Safe Routes to School pioneer Deb Hubsmith has passed away

🙁 As a dedicated hermit, I so appreciate people like her who get out there and do the not-so-fun work for the greater good. I’m sorry she’s gone.

R.I.P., Deb. It’s horrible that we lost you so soon. I remember fondly visiting your house in Marin over a decade ago for a party following a bicycle event, before Safe Routes to School exploded on the national scene. Even back then, you were a powerful and effective bicycle advocate within the San Francisco Bay Area, and influential in ensuring that the first Bay Area Bicycle Plan of 2001 was at least a step in the right direction for bicycles. I enjoyed working with you, and I enjoyed even more hearing from those in power how you effectively lobbied them to consider bicycles, especially when their priorities otherwise lay elsewhere.

You will be missed greatly. There are too few remaining in this world like you.

So sad, and a loss to the advocacy of cycling.

Never met her, but pictures, stories and remembrances posted here, say a lot. So beautiful and bright. Even given such a relatively short life, how wonderful to have been able to leave such a fine legacy and inspiring example to other people with hopes of making some small improvement to life for everyone during their time here.

Hopefully she is riding a lovely bike in the sky someplace.

Wow! Another person who really deserved to be alive more than me. Whenever a life is snuffed out too soon, I think of Benjamin Jonson’s poem:

It is not growing like a tree
In bulk doth make Man better be;
Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere:
A lily of a day
Is fairer far in May,
Although it fall and die that night—
It was the plant and flower of light.
In small proportions we just beauties see;
And in short measures life may perfect be.

Deb inspired so many, including me, to do the work we do. Thank you Deb for all that you gave to the movement and for leaving a lasting legacy for our children. You will be sorely and deeply missed.

Deb was an incredible cycling advocate and we are all sad in her passing. But her presence will always be felt – Presente! Presente! Presente! She visited me in Portland with her wonderful partner in cycling advocacy, Andy Peri, who I have known for 28 years. Sincere condolences.