Marin bicycle advocate lobbies for safe routes as well as federal grants
Keri Brenner
Marin Independent Journal, Jan. 29, 2006
TEN YEARS years after she totaled her car at a freeway exit near Highway 101 in South San Francisco, Deb Hubsmith still cringes at left turns.
"Right before the crash, I had the thought that if I lived, I'm never going to have another car," says Hubmith, 36, of Fairfax. "I injured my low back, but I walked away without a scratch - it's a miracle."
True to her vow, the 1996 accident turned Hubsmith, advocacy director of the Marin County Bicycle Coalition, into a non-car-owner and confirmed bicycle commuter.
"In fact, it's laid out my destiny for the future, it appears," says Hubsmith in an understatement.
Now powered by a vegan diet, lots of sleep and a fervor for transit approaching "born-again" dimensions, Hubsmith is not shy about public speaking on the need for new bicycle trails in the county or her newest cause: making Marin the model for a national Safe Routes to Schools program.
"I gave up coffee five years ago," she says. "But my big secret to having energy is I try to get eight hours sleep a night - good, old-fashioned sleep - and my passion for my life and my career gives me a lot of energy."
Friends like Patrick Seidler, president of the nonprofit Transportation Alternatives for Marin, says he marvels not only at Hubsmith's verve but also her effectiveness.
"She's smart, articulate and a very good visionary, but also knows the nuts and bolts of how you type a document," says Seidler, of Marinwood, who has known Hubsmith since 1997. "It's very rare that you find that combination."
Seidler and Hubsmith have worked together on bicycle and pedestrian advocacy projects since 1998 - the year Hubsmith became executive director of the Marin County Bicycle Coalition. After seven years at the coalition's helm, she stepped down a year ago this month to a part-time advocacy director post - a move that left her time to assume coordination duties nationally for the Safe Routes to Schools program.
SR2S is actually less a program than a menu of encouragement, education, engineering and enforcement initiatives - all to help children easily and safely bike or walk to school.
Last month, Hubsmith was the only Marin citizen representative on a four-person panel that traveled to Washington, D.C., to talk with federal officials about a $25 million bicycle and pedestrian grant the county was awarded earlier last year.
She had been active in lobbying for the county's grant - part of a $100 million, five-year demonstration program given to only four communities across the nation. Over the past six years, Hubsmith has met more than dozen times with U.S. Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. The committee championed the $286.5 billion transportation bill passed by Congress last summer that included the Marin grant and also the national rollout of the Safe Routes to School model.
"He's one of her biggest fans," says Jim Berard, Democratic communications director for the House transportation committee, of Oberstar and Hubsmith. "He admires her enthusiasm - she's one of those people that makes things happen, and she's really been Marin County's strongest advocate."
Marin Supervisor Steve Kinsey, who was also on the four-person Marin delegation to Washington, says he recommended to leaders of the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, a co-sponsor of the visit with the Federal Highway Administration, that Hubsmith be included as a community representative.
When the group arrived, he volunteered Hubsmith as a resource for the other three communities as well as for Marin. They gratefully accepted, Kinsey says.
"She's one of those people who has a holistic understanding of what it takes to bring about cultural change in the area of bicycle and pedestrian philosophy, politics and technology," Kinsey says. "It's not just about infrastruture - it's about getting the values driven into people's consciousness regarding health and safety of a community, and health and safety of children."
Kinsey, who has known Hubsmith since 1993 - pre-supervisor for him; pre-bicycle activist for her - when they both lived and worked in West Marin, says he respects Hubsmith's deep allegiance to concepts such as sustainability, environmental awareness and "green" living.
"She seeks to live her core values every day," Kinsey says. "She is a unique blend of visionary idealism and detail-oriented investigation skills."
Of her "characteristic effervescence and enthusiasm," Kinsey admits with a smile that "some people might feel that a white tornado has just moved through when she leaves a room."
But Kinsey says the intensity is part of the reason for Hubsmith's success in getting things done.
"Nobody challenges the sincerity of her intentions," he says. "She lives an incredibly modest lifestyle."
Marin Supervisor Charles McGlashan, another member of the county's Washington delegation on the recent bike and pedestrian program trip, is also a Hubsmith fan.
"She's done a lot of incredible service for the county," McGlashan says. "She's one of the unsung heroes who has done good environmental and transportation work - day in, day out."
Away from the Marin Civic Center, where Hubsmith is known to mesmerize the public comment periods at Board of Supervisors meetings with her forceful rhetoric and strong presentation, the Manhattan native is not at all overbearing.
In fact, at her home office cottage behind hers and husband Mika Scott's snug wood floors and stone-front country-style house on a tree-lined street in Fairfax, Hubsmith wholly endears herself to those with lesser wattage when she acknowledges she is not at all a bike fitness freak.
"I had very serious asthma as a child, and I still carry an inhaler," she admits with candor. "Riding a bike is good for my asthma and is quite therapeutic."
Right after her watershed 1996 car accident, Hubsmith was unable to ride more than a mile without wheezing and had to walk up all the hills. She kept with it, however, and now rides wheeze-free all over the county - even uphill.
"Riding a bike seems to be the thing that has improved my asthma more than anything, including medication," Hubsmith says. "It has expanded my activity level and improved my stamina."
Hubsmith actually bikes only about 15 to 20 miles a day for commute purposes, and doesn't, despite speculation to the contrary, keep fit by zipping off on 100-mile "century" rides in her days off, or wake up at 4 a.m. to attend "spin" classes.
"I don't bike so much in my free time," she says, delivering the coup de grace. "What I like to do for exercise is go dancing."
Music and dancing - she does free-form dance "jams" and also does swing, salsa and contact improvisation - form the core of Hubsmith's free-time pursuits. They also are part of the basis for her September 2004 marriage to Scott, 44, a Berkeley-based disc jockey, music event coordinator, recording studio entrepreneur and fellow dancer.
The couple met in 2001 at a weeklong dance "camp" in the Sierra where Scott, who grew up in the East Bay, was one of the organizers of a drumming group. Scott still runs a weekly live music "dance jam" in Berkeley, and the couple often take dance-oriented vacations and weekend getaways.
Their 200-guest wedding, which stretched over three days at a camp in Mendocino, included dancing, drumming, vegan meals and "every conceivable ritual," says Kinsey, an attendee.
Born in Manhattan, Hubsmith grew up Bergen County, New Jersey. Her parents divorced when she was 5, and her father moved back to Manhattan.
Hubsmith's interest in transit began when she and her younger sister visited their father, an antiques dealer and early bicycle commuter, in Manhattan. They traveled by bus, train and occasionally bicycles around the city and environs.
"We would get on the subway and go into the Village to check out the shops," Hubsmith says. "We would take the train from Manhattan to New Jersey."
After abandoning an earlier major in civil engineering, Hubsmith graduated from Lehigh University in 1992 with a degree in environmental science and resource management.
After graduation, she moved to California, choosing the Golden State over Oregon because she was more focused on environmentally oriented lifestyle choices than the loggers vs. environmentalists drama unfolding in the Pacific Northwest and upper Northern California.
"I really wanted to do something with the environment, and the West Coast was the most fertile ground," Hubsmith says. She ended up in Marin because "it looked the most green close to San Francisco."
Landing in San Rafael, Hubsmith worked in a series of jobs with nonprofits in Marin and San Francisco - where she saw her first Critical Mass bike rally clog the city streets one Friday night in 1994.
"I'd never seen anything like that before," she says. At the time, Hubsmith, who moved to West Marin in 1995, was still driving her 1981 Honda Accord every day, despite criticism from one bike activist friend in the city.
"He didn't believe I was a real environmentalist because I was still driving my car," Hubsmith recalled.
Her epiphany at the 1996 accident changed all that. The crash took place when Hubsmith was traveling from San Francisco to see a concert in Santa Cruz. Although she was, at 26, old enough to be admitted to adults-only concerts or to buy a beer, she looked young enough that she knew she would need identification - for which documentation was unfortunately still locked inside her office in the city.
Hubsmith got off the freeway and headed down to an underpass to turn around and get back on Highway 101 northbound to retrieve the ID. When she began turning left to go back on the freeway, she was waved on by one driver coming from the other direction, but then broadsided by a second car traveling in the middle lane.
"The car didn't have any lights on so he didn't see me," she says. "He smashed into me on my passenger side."
With no car after that, commuting by bus to her job in the city took 21Ú2 hours. After camping out with friends in the city during the week for about six months, Hubsmith quit her job in San Francisco and became an arts coordinator at the San Geronimo Valley Community Center in West Marin.
She began commuting by bicycle to work from her home, then a one-room cabin in Forest Knolls. From there, Hubsmith got involved in a series of community campaigns - from safe hitchhiking to bike racks to a transportation tax - that ultimately led to her work with the Marin County Bicycle Coalition.
She still does not own a car. She has no complaints.
"I always wanted," Hubsmith says, "to be a person who walked my talk."
