Streetsblog Los Angeles

LA's Draft Bike Plan is a huge document of thin ambition, that relies on controversy over process to distract from the fact that it lacks vision, it lacks substance, and it lacks the teeth necessary to bring about any change

The Draft Bike Plan was released last week, an hour before the end of day on the eve of furlough Friday, giving city staff the opportunity to "drop and run" and providing a three-day cooling off period before they had to answer for the long overdue, hotly contested and controversial document.

Commissioned in December of 2007, the Bike Plan is part of LA's Transportation Plan which is an element of the city's General Plan. As the consultants so eloquently explained during the community workshops during March of 2008 that kicked off the Bike Plan process, the Bike Plan is a critical funding document that must be updated in order to qualify for funding. As for positioning it as a powerful visionary document with implementation teeth, city staff have never expressed such ambition.

The limited opportunity for robust community involvement at the onset, the long, dark and silent period of time when the plan went overdue, the release of Bike Plan maps that positioned "infeasible" as a standard for the future of LA bikeways and the promise of another limited public access comment period have all fueled great gnashing of teeth and provided great fodder for the blogs.

Now that the Draft Bike Plan has been released we can evaluate it and I contend that it fails on three levels, based on content, based on process, and based on commitment.

CONTENT:

Missing from the Draft Bike Plan is the Cyclists' Bill of Rights, a vision document that has picked up endorsement from neighborhood councils and community groups throughout Los Angeles, working its way to the City's Transportation Committee where staff was directed to include it in the city's Bike Plan. It is missing. In its place is a plaintive whimper of a vision that simply asks for consideration. At the Federal and State levels, Equality is positioned as the foundation of mobility planning but here in Los Angeles, cyclists can look forward to a future based on "consideration."

Long Beach, by way of comparison, has a Bike Plan that opens boldly by stating that the City of Long Beach "Consider every street in Long Beach as a street that bicyclists will use." It continues by establishing a policy to integrate its bikeways facilities with surrounding communities, a significant commitment given the fact that LA County cyclists have 88 municipalities to traverse and synchronicity is important if cycling is to be a viable transportation choice.

Los Angeles also positions integration with surrounding communities but seems to feel a stronger kinship with Portland than with Long Beach. Portland uses colored bike paths to indicate conflict, Long Beach is famous for its green bike lanes and Sharrows which use the coloring to indicate preferred position. Given a choice, Los Angeles integrated with Portland, giving credence to an earlier criticism that the Bike Plan should have been developed by local consultants and with a local sensitivity.

From the missing Cyclists' Bill of Rights to the boiler-plate data and specs, the Bike Plan not only misses the big picture but it also fails to establish itself as the authoritative document that could be used to settle some of the minor Bikeways controversies that have arisen of late in Los Angeles.

For example, are Bike Paths for the exclusive use of cyclists or are they simply misnamed mixed-use paths that are off-limits to motor vehicles? Are bike lanes open to mopeds and if so, up to what size engine is permitted on a bike lane? Is the concept of wrong-way cycling on a sidewalk valid and is it legal to ride a bike in the crosswalk?

The Draft Bike Plan does demonstrate a bit of creativity, unfortunately it's creative accounting. By using the collective term "Bikeways" which includes Bike Paths, Bike Lanes, Bike Routes, Bike-Friendly and Good Wishes, the Draft Bike Plan can claim a significant improvement over the old plan. But apples to apples, LA's old Bike Plan had 452 miles of existing and proposed Bike Paths and Bike Lanes. The Draft Bike Plan now has 400 miles of existing and proposed Bike Paths and Bike Lanes. That's a decrease. Adding Bike Routes and Bike-Friendly streets to the mix is bad math and engineers should know better. The simple fact is, LA slid backward and Topanga Canyon Boulevard was designated for bike lanes on the old plan, the engineering and funding was in place and the LADOT rejected it, electing to downgrade it to "infeasible" and finally "possible" but in reality "never."

From the vision to the details, LA's Draft Bike Plan is hundreds of pages of very pretty, shelf-ready Bike Plan, destined to collect dust.

PROCESS:

Dr. Alex Thompson of WestsideBikeSIDE wasted no time, calling the LADOT out for the short comment period that prevented Neighborhood Council involvement, simply by shortcutting a process  that essentially requires a full month cycle for committee meetings and then a full month cycle for Board Meetings, simply to offer feedback. Thompson takes them to task simply for failing to create a process that accommodates the 89 Neighborhood Councils who purportedly advise the City of Los Angeles on issues that efect the quality of life in their communities.

BikeGirl jumped in calling the Draft Bike Plan "Infeasible" and pointing out that the four public workshops fail to reach the cyclists of LA, completely ignoring her community. This complaint echoes that of Councilman Ed Reyes who asked last year why the Eastside wasn't involved, actually introducing a motion to City Council in an effort to connect with the process.

GreenLAGirl (editor's note, look for Siel's day running Streetsblog in a couple of weeks) entered the fray, calling out Thompson and BikeGirl, challenging them to deal with the process and focus on evaluating the Draft Bike Plan. Siel offers some advise on dicing the cumbersome task of evaluating hundreds of pages of technical content, proposing that the solution might simply be to request more meetings and dividing the duties amongst a team of cyclists.

Again, the brouhaha over process echoes the debate that took place last year when the City Council's Transportation Committee weighed in on the runaway Draft Bike Plan. Chairperson Wendy Greuel and Councilman Bill Rosendahl have both expressed conviction that a flawed process results in a flawed product, a position that has grown stronger as time progressed.

Ted Rogers' (editor's note: Ted will be taking his turn at the Streetsblog handlebars next week) BikinginLA gives moderation a shot and concludes with a hopeful note saying "Meanwhile, I’m marking my calendar for the West L.A. meeting on October 28. And I hope to see a room filled with informed and passionate cyclists."

Through it all, it should be noted that the LADOT is in the process of developing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Neighborhood Councils in which 60 days is the minimum period of time for comment on small projects and the amount of time increases with the significance of the proposal or plan. It is telling that the Draft Bike Plan is given less than the minimum time, giving it less significance than simple neighborhood improvements or variances.

The Draft Bike Plan refers to "respect and consideration" as the essence of the vision and it is imperative that the City of Los Angeles bring those words to life now, not down the road after the Draft Bike Plan has gone through the process.

APPLICATION:

The value of LA's Draft Bike Plan is in its ultimate impact on the streets of Los Angeles but we have little hope that real change will occur and, in fact, we have evidence that it is a document with no teeth carrying little commitment from even its departments of origin. The same folks who have been shepherding the Bike Plan to the dotted finish line apparently failed to notice the huge Police Headquarters being build across from City Hall over the last few years. All the talk of bikeways amenities, support for cyclists, steps taken by the city to encourage cycling as a viable transportation choice are contradicted by the simple fact that nobody from City Planning of the Department of Transportation found the courage to simply cross the street to offer some advise to the LAPD on the positioning of their bike racks.

The Draft Bike Plan is loaded with pretty colored diagrams on bike parking along with descriptions of appropriate and safe and practical positioning for bike racks. If Planning and the LADOT were shy about relying on the Draft Bike Plan they could have offered up the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycling Professionals (APBP) standards for bike parking. But they didn't, leaving the Los Angeles Police Department to figure it out on their own. Granted, one would think that the LAPD would be familiar with Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) but such is not the case. The bike racks are as far from the front entrance as possible, around the corner and behind a wall, in an area that offers refuge to someone who would want to hide and wait for a victim.

Of course, this is Police Headquarters! Only a fool would commit a crime so brazenly. Perhaps the same bike thief who stripped the bikes at City Hall east while they were parked just feet from the from doors but around the corner and out of the eyeline of the armed General Services officers who ensure the safety and security of City Hall East!

LA's Bike Plan has long given the LADOT the responsibility to communicate to the city departments simple bike parking standards. To this day the Library Department, the Fire Department, City Hall, Rec and Parks, and the 45 City Departments that compete with each other for autonomy can't agree on how to position a bike rack if they even have bike racks.

This does not speak well for the Draft Bike Plan's ability to serve as the platform that will bring together the dozen departments that have a piece of the street that the cyclists of Los Angeles, hereafter known as transportation solutions, must navigate in order to get home safely at the end of the day.

Conclusion: LA's Draft Bike Plan is thin on content of substance, is the product of an ongoing flawed process, and avoids at all turns any attempt to position itself as a document of change with a real plan for implementation. It is an exercise in civic enragement designed to qualify the City of Los Angeles for Bikeways funding that will then simply fall into the co-mingled coffers of the LADOT, a department that has failed to establish or support cycling as a viable transportation choice in the City of Los Angeles.

"See you on the Streets!"