I think it’s better to tailor my message to a good appropropriate ask for the people who are there who can say yes. I suspect that that will be Councilmember Rosendahl, and probably one or two other councilmembers. I think our most effective tactics in a meeting like I expect tomorrow’s to be is to make it clear to councilmembers what they can do to be effective for bikes.

Bikinginla’s Ted Rogers has the right idea with is candidate meetings, and questionnaires. Yet we need to follow up in city halls across the county, to connect the money givers with the department staff – to build a bridge to get the paperwork filled out and the legislator’s votes lined up. We need a legislative director for bikes.

She’s not only “the person who can’t say yes” but she’s the person who spends a lot of time saying NO. So much so, that it begins to normalize the “no room for cyclists” position.

Your point that she is not the correct person to engage is exactly the motivation for simply leaving the room until they replace her with someone who can say YES.

It’s critical that we have very clear asks that are targeted toward Councilmembers, Mayor and toward higher level DOT staff (Rita Robinson, John Fisher.) These folks have the power to say yes. They are the people we should target.

(One worry that I have is that, by lumping all the bike stuff together for one meeting, the only high-level people in the room will be a few councilmembers. Will Rita Robinson and John Fisher attend a bike-centric Transportation Committee meeting? Will Councilmembers Parks, LaBonge, Koretz, and Alarcon show late and/or leave early? I hope these folks will respect bicyclists by attending and participating, but I fear not. While I applaud Councilmember Rosendahl for trying to support bikes by focusing on the tomorrow, I wonder if it would be better to have one or two bike items as part of every Transportation Committee meeting… so bikes are seen as an integral part of our entire transportation system… not segregated as a special project now and then… and left out of most of our deliberations.)

The LACBC is off the mark calling us all into the room without a legislative/policy/political strategy to get what we need from these elected officials and city staff

BUT

we should try and make (yet another) statement about our engagement in this process.

This means: street theater.

When Mowery talks, we walk – out of the room. When the LAPD talk, we all submit speaker cards and continue to direct questions and dialogue back to issues having to do with their treatment of injured and killed cyclists in LA.

See soapboxla on twitter for more details.

We cannot rely on the politicians to do our lobbying for us. Coming on “game day” during public comment time is a joke, and I hope that the LACBC is educated enough by now to play a little “telephone” by walking around city hall during the off-days and building support for measures they’d like to see passed.

This whole things is getting amateurishly boring. I’m tired of public hearings! Give us something to rally around, or leave us alone.

The City of Los Angeles’ Depertment of Alternative Transportation has recently completed it’s fourth sharrow pilot project – the second in Council District 1.

For more details, please ride your bike!