Streetsblog Los Angeles

Earlier this week, we debuted the new-look LADOT TAP Cards that will be available in May on Streetsblog LITE. Just like current LADOT TAP, you can add fare media for both LADOT and Metro on one card. Unlike the current cards, these could become collector’s items as the Exposition Opening Cards already have.

People were so excited, there was a small social media buzz asking how to get the cards. LADOT happily reported that you can pre-order the cards now. LADOT spokesperson Bruce Gillman:

To pre-order cards call LADOT at (213,310,323 or 818) 808-2273.  These personalized TAP cards will also be availble for pre-ordering beginning Friday on line at: http://www.ladottransit.com/ or by stopping in at the LADOTTransit store located at 201 N Los Angeles Street, Lower Level, Los Angeles, CA 90012. Cards will be in the store for walk-up purchases starting May 20th.

Technically, tonight's community meeting is on all of these projects. However five of them are expected to draw more attention than the others.

Tonight, city officials with LADOT and City Planning will present the environmental documents for five Bike Plan projects in West Los Angeles. Highlighting the list of projects is a proposal by the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition (LACBC) to restripe 1.6 miles of Westwood Boulevard between National Boulevard and Santa Monica Avenue to create a “floating” bike lane in each direction. LADOT has said they would back such a plan if there were community support.

The proposed floating bike lane for Westwood between National and Santa Monica Boulevards. Image by LACBC via Rancho Park Online

Basically, if a floating bike lane were installed, the city paint what would at first glance appear to be multiple bike lanes. During different periods of the day, the street configuration would change. For example, during off-peak hours there would be car parking along each curb, then a bike lane, then two mixed use travel lanes and a turn lane, then another bike lane, parking, and the alternate curb. At rush hour, there would be two lanes in one direction and one in the other (it changes pending which rush hour) with a turn lane and bike lanes hugging the curb.

For more information on how floating bike lanes work, read this case study from San Francisco. It states that the design, while not perfect, generally works.

While not perfect, with its slightly confusing, unorthodox design, it successfully accommodates cyclists, part-time on-street parking, and motorists needing additional capacity during peak hours. It does so with minimal signs, leading one to conclude that while the design is unorthodox, it uses fairly predictable road-user behavior to its advantage. Cyclists naturally tend to stay to the right, and motorists will use a space even if it is not clearly for their use if traffic congestion reaches certain levels and the space is reasonably accommodating.

Following 150 riders attending the Ride Westwood! ride and rally the previous Saturday, the LACBC’s Eric Bruins attended the Westside Neighborhood Council meeting on Valentine’s Day to press for the “floating bike lanes.” In advance of his meeting, some on the Council circulated a letter deriding the plan, encouraging attendance and even stating that “even the local cyclists find the proposal unworkable.” More of the letter is available at Biking in L.A.

Despite the email blast, Rancho Park Online reported that most of the people in attendance that spoke were in favor of the proposed changes. Conversely, most of those on the Neighborhood Council were skeptical. Read more…

“I’m lonely,” a man half-jokingly testified at the LADOT’s Public Hearing in support of the First Year Bike Lanes last Thursday night. “My friends find [riding in the street] terrifying.”

Terror, safety, and loneliness seemed to be the major themes of the night for many of the 37 advocates that spoke in favor of implementation of the draft plans that would add several miles of bike lanes to Central and South L.A.

On behalf of fiancées, girlfriends, little sisters, partners, and friends — male and female — that were said to be “terrified” to ride streets that didn’t have lanes, many of those offering comments asked the planners to not only implement the proposed lanes as quickly as possible, but to take extra steps to make sure they linked up to other lanes and were protected lanes wherever possible.

Making the streets feel safe and welcoming to women was of particular interest to a number of speakers. Several mentioned knowing women who wanted to ride or would sometimes ride where lanes were present, but who refused to risk taking their lives into their own hands where there was no such infrastructure, even when accompanied by experienced friends or partners.

As one cyclist explained, he might have convinced his fiancée to take a dedicated bike lane to work, but he was not able to ride with her and his little sister recreationally, such as to a USC game, because there weren’t lanes connecting his home to the campus. He and other experienced riders felt that while the absence of bike lanes was manageable, having to constantly fight for space and endure harassment was frustrating and would be too intimidating for beginners. Most, they feared, would be afraid to try their hand at riding alone.

Others testified that it was precisely the existence of bike lanes had been instrumental in getting them to take their first rides in the street. One man from Los Feliz described how he began commuting by bike after observing lanes popping up around the neighborhood and realizing he could ride dedicated lanes the whole way to work.

Still, bike lanes alone are not enough to make people feel completely safe. Some speakers mentioned that even the green and buffered lanes downtown are conveniently disregarded when drivers have other priorities on their minds.

Protected lanes might be costly, said one man, referring to the presentation made by LADOT staff about the enhancements planned for Figueroa Ave., but the increased safety and the long-term benefits of encouraging more people to ride would outweigh them. Read more…

From the, “what the heck?” file.

This public menace may be the last of its kind. It was installed in Atwater in late June of 2009. Photo:Atwater Village Newbie

On Tuesday afternoon, the City Council Transportation Committee posted a “special agenda” for yesterday’s meeting. Special agendas are added when an item is so important, that regular public notice is pushed aside so that this important report/ordinance/piece of legislation can be heard immediately.

So what was yesteday’s special item? An LADOT report examining the value of removing traffic calming devices commonly known as speed humps and banning their use in the city. Apparently, some in the city are worried that the humps are slowing down emergency response vehicle times endangering us all.

The report was requested by an unnamed member of the transportation committee  but city staff admitted surprise that the memorandum “included recommendations  and another commented that “it reads like a report they would have written six years ago…now don’t start hating LADOT again!”

Mercifully, the Committee delayed a vote so that outreach can be done to Neighborhood Councils and other stakeholders, including the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, Los Angeles Walks, and pretty much everyone that reads Streetsblog.

There’s several problems with the report that LADOT presented.

First, it talks about the “public health” issues created by speed humps without once mentioning the benefits of slower traffic for bicyclists, pedestrians, people playing in their front yards, people living in their houses, and pretty much everyone except the driver that wants to go faster. Also never mentioned is the time saved for emergency vehicles by the traffic reduction on local streets caused by drivers choosing faster, non-calmed, routes on other streets. That alone should be enough to disqualify the report as a serious examination of the program. Read more…

Map of proposed bike lanes scheduled for implementation in the first year of the 2010 Bike Plan (image courtesy LADOT)

When I think “Valentine’s Day,” I think “bike lanes.”

OK, maybe that’s a lie and I am more likely to think “CHOCOLATE!” than “Hearing to Support New Bike Lanes in South Los Angeles!” But this year, the LADOT has decided to help us all spice up our love lives by holding a hearing specifically designed to bring us closer to finding that special someone whose passions drive them to unique feats of heroism, like lobbying in support of the bike lanes in the Central and South areas of L.A.

OK, so maybe that is not completely true, either, and the folks at LADOT just happen to be some of the least romantically-inclined people on the planet. Either way, we still need your support!

The public hearing is one of four events created to gather feedback on the traffic and safety impacts of the nearly 40 miles of bicycle lanes evaluated in the recently released Draft Environmental Impact Report (EIR) and scheduled to be implemented this year. The projects are spread around the city, including along Sunset Blvd., Vermont Ave, 7th Street, Cesar Chavez Ave., “strategic gap closures” like Venice Blvd, and Figueroa Ave., the city’s first proposed protected bicycle lanes or ”cycle tracks” (part of the MyFig Streetscape project). According to planner David Somers, lanes like those proposed along Sunset Blvd. will move us toward greater network connectivity by “provid[ing] a direct connection [from] the neighborhoods of Hollywood, Silver Lake, and Echo Park to Downtown by a continuous bikeway.”

Sounds great, right? So, why the need for you to drag your honey to a hearing? Read more…

39.5 miles of bicycle lanes on congested streets and the My Figueroa Project are headed towards environmental clearance following release of a DEIR and a new law signed by Governor Brown. Map via: The 2010 Bicycle Plan - First Year of the First Five-Year Implementation Strategy and the Figueroa Streetscape Project

When Governor Jerry Brown signed A.B. 2245 into law, a law allowing certain bicycle projects to opt-out of the CEQA process, the news was somewhat buried. On the same day, the Governor vetoed the “Give Me 3″ safety legislation that created a legal buffer between cyclists and passing automobiles earning the scorn of cyclists everywhere.

While the veto of Give Me 3 is still a sore subject, cyclists can take solace that the City of Los Angeles is taking advantage of A.B. 2245 to speed up bicycle, and even some pedestrian, projects in Los Angeles.

When the Department of City Planning unveiled the Draft Environmental Impact Report for the next five years of bicycle plan implementation and the My Figueroa! project, one small paragraph in Section II shows how the game has changed.

In September 2012, Governor Brown signed in to law Assembly Bill (AB) 2245, which allows re-striping of  urban roadways to proceed under a Statutory Exemption as long as a traffic and safety analysis is prepared  and hearings are held in affected areas…The city will not be certifying the EIR or preparing a Final EIR. Rather, Notices of Exemption will be filed pursuant to 1) California Public Resources Code (PRC) Section 21080.20.5 (c)(2) – for the bicycle lanes and 2) CEQA Guidelines, Article 19, Sections 15301, 15304, and 15311 for the streetscape improvements proposed as part of the My Figueroa Project.

In plain English, the city is opting out of the lengthy EIR process for the rest of the certification and using the public outreach, traffic and safety studies to meet the requirements of A.B. 2245. This will save the city money and months of planning and allow many projects to move forward on an accelerated timeline. At this point, neither LADOT or City Planning were able to release a timeline on when each of these projects or the sensational My Figueroa! project will move forward. Read more…

Municipal bond rates are at historic lows.  A memo by two respected faculty members at the UCLA Anderson Forecast (available at Streetsblog, for some reason link to city website is broken) suggests the city take advantage of these low rates to fund a $3 billion program to resurface, rehabilitate, and reconstruct city streets. This same logic extends to any local investment activity – because rates are low, it’s a good time to build or repair anything the city will need in the future. Street repair is an especially good choice for a city experiencing an historically high unemployment rate because a higher proportion of street investment goes into labor and wages than for other investments, a subway tunnel for instance.

...does a gas tax, or a mix of user fees, make more sense to fund road repair than a property tax increase?

While the UCLA Anderson Forecast memo connects street quality and property values, assessing street repair bonds on property tax bills disconnects the payers and the beneficiaries. Although the street improvements, like any increase in amenity value, will be capitalized into slightly higher housing prices, the primary beneficiaries will be drivers who enjoy a smoother ride and reduced vehicle maintenance costs. These drivers need not live in the City of Los Angeles to benefit.  Those Los Angelenos who do no or little driving will be assessed the same amount as those who drive fully-loaded Humvees.  Even lower income renters who rely on transit and walking will absorb some of the property tax increase.

These are some of the many reasons that policymakers have used user fees to generate revenues for transportation. This century-old system of user fees was born in Southern California.  The belief at the time was that asking those who purchase cars and use gasoline to fund roads would be fair and equitable. The gas tax served the transportation system well, until increased vehicle fuel economy and inflation eroded its purchasing power. Californians pay the same nominal tax on a gallon of gasoline as they did in October, 1993.  However, a dollar spent on state and local investment in 1993 is only worth 57 cents today.

The City of Los Angeles can’t increase the gas tax, but it can implement other revenue measures that target transportation system users.  These measures include:

• an increase in the citywide parking tax charged on private lots
• an increase in citywide parking rates charged on public lots
• cordon pricing – requiring a fee to enter certain areas of Los Angeles.  The city can even exempt residents from the fee
• participation in a regional VMT fee, congestion pricing system, or gas tax supplement, with a local return to the city. Read more…

When not riding his bicycle, Chen takes pictures of bike lane violators from his perch in a Culver City Bus.

In May, Streetsblog reported that new bike lanes were painted on Sepulveda Boulevard between Venice Boulevard and National Boulevard. The new lanes could connect all the way to the Expo Line Station scheduled for Sepulveda and Exposition, about a half mile north of where the lanes now end.

Reader Irwin Chen notes that the lanes are being put to good use…by speeding motorists as well as cyclists. Chen photographed cars both violating the bike lane and driving to the right of the lane at high-speed. He then mails the pictures to the LAPD, who assure Chen that they are enforcing vehicle code on drivers who violate the lane.

In a letter to the LAPD, Chen writes:

I’m writing to you with some follow up info. It has been about 6 weeks since I reported my experience riding in the bike lane on Sepulveda near National and since that time, I have stopped riding in this area because it is far too dangerous with cars constantly driving illegally in the bike lane and passing me on my right. I have attached some photos which I think are self-explanatory: cars are illegally entering the bike lane and using it to bypass traffic, sometimes at speed greatly exceeding the posted speed limit. Read more…