SVBC Policy Advisory Committee (PAC)

Adina is Executive Director of Friends of Caltrain, a nonprofit organization which supports successful modernization of Caltrain in the context of integrated system of sustainable transportation. She is also Advocacy Director for Seamless Bay Area, a nonprofit focused on achieving a seamlessly integrated, equitable public transportation system for the region. She contributes to a variety of local and regional advisory bodies on transportation and connections between transportation and land use. She is a serial entrepreneur with a background in for-profit and nonprofit ventures.

Amie is a passionate cycling evangelist, environmentalist, and urbanist. She is committed to the idea that cities should have cyclists in mind during local and regional decision making. Amie works as an environmental planner and project manager and has championed bike-related amenities as part of roadway improvements, commercial office, public park, and residential development projects throughout the Bay Area. She is a dedicated bike/Caltrain commuter and appreciates the physical and mental boost that an active commute provides. As a board member, Amie leverages her connections with city staff and partners the development world to ensure that necessary bicycle infrastructure is included in long-range planning documents and is ultimately constructed. If you build bike paths, they will ride!

April Webster is a software engineer and data scientist by profession, but has harboured a strong passion for the environment and for bikes from an early age. She grew up surrounded by nature in the small town of Hope, BC where she began biking both for transportation and exercise as a child.

During university, she was introduced to the concept of road diets and slow streets by a city planner for Vancouver, and to community activism through her mother's involvement in local politics. Both of these influences planted the seed for her later involvement in active transportation and sustainability advocacy. She strongly believes the way in which we design our built environment should have a much more holistic, system-oriented, people-focused, and sustainable approach, and that integrating nature, prioritizing more active forms of transportation, and creating more connected communities will be important tools in our fight against climate change.

Bobby began riding the streets of San José when he got his first BMX bike in 4th grade. He moved around various parts of San José and gained perspective of the differences and inequities across the city. He eventually attended UCSB, a Platinum-level Bike Friendly University, and continued to get around by bicycle. He has worked in local government for almost a decade, and has become familiar with how a city operates. In one position he worked closely with the transportation planner within the city and learned about both the process and funding mechanisms.

He got involved with the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition and continues to advocate for safer streets to increase bicycling in San José. He currently serves on the City of San José’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee (BPAC) and works with the San Jose Local Team.

David is a life long cyclist and environmentalist working on many aspects of solutions to climate change. David was involved in the very early days of the formation of Bay Area Action (1990), which later became Acterra (2010) and was on the board for many years. His longer bike riding events were started with Wave to Wine benefit bike rides almost 40 years ago. More recently he has been volunteering for Bike to Work days for the last 15 years and a main organizer of Bike Palo Alto from it’s inception in 2010. He has also participated in 9 Climate Rides since 2011 and has done clean up activities with Bicyclean, which won an award from SVBC in 2020.

San Mateo Local Team Member

David is a active transportation and sustainability advocate based in San Mateo who works in hardware engineering in the tech industry. He started cycling and using public transit for to get around Los Angeles in 2008 because he was tired of the frustration of driving. Ever since then he has been trying to take more trips by bike/transit and has developed a possibly unhealthy obsession with electric bikes (especially cargo bikes). David has lead several free bike repair events in San Mateo that have connected with the local community, gotten people back out on bikes, and fixed hundreds of bikes. David enjoys exploring the intersections of data and transportation.

Areas of expertise: Data wrangling and visualization, advocacy and organizing

Janet Lafleur is a bicycle advocate based in Mountain View who works in product marketing for the tech industry. After many years of sport cycling, she made a commitment in 2010 to bike and take transit wherever possible: commuting to work, doing errands, visiting friends, going out on dinner dates. She quickly learned where our streets fell short in terms of comfort, convenience, and safety, and became a bike advocate. With the support of the SVBC, she founded Silicon Valley’s first Bike to Shop Day to show the economic value of bicycling to the local business community and to residents. She fought hard to get bicycling on El Camino Real included into Mountain View's plans. The first of the city's bicycle lanes on El Camino are slated for installation in 2023. Her goal is to make bicycling accessible to every person, to go everywhere.

GEOPHYSICIST, RETIRED

John is a long-time cyclist after getting his first 10-speed bike in high school in 1965/66. Over his career as a cyclist, he used his bike to attend graduate school (Seattle), and for commuting during his 38 years working at the US Geological Survey in Menlo Park. John also rides recreationally and still enjoys riding the 60 mile loop from his home in Redwood City to Pescadero on the San Mateo coast. In addition, he has completed many bike tours including cross country from New York to Alaska (1972), the Adventure Cycling “Great Divide”, three tours in the Alps, along with tours covering Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and Labrador. All self supported.

John has been doing bike advocacy since the early 1990s when he joined the San Mateo County Bikeways Advisory Committee (which became the C/CAG BPAC). Currently, John is a member of the current San Mateo County Bike and Pedestrian Advisory Committee and, until recently, a member of the Atherton BPAC (and no, I don’t live in Atherton!) but my daily rides often go through Atherton)

Expertise: Earthquake and Volcano Geodesy!

Josh Mello is the District Transportation Lead for Google and has a long track record as a transportation manager specializing in bikeway and complete street planning, design, and construction. Projects he has worked on include the Cross-City Trail in Wilmington (NC), NACTO Urban Bikeway Design Guide, and the first bicycle plan for the City of Compton. Prior to Google, Josh served as the Chief Transportation Official for the City of Palo Alto, and Vice-chair of the VTA Technical Advisory Committee, where he became a thought leader on all things bikes for neighboring cities to emulate. He has also worked for Alta Planning + Design, Atlanta (GA), and Wilmington (NC). In 2013, Josh won an award for Professional of the Year from the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals and a Blinkie Award from the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition.

Areas of expertise: Local and state government, transportation grants and funding, bikeway and complete street planning, design, and construction

Stay tuned

SVBC Sunnyvale Local Team Leader

Sharlene Liu protects the natural environment. She promotes biking, walking, and transit as necessary means toward sustainable transportation. Currently, she is the Lead of Bike Sunnyvale, the local Sunnyvale team of SVBC. As Lead, she advocates for safe bicycle infrastructure with Sunnyvale city government. In addition, Sharlene serves on the Sunnyvale Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Commission. When her children were in school, she was Parent Lead for the Safe Routes to School programs at her children's K-12 schools. She led weekly walk and bike to school days, did bike counts to track progress, and created the local high school's first bike route map. Sharlene uses her bike as her main mode of transport for all local destinations like farmer's markets and downtown.

Sharlene holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT. She built a career as a research engineer in the field of automatic speech recognition prior to pivoting to bicycle advocacy.