Bike San Diego is working to make biking safer by giving community members the tools and knowledge to demonstrate how street design can improve bike and vehicle coexistence. A grant from the Sacramento Region Community Foundation’s Maggie O’Mara Bicycle Safety Award is helping make it possible.
Through its Tactical Urbanism Lending Library, Bike San Diego will provide materials for temporary street-safety projects, such as protected bike lanes and curb extensions. The library will include flexible delineators, K-rails, temporary chalk paint, traffic cones, and a companion booklet designed to help community organizations use the materials in their own neighborhoods.
This kind of hands-on resource is exactly what a local donor had in mind when he established the Maggie O’Mara Bicycle Safety Award at the Foundation in 2025, in memory of his wife. This Field of Interest Fund awards grants that advance bicycle safety and better coexistence between bikes and vehicles on the road. The cause was close to Maggie’s heart: She spent her career at Caltrans as a bicycle safety coordinator, working to build safety into the department’s projects statewide. Through this fund, that work continues in her name.
The grant to Bike San Diego project will also give community members hands on opportunities to learn about infrastructure that can create safer conditions for people biking and driving. Bike San Diego plans to collaborate with organizations from diverse communities across the City of San Diego and implement four to six tactical urbanism demonstrations, with potential focus areas including gaps in the bike network and areas surrounding schools.
By making the materials and educational resources available for organizations and community members to borrow, Bike San Diego hopes these temporary demonstrations can help communities visualize safer street designs and advocate for longer-term improvements.
This is the fund’s second grant. In 2025, the fund supported Sacramento-based Safety Center, which purchased helmets for local youth and hosted a bicycle safety event earlier this year.
Donors interested in supporting the Maggie O’Mara Bicycle Safety Award are invited to visit www.sacregcf.org/bikesafety. To follow this donor’s example and open a charitable fund around a cause you care about — including a Field of Interest Fund that, like this one, awards competitive grants — visit our Donor’s page.