Vigil for Donna Revecho: We must make San Pablo safe for all
About 25 concerned citizens gathered at San Pablo and Waldo avenues, next to the crosswalk where Donna Revecho was struck by a car and died from her injuries 3 weeks later.
By Steve Price
On December 22, about 25 concerned citizens gathered to honor Donna Revecho, a Richmond Annex resident who died trying to cross San Pablo Avenue in the crosswalk at Waldo Street. El Cerrito/Richmond Annex Walk & Roll called the vigil at 2 p.m., the time of day that Revecho was hit by a car.
(A friend of Revecho’s family posted a GoFundMe to help them pay for funeral expenses, and AC Transit director Jean Walsh posted a reel of the ECRA Walk & Roll vigil on Instagram.)
This was the second pedestrian fatality within a month in El Cerrito; Sumitra Gurung, a 57-year-old woman, was struck and killed crossing Eastshore Boulevard near San Pablo on Dec. 12, along with a spate of nonfatal but serious accidents in November. Our streets are becoming more and more dangerous as traffic laws are increasingly being ignored, vehicle sizes are ballooning, vehicle miles traveled is increasing, and our street designs are encouraging reckless driving. Dangerous streets that lead to tragic outcomes don't reflect well on a community. We can do better.
As ECRA Walk & Roll reported, Caltrans is becoming more open to working cooperatively with jurisdictions that its roads pass through. In 2024, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law the Complete Streets bill (SB960), authored by California State Senator Scott Weiner and sponsored by CalBike, SPUR, AARP California, and other groups. The new law puts Caltrans on notice to work with local governments to make major streets like San Pablo Avenue work for all users, not just motorists. This landmark law creates comprehensive, statewide requirements for designing streets that prioritize safety and accessibility for bicycle riders, pedestrians, and transit users, as well as motorists.
Cities up until now have often maintained that they couldn’t make changes to Caltrans streets and highways because the cities had no jurisdiction over those thoroughfares. “Caltrans won’t let us” has been the refrain for years. SB 960 will make it easier for local jurisdictions to work with Caltrans to make state streets and highways like our stretch of San Pablo Avenue work for the communities that they pass through.
With Caltrans’s upcoming San Pablo repaving project (see below), it is time for El Cerrito to assert its right to a safe San Pablo Avenue.
TAKE ACTION FOR A SAFER SAN PABLO AVENUE!: Sign Bike East Bay’s Multimodal San Pablo Avenue petition, which is advocating for a “street that works for every person who walks, rides, plays, and drives”; learn more about the Multimodal San Pablo Avenue campaign, which “envisions thriving communities and continuous, pleasant, low-stress, and all-ages bicycle and pedestrian pathways from downtown Oakland all the way north to the Carquinez Bridge.”