Cyclists celebrate Mount Diablo bike turnouts as a life-saving success story
DANVILLE -- For years, one of the Bay Area's most popular cycling destinations -- the summit of Mount Diablo -- has also been one of the most dangerous. This Saturday, bike riders and park officials celebrated an accomplishment ten years in the making that is dramatically reducing the number of tragedies on the mountain.
They're called "bike turnouts," narrow lanes of asphalt allowing uphill bikes to pull off the main roadway on blind curves. That gives cars a chance to pass without swerving into the oncoming lane, sometimes into the path of downhill cyclists.
Danville Mayor Karen Stepper's daughter Shannon was lucky to survive a head-on collision in 2015.
"You see all of these turnouts and see the people turning, getting over," Stepper said as she watched cyclists using the turnouts. "Obviously, Shannon wouldn't have been hit if it had been like that. So, you have to have somebody who actually comes up with the idea."
That somebody was Al Kalin. The retired Army colonel and avid bike rider got fed up with all the carnage and formed the group Mount Diablo Cyclists to do something about it.
"We were established in 2014 when we realized that the fire department was coming up here every other week," he said. "Cyclists were being hit -- actual collisions -- and state parks, at that time, was doing absolutely nothing to understand why and even less to implement any safety improvements."
So, in Kalin's backyard, a working group of cyclists sketched out a design for a turnout that didn't seem to exist anywhere else in the world. They shamed the state into creating the first three and, when those seemed to work well, a few more were added here and there on a piecemeal basis. Finally, in 2021, state senator Steve Glazer spearheaded the appropriation of $1.5 million to finish the first 45 turnouts on the mountain.
"It became incredibly safer," said cyclist Linda Kwong. "And it's only been much more improved with the quantity that has gone up over the years."
Then, tragedy pushed the project forward. In 2021, a legendary Diablo cyclist named Joe Shami was killed in a collision with a car. His will left $125,000 to the effort, which State Parks matched. Then, Kalin began collecting donations at a Danville coffee shop, raising an astounding $750,000. With that, Mount Diablo got its most recent 22 turnouts for a current total of 67. A ceremony celebrating their completion was held at the site of the pilot turnout and, with voice cracking, Kalin acknowleged the legacy of his friend Joe Shami.
"Joe was my friend. Joe was your friend. Joe was 86 years young and never, ever accepted the word 'no' when your life was at stake. In honor of Joe's efforts, today is 'Joe Shami Day' on Mount Diablo. I hearby declare it!" said Kalin, to the cheers of the crowd.
He didn't get permission from the parks department to do that but, then, the entire effort to create the turnouts has been a grassroots struggle with bureaucracy, which Kalin said can be a little discouraging at times.
"When you battle a bureaucracy, you go to bed thinking, 'Oh man, I don't want to do this,'" he said. "But then you wake up and they say 'thank you.' And so, the thank-yous have kept me going."
On Saturday, both the park and the cyclists said "thank you" for making the ride to the top a little less harrowing. Collisions have been reduced by 80 percent and others are taking notice. Kalin was recently contacted by Oregon State University to see if the turnouts might be feasible in that state as well. On Mount Diablo the plan calls for a final 13 turnouts but someone else may need to find the funds for that. Kalin said he is afraid of what his wife might do if he starts trying to raise money again.