Making Streets Work for Everyone
- Brooks McKinney, APR
- Nov 4
- 11 min read
Updated: Nov 9
Streets for All CEO Michael Schneider spearheads efforts to make public streets safer, more accessible for cyclists, pedestrians, transit riders and drivers alike.
When Michael Schneider was in elementary school, he got tired of having to write his name, date and subject on the top left corner of every sheet of notebook paper he turned in. So, like any good entrepreneur trying to resolve a personal “infrastructure” problem with an easy-to-scale solution, he started selling customized notebook paper to his classmates—for 10 cents per sheet.
“I think I made maybe 20 bucks until I got called into the principal’s office,” he recalls fondly, “because apparently you’re not allowed to sell things on a public-school campus.”
Turning Convention Upside Down
While the principal was no doubt trying to discourage such “innovation,” the run-in with authorities only reinforced Schneider’s willingness to turn conventional rules of engagement upside down.
At the age of 15, he hit on the idea of selling video games on the Internet by going to local video game stores, taking note of their best-selling titles and then putting them online at a marked-up price.
“When I sold a game, I would go get it from the nearest game store and ship it,” Schneider explains. “It wasn’t the most scalable business and I couldn’t drive yet. What actually killed the business is that my mom got sick of taking me to the post office every day after school.”
Making Streets Safe for All
Today, as founder and CEO of Streets for All, an LA-based mobility infrastructure advocacy organization, Schneider is applying his unorthodox, unapologetically disruptive approach to democratizing the streets of Los Angeles and San Francisco. His goal is to make them safe, even pleasant to use for cyclists, pedestrians, motorists and public transit riders alike.
“Most people in US cities don’t have freedom of choice in terms of how they get around,” he observes. “They are essentially forced into owning or renting a car and using that car because their built environment doesn’t support much else. (That condition) is expensive, hurts the environment, and makes streets unsafe for everyone else.”
Discovering Possibilities
Schneider, the son of an elementary school teacher and a lawyer, grew up in the 1980s in the family-oriented, tree-lined neighborhood of Rancho Park in West Los Angeles. He describes his childhood self as a “very nerdy kid.”
“My parents got me my first computer when I was five or six years old,” he recalls. “They came into my room the next day and I had taken it all apart. They were furious because the machine was expensive. But then the next day they came back and I’d put it back together again and it was working fine. They said, ‘Oh, that’s interesting, maybe this is his thing.’”
Like most kids, Schneider also loved riding his bike and the freedom it offered, even though he was not allowed to ride outside the three-block-by-four-block zone around his home.
“I remember my parents driving me to school, and my school was just two blocks away,” he says. “Or when we would go to dinner at the Westside Pavilion, my mom would drive there, and that’s just four blocks away. We just never considered not driving places. Looking back now, it was insane.”
Speeding Downhill
Until Schneider reached driving age, his “go-to” means of transportation was a bike. But then he turned, in his words, into a “very typical teenage boy.”
“I got my driver’s license at 8 a.m. on my 16th birthday,” he remembers. “I became someone I wasn’t proud of in terms of how I thought about roads. I loved speed. I loved cars. I loved customizing cars. And as I did better financially, I would spend a disproportionate amount of my income on importing cars, and just went all in.”
Predictably, Schneider’s “need for speed” caught up with him. He crashed his first car—a used, white BMW 318i stick shift with cloth interior—by going “way too fast” down a hill in Beverly Hills, losing control and wrapping it around a tree.
Trying on a Business Career
Schneider’s fascination with technology and the business potential of the Internet brought him to the nearby University of Southern California (USC) in 1999. Though he insists he stayed in school primarily to please his parents, the experience earned him a bachelor’s degree in business management from USC’s Marshall School of Business in 2003.
Schneider parlayed his degree into several well-intended but ultimately unsuccessful start-ups, including:
Fluidesign, an interactive design and branding agency that specialized in high-end custom websites and online marketing strategies.
Nesting.com, a business that Schneider describes as “Facebook for moms.”
Mobile Roadie, a platform that allowed users to create and manage native mobile applications without needing to know how to code; and
Service, a system that automatically saved users money as they traveled, and compensated them for delayed and cancelled flights.
Facing Reality
In 2010, however, faced with shrinking business fortunes exacerbated by the financial crisis, Schneider realized that he could no longer afford to own or drive a car.
“I found someone on Autotrader.com who was willing to take over my BMW lease,” he explains. “I drove it over to the Hillcrest Country Club—that’s where the trader wanted to meet—and walked home. “It was a painful but financially prudent decision.”
Looking back, he considers the transaction to be one of the best things that’s ever happened to him.
“It made me realize that cars just aren’t that important,” he acknowledges. “If one of my businesses hadn’t been on the ropes, and I hadn’t had to give up my car, I don’t think I ever would have started Streets for All or been inclined to be curious about other ways to get around Los Angeles.”
Falling for Cycling
Schneider’s rediscovery of the bike began with a used, 1970 Schwinn 5-speed that his girlfriend (now wife) had bought for him to share sunset bike rides with her along the Venice bike path. Undeterred by the bike’s weight and limited functionality, he was soon riding it to and from the gym regularly, and joining friends for extended rides of up to 50 miles.
But it wasn’t until Schneider’s dad pointed out the advantages of riding a lighter, multi-speed bike—and bought him a hybrid Trek bicycle as a birthday gift to make the point—that he discovered a world of cycling comfort he’d never known.
After several cycling trips with friends to Mallorca—one of Spain’s Balearic Islands—he also got over his fear of riding a road bike with drop handlebars and clip-in pedals. And he’s never looked back.
Rethinking Mobility Infrastructure
As Schneider’s lifestyle evolved from being car-centric to bike-centric, he also became keenly aware of the limitations and idiosyncrasies of LA’s bicycling infrastructure.
“I was distressed to learn that the places in the world with the best bike infrastructure have the worst weather, while here in LA we have the best weather and some of the worst bike infrastructure,” he laments. "I wanted to understand better who made (bike infrastructure) decisions, and why they’re making those decisions for me. For example, why do some bike lanes just disappear at a certain point?”
So, he started attending community meetings, city council meetings and other forums where people were debating the demand for bike lanes and other forms of mobility infrastructure.
“I went to local meetings where someone was yelling about how a bike lane was going to destroy a neighborhood, but there was no one yelling back,” Schneider remembers. “I realized that our elected officials had the mindset that no one cared about this stuff or were hostile to it, so they weren’t willing to go out on a limb politically.”
Launching Streets for All
That’s what inspired him to launch Streets for All in 2019, initially as a political action committee (PAC) to support and help elect officials who would support the build-out of bike lanes across Los Angeles.
“My goal was to flip the LA City Council to a majority of people who cared about this topic,” he shares.
“When we started, we had just one ally, Councilmember Mike Bonin. Today, there are seven sitting Council members that we’ve endorsed—the LA City Council has 15 members—so we’re very close to having a majority.”
Headquartered in Los Angeles with operations also in San Francisco, Streets for All is a 501(c)(4) organization that houses an independent expenditure committee. It also has a 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor, which makes it eligible for tax-deductible donations.
Uncovering LA’s Mobility Truth
When Schneider formed Streets for All, his goal was to learn as much as he could about LA’s city structure, how decisions got made, and how things worked, politically and logistically,
when it came to installing mobility infrastructure.
What he discovered was that the City Council had formally adopted LA’s Mobility Plan 2035 in September 2016, but there was nothing that required the City to implement it. In response, Schneider and Streets for All organized and ran a two-year, $4-million campaign to create a ballot initiative called “Healthy Streets for All,” also known as Measure HLA.
LA voters passed Measure HLA in March 2024 with 65.5 percent of the vote. It requires Los Angeles to implement improvements from its Mobility Plan 2035 whenever it repaves a street section one-eighth of a mile or longer. These improvements include:
Protected bike lanes and paths
Dedicated bus lanes
New and safer crosswalks
Wider sidewalks, and
Traffic-calming devices like mini traffic circles
Leading with Persistence
Inspired by his Measure HLA success, Schneider has become a persistent and outspoken advocate for significant changes to LA’s car-dominated streetscape.
These days, you’re as likely to find him advocating for bus-priority lanes and safer pedestrian crossings in Central LA as testifying at City Hall or LA Metro board meetings for mobility-friendly policies or attending pop-up Streets for All-sponsored neighborhood events. Among supporters and detractors alike, he’s known for being bold, passionate—some call his style confrontational—but highly effective at making the case for safe, enhanced mobility infrastructure.
“My style has always been direct and, frankly, aggressive, because I think that’s what politicians listen to,” admits Schneider. “In the early days, we tried talking about climate change, doing the right thing, etc., but no one cared about that. Today we’re much more strategic and surgical with our messaging and video content.”
Celebrating Success
Schneider and Streets for All are continuing to monitor and promote their “Venice Blvd for All” campaign, a project initiated in 2019 to convert Venice Blvd in Los Angeles into a “complete street,”—a thoroughfare made safer for walkers, cyclists and transit riders—by adding protected bike lanes, dedicated bus lanes, safer crossings and signal upgrades.
Schneider is also continuing to press LA’s County Board of Supervisors to make HLA mandatory in LA County’s unincorporated areas, not just LA City, as it now stands.
“If we can get HLA (applied) at the county level and the city level,” he declares, “we can surround every other city with HLA-style policies. That would be a great step forward.”
Visualizing the Future
Schneider is particularly proud of Streets for All’s work inspiring a proposed 2.3-mile extension of the Ballona Creek Bike Path.
“When I was biking to and from LAX, I would take the Ballona Creek bike path, but then I realized that it ended in Culver City (an LA suburb), while the creek kept going,” he says. “If we could extend the bike path along the creek into LA proper, that would open up car-free transportation options to thousands of mid-city residents.”
In 2022-23, Schneider and Streets for All raised more than $420,000 from the City of Culver City, the City of LA, County Supervisor Holly Mitchell’s office and the Baldwin Hills Conservancy to study the feasibility of the proposed extension.
With a green light from this study, completed in 2024, the City of Los Angeles applied for grant funding. In summer 2025, the California Transportation Commission awarded the project $6.4 million to begin its design and environmental review phases and make it “shovel-ready” for construction.
Schneider hopes Los Angeles can complete this pre-construction work by the end of 2027.
Staying in Shape
Workdays begin early in the Mid-City West LA house that Schneider shares with his wife and three elementary-school-age children. On most days, nothing happens until he hits the gym or hops on his bike for a quick ride.
I’m pretty addicted to endorphins,” he admits, “so I’m working out six days a week. I usually lift weights three days, run on a treadmill two days and ride my bike up hills two days.”
After the morning workout and a protein-enhanced smoothie, Schneider walks down the hall to his home office, where the real work of the day begins.
Moving the Needle
There’s no such thing as a typical work day, he claims. Still, his calendar is full of Zoom calls, relationship-building sessions with local politicians and reviews of Streets for All communications. He’s also in regular contact with transportation advocates around LA and the State of California who keep him and Streets for All apprised of “things we need to pay attention to.”
“I find that I’m most useful with the politics of things,” he explains. “When something comes up either that shouldn’t happen or needs to happen, I’m most useful in making calls and trying to move the needle. My job is to define the vision, define the strategy and try to make sure our tone is always constructive and not just angry.”
Just Say Bike
Whenever Schneider does leave home, he still relies exclusively on bicycles. “My household owns a car, but I never get in it,” he insists. Instead, he’s adopted an electric Riese and Müller cargo bike as his “SUV.”
“I use it whether I’m taking kids somewhere or picking up something I need extra space for,” he offers. “The only time I don’t use it is if I’m traveling—I ride my Brompton folding bike to LAX, put it in the overhead storage bin, then ride to wherever I’m going—or going
on a recreational ride, when I’ll take my gravel bike.”
Nudging the Naysayers
Looking ahead, Schneider is clear-eyed about the political and logistical challenges of modernizing urban mobility infrastructure. He also believes that consumers, whether they prefer driving a car, riding a bike, walking or riding public transit, have more in common than they think.
“You don’t need to be a cyclist to care about bike lanes,” he emphasizes. “You don’t need to be a transit rider to care about bus lanes. The reason these things matter to everybody, whether you use them or not, is A, they make the roads safer for everybody, and B, they actually reduce congestion and parking demand.”
Ultimately, Schneider believes, the arc of history points toward multi-modal cities, where trains, buses, pedestrians, scooters, cyclists and yes, even motorists, can peacefully coexist. And that sooner or later, even the most vociferous naysayers, such as people who originally opposed New York City’s congestion pricing policy but now embrace it, will come around.
“I don’t want to dismiss people who are scared of change, but I know that once those changes are put in place, a lot of them will love it,” he promises.
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If you enjoyed reading this article, please check out my profile of Joshua Schank, who is helping transit agencies align their infrastructure priorities with the equity and mobility needs of their customers. If you have suggestions for other people you’d like me to profile on this blog, please send your ideas to brooks@personsofinfrastructure.com. Many thanks.
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