A minor change to California law

And it's a good one, too. Bike Nopa has the details:

Last month Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law a measure that makes legal what bicyclists have been doing all along: riding across Masonic Avenue on the Panhandle Path. No matter how carefully bicyclists shared the path with pedestrians and other cyclists and no matter that they only crossed the street with a green bike light before, they were still breaking the law. The problem was with the interpretation a law that governed use of the crosswalk. The previous wording of the law allowed an interpretation that cyclists should get off their bike and walk across a street like Masonic.

... Senate bill 734 (in pdf here), introduced by Senator Alan Lowenthal, rectified the problem by defining a "bicycle path crossing" as any portion of a roadway clearly marked and indicated for use by bicyclists. In other words, bicyclists have the right to use the bicycle paths designated for their use even when the path crosses a street that connects segments of the route.