I wouldn’t be so quick to write off an entire environmental organization, or to dismiss the good will of people who are sympathetic to your cause.

If this issue is going to go from esoteric to mainstream, you’re going to need to reach out to a broad cross-section of people, and it won’t be enough to stop with one region.

I love your work out in LA but I don’t know how complete a street that is for cyclist. The textured brick surface of that lane would make it uncomfortable if not dangerous for a cyclists to ride.

Peace (but not Greenpeace, at least not for this).

There is already a mass of pissed off people in LA working to create “Complete Streets” – which would include standards for roadways that measure the effects those roads have on the lives of people and the civic sphere.

Currently, the City of LA only measures car throughput (how many cars, how fast, etc.) on its roads. There is no other regime of road measurement the city uses to assess its streets BUT such measurement is easy and cheap to implement. Measuring the road different;y will affect the entire road planning and design process – and is part of what will guarantee us complete streets.

That caption had me cracking up!!!

The issue of “complete streets” comes down to getting large numbers of people to not just accept the idea of making room for bikes and sidewalks in streets, but also to actively demand it of their politicians.

Taking space away from cars and giving it to other transportation modes is not an easy sell in LA or most parts of America. How do you change that? How do you get average Joes and Janes to read stuff like this blog (or anything)? How do you convince people to take a leap of faith and risk making car traffic worse so that we can have a transportation system that doesn’t just depend on one mode?

I don’t know . . . But I just signed up for Greenpeace, maybe that’ll help :)

A great way to start working on this problem is to keep up the fight, but to ask officials to change the “Monitor and Evaluate” portion of the Transportation (or Mobility) section of the General Plan.

This is the part of the plan that has actual teeth, and in LA it sets out how our city’s managers will be informed by their staff about the performance of our streets. Right now, they get ad hoc reports on car throughput (like a waste water plant report). We need a comprehensive system that measures crashes and injuries, air quality, noise, retail sale income, the use that people make of the right-of-way, neighborhood protection plans, etc.

In other words: we need BETTER STANDARDS! I’ve got a list, and I know there are a few items other would liek to add. The discussion (in the backrooms) need to focus on standards and not Yea or Nay votes on this vague idea of “complete streets”.

I also did a quick report from the meeting here: http://glatwg.wordpress.com/2009/06/16/complete-streets-report-from-plum-committee/