push the fact that active transportation is a way and a means to have people move naturally, to get them out of their cars, to move naturally.

00:56:34:12 - 00:57:08:28
Gary Oddi
No need to have to do your work out because you've been moving naturally all day. But one of the fantastic things we got out of that you mentioned, the metal program, the American League of American Bicycling. So I always I always mess it up. But so we're a bronze level and one of the things that we got them to do, which was just amazing, they got them to do, we got the committee committee to put in to the plan was the criteria for becoming a bicycle friendly community.

00:57:09:03 - 00:57:44:07
Gary Oddi
So now we are held to that rubric that the league puts out. And one of the things they put out, for example, was to have a a community advisory committee for cycling or active transportation. And we now have that. We have that advisory panel. And it was it was bike Temecula Valley that kind of got that going. And we have all of these things in place because of that one amazing idea that the city put that into their plan.

00:57:44:14 - 00:58:03:00
Gary Oddi
So now we're we're held accountable to all of those things to to build our stress free routes based on what the league is saying. And in doing so, we hopefully, you know, we put in two to go up one level this year. We hopefully move from bronze to silver and we'll see how we do with that. Yeah.

00:58:03:02 - 00:58:25:01
John Simmerman
And and the league does a really good job of helping bring cities along so that they know what those next steps are and what they need to be able to get to the next level. It's important for city leaders to understand that, you know, this is serious business to be able to try to make your environment more to all ages and abilities.

00:58:25:03 - 00:58:49:25
John Simmerman
And in really embracing this concept, it's really not exercise per say that we're talking about. It really is that concept of the human body was was really, you know, meant to be active through little bits throughout the entire day and, you know, if we go back far enough, you know, a little bit past 10,000 years ago when we were hunter gatherers, you know, we had a pretty good range.

00:58:49:25 - 00:59:19:07
John Simmerman
And so we were constantly moving. This is the landing page for your your website. And it looks like you've got all sorts of incredible activities that are happening in the city. It's so wonderful to see this level of enthusiasm that you have moving along. And and I get the sense in what you were saying earlier is that you're sort of kicking yourself, realizing that you probably could have gotten engaged and yet getting moving, you know, sooner.

00:59:19:09 - 00:59:45:22
John Simmerman
But give yourself a break. I mean, you were actively working, you were raising kids, you were doing all these things. You have a little bit more time now and you're able to do that. If I were to recommend anyone thing, it's do whatever you can to engage those younger generations, to also get inspired to get, you know, to join you, to join you in your efforts, to join you on the board of directors.

00:59:45:22 - 01:00:11:25
John Simmerman
What tends to happen with many of these nonprofits and advocacy organizations is they tend to all look the same. They all tend to be mostly white males and mostly older gray hairs. And so anything that you can do to bring youth and energy into your movement, that would be my little pearl of wisdom, you know, based on the, you know, 15 to 20 years that I've been engaged in these activities.

01:00:11:27 - 01:00:32:06
Gary Oddi
I join in. I mean, I think that is amazing advice. And I, I keep thinking about it. It's like, you know, and I do you know, when I walked out on that trail and thought, oh, wow, this city's going to have a trail. And I was in my I was just turning 40 and you know, now I'm I'm 60.

01:00:32:06 - 01:00:55:02
Gary Oddi
I'm going to be 69 next month. And I would if somebody like me or, you know, had a page like this and I saw it, you know, I probably would have done a little bit, you know, And that's that's just what I'm looking for with people who are so engaged and in that part of their life, because we need youth, we need diversity, we need the young energy.

01:00:55:05 - 01:01:17:23
Gary Oddi
And it's just, you know, that part is not happening the way I would would like it to. But, you know, I think what you said in, you know, give a give us give ourselves a break. You know, what we have done from those five, five guys sitting in the the library parking lot to now we've built we've built quite a bit.

01:01:17:23 - 01:01:28:03
Gary Oddi
And I think everything you showed on that page was about bringing community together for a great cause. And that cause is to have a healthy community. Yeah.

01:01:28:06 - 01:01:56:27
John Simmerman
Yeah. And as you alluded to earlier too, you do have an in with the city and you do have some, you know, very familiar and friendly, you know, advocates at that level. And that's absolutely crucial, especially when you're trying to work as partners, as advocates, advocacy organization, as you know, having that positive relationship with the city and with the politicians is incredibly important.

01:01:57:03 - 01:02:25:17
John Simmerman
That level of leadership that is is needed to do some of these tough things. And I probably don't think that you, as the city have have taken the step of taking lanes away from automobiles or doing anything like that yet. But at some point in time, there may be, you know, those tough decisions that need to get made if if we're going to actually create a truly protected and separated path.

01:02:25:17 - 01:03:04:00
John Simmerman
And the only place for us to do this, you know, is an on street bike lane with some level of protection, there may need to be some real estate that, you know, get squeezed, you know, away from the motoring public. And so having those strong at city Hall and them knowing that the constituents that you the voters, because you're growing your movement will have their back when the haters come hating because they are, they will you know that that that will be that will give them that will you know that sense of of political will and that being emboldened to be able to know that they're doing the right thing.

01:03:04:02 - 01:03:26:12
Gary Oddi
I know I agree 100%. That was that was one of our goals. A prime was to try to continue to be visible even if if it wasn't you know, if it's not my particular commission for me to go to a different commission, a planning commission or the safety commission and, you know, comment on some of the things they're doing or going to city council and with constant reminders about what we're doing.

01:03:26:14 - 01:03:52:16
Gary Oddi
And then being there in force too. We had a few council meetings where we had a big group with wearing, wearing our blue shirts and representing, you know, hey, we are voters and we're, you know, this is what we want. This is that I mean, no, you're so right. And I think to one of the things about our advocacy group is we our goal is to expand out and be a regional group.

01:03:52:16 - 01:04:20:10
Gary Oddi
And we have been participating. We were in the Menifee city of Menifee Complete Street Project. We sat on that committee, the City of William, our active transportation plan. So we want to be a regional advocacy group. That's something that we just didn't have in our area. We had San Diego Bike Coalition, L.A. Bike Coalition. And so, you know, we're going to be a regional, but we felt like since we're mostly from Temecula, we get Temecula right, we can then expand out from there.

01:04:20:13 - 01:04:21:27
Gary Oddi
Yeah, Yeah.

01:04:21:29 - 01:04:28:17
John Simmerman
I love it. I love it. Gary, thank you so much for joining me on the Active Towns podcast. This has been so much fun.

01:04:28:19 - 01:04:31:17
Gary Oddi
Thank you, John. We really enjoyed being here.

01:04:31:19 - 01:04:45:05
John Simmerman
A Thank you all so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this episode with Gary from the Temecula Valley Bicycle Coalition, and if you did, please give it a thumbs up. Leave a comment down below and share it with a friend. And if you haven't done so already, I'd be honored to have you subscribe to the channel.

01:04:45:05 - 01:05:05:24
John Simmerman
Just click on that subscription button down below and ring the notifications bell. And if you're enjoying this content I'm producing here on the Active Towns channel, please consider supporting my efforts on Patreon. Buy me a coffee YouTube Super. Thanks for down there. As well as supporting the nonprofit, just head on over to Active towns dot org and click on the support button.

01:05:05:28 - 01:05:29:27
John Simmerman
And while you're over there at the website, you can also pop on over to the active town store and take a look at some of the streets or for people swag out there, including water bottles, T-shirts and all that good stuff. Every little bit helps and is much appreciated. Until next time. This is John signing off by wishing you much activity, health and, happiness, cheers and again sending a huge thank you to all my active towns.

01:05:29:27 - 01:05:45:16
John Simmerman
Ambassadors supporting the channel on Patron Buy me a coffee YouTube super Thanks as well as making contributions to the nonprofit and purchasing things from the active town store, every little bit adds up and it's much appreciated. Thank You all so much.