Streetsblog Los Angeles

For more information on Long Beach's bicycling efforts, visit Bike Long Beach.

(If you’re not familiar with the infrastructure innovations in Long Beach, you should read this article first.  In 2009, Joe Linton wrote a two part series on Long Beach’s “Leap Towards Livability.”  Today and tomorrow’s stories are both part of our Annenberg School of Journalism Public Health Fellowship and a continuation of that series.)

Sometimes, the politician in Charlie Gandy still comes out.  ”Hi, I’m the bike guy,” he introduced himself to other cyclists, pedestrians, people at cafes or whoever happened to be at hand while I was taking pictures or doing an interview during my visits to Long Beach this summer.

“The bike guy” was hired by the City of Long Beach’s transportation program manager Sumire Gant in early 2009, with funds from a Los Angeles County Public Health Grant known as the Policies for Livable and Active Communities and the Environment (PLACE) Grants that Long Beach won in 2008.  The grants were given to five cities to improve their planning documents to make the connection between promoting active transportation options and the health of the surrounding communities.

To give you an idea how much things are changing, this 2010 Bike Map is considered outdated 14 months after publication. Advocates keep track with their own map on Google.

Most of the grantees used their funds to create long and impressive planning documents.  While Long Beach has produced its own planning documents as part of the grant (more on that tomorrow), the major impact of the city’s grant is the addition of the “bike guy” who sells the city’s bike projects to residents, visitors, reporters and the state and federal officials who fund the projects with a steady demeanor and seeming ease.

“Long Beach is what happens when middle-aged athletes are put in charge,” Gandy joked when asked about the changes the city’s infrastructure was undergoing.

In 2009, the city needed all the athletic help it could get.  Census figures from 2005-2009 show that nearly one quarter of school age children (22.4%) in Long Beach were obese and the number of people commuting by bicycle (.9%), walking (2.7%) or by public transit (7.2%) were in line with the city’s sprawling neighbor to the north.

There are many reasons why using census data to look at transportation usage can be misleading, minorities are under-represented, and the statistics look only at commuting trips and not recreational trips, trips to the store, or church, or the dry cleaners, etc.  But for comparison purposes, Portland’s commuting mode share for active transportation options were much higher for the same period.  12.4% of respondents commuted by transit, 5.1% walked and 5.9% rode their bicycles.

Enter Charlie Gandy, and things began to change.  By October of 2009, Long Beach had moved aggressively on some ground-breaking bicycle projects, high profile traffic calming, and even some road diets.  Writing for Streetsblog, former Long Beach resident Joe Linton, who co-founded the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition two years after moving to Los Angeles in 1998, wrote approvingly about what was already happening in Long Beach.

This is not to say that everything that’s happening is one man’s doing. Gant was responsible for the city’s grant writing for transportation, and she’s brought in an impressive $12 million for active transportation projects. Allan Crawford is the program manager for the bike program, April Economides is working on the Bicycle Friendly Business District Program and Georgria Case is working on the “Share our Streets” Campaign. While Gant may have moved on, her team continues to push the envelope on Long Beach.

But, for better or worse, Charlie Gandy has become the face of Long Beach’s Livability efforts, and it was Gandy who took me for a pair of bike rides throughout the city.

The day before Streetsblog published Linton’s article in 2009, a traffic calming plan in the downtown business district was put into place.  The plan made it easier for pedestrians to cross the street with better crosswalks, dramatically increased the bike parking in the area through a bike corral (where a car parking space is converted to hold 12-14 bicycles) and, by “bumping out” the curb, slowed traffic down and created patio space for the local cafe, aptly named Utopia. Read more…

Bicycle advocates from Copenhagen to Bogota to Northeast Los Angeles have all made the case that what’s good for bicycles is good for business.  Nowhere in America is that statement being put to the test more than in Long Beach.

During my two bike tours of Long Beach, I talked with business owners along the popular bicycle infrastructure that’s making the city the bicycling capital of Southern California.  I encountered near universal approval of the city’s bike-friendly efforts, which has led city officials and leaders to expand their bike plans to other parts of the city.  Streetsblog will have more on those planning efforts tomorrow.

Bike Friendly Business Districts

The jewel of Long Beach’s efforts to use bicycling to promote business is it’s Bike Friendly Business District (BFBD) Program.  Funded by a $72,000 investment by the L.A. County Public Health Department’s RENEW program, Long Beach designated four BFBD corridors; Bixby Knolls, the East Village Arts District, Cambodia Town and the 4th Street/Retro Row area.  When the program launched earlier this year, it drew national attention because it was the first time a city anywhere in America had launched a BFBD program.

At the time, the Long Beach Business Journal covered the launch with pictures of Mayor Bob Foster and other politicians smiling on a bike ride through the districts and happy business owners extolling the virtues of mixing bike infrastructure with business plans.  Long Beach’s Mobility Coordinator, Charlie Gandy, reports that the Business Journal story was the most downloaded story in the paper’s history.

But what does the program actually do, and has it made a difference?

April Economides, a Long Beach native who returned to the city from San Francisco and is the principle at Green Octopus Consulting, serves as the coordinator of the BFBD Program.  She explained to Streetsblog how Long Beach is spending its funds and what it means for the businesses and public health.

“When I talk to businesses, and business improvement districts, I don’t talk about it in environmental or health terms,”  She explains. “I talk about how biking local ties in with shopping and dining.  People that are taking their bikes to go out, are more likely to be going out in their community or the next community and not getting in their car to drive out of town.” Read more…

As part of our ongoing coverage of the impact of the Los Angeles County Public Health P.L.A.C.E. grants, this week Streetsblog will focus on Long Beach.  Because Long Beach is so close to Los Angeles and has been making such strides in the world of sustainable transportation, the city’s strides have been a secondary focus of Los Angeles Streetsblog for the last three and a half years.  Heck, it even has its own Streetsfilm.

Two weeks ago, Streetsblog looked at Culver City’s first steps towards a Livable Streets transportation policy, while Long Beach is quite a bit ahead of Culver City there are some chinks in Long Beach’s armor.  There has been a quiet, but growing murmer that much of the outstanding infrastructure that has been put on Long Beach’s streets to help cyclists and pedestrians in recent years has focused on business corridors and upper class residential communities.  Streetsblog will examine that issue head on.  After all, a progressive public health plan for transportation should address the communities that most need it.

Since much of Long Beach’s PLACE Grant went in to funding the Mobility Coordinator position filled by the local bicycling community’s motivational speaker, Charlie Gand; Gandy will be a regular face on Streetsblog this week starting with our video and story series available after the jump.

In addition to this article, we’ll be publishing three more this week.  The first looks at the impact that this new focus on Livable Streets has had on business.  The second examines “Active Living and Complete Streets” planning documents put together as part of the PLACE Grant.  The third will look at the existing and funded infrastructure that’s been put in place over the last three years and talk about Long Beach’s recent past and future.

For anyone unfamiliar with our Long Beach coverage, or anyone that wants to catch up, read on after the jump.  We’ve added a few new interviews on You Tube discussing bike corrals, bike boulevards and separated bike lanes with Gandy.

Read more…

Long Beach's cycletracks open this Saturday - all photos by Joe Linton

The city of Long Beach is Southern California’s undisputed leader in innovative infrastructure for safe and convenient bicycling.  They’re at it again this Saturday, April 23rd 2011, when they unveil the first genuine protected bike lanes west of New York City.

Opening festivities are from 11am to 2pm at the The Promenade - one block east of Pine Avenue. The dedication ceremony takes place at 12noon. Presiding over the event will be the leadership that brought this project to fruition: Long Beach Mayor Bob Foster, Vice Mayor Suja Lowenthal, City Councilmember Robert Garcia, Mobility Coordinator Charlie Gandy and Transportation rain-maker Sumi Gant. Additional details on event flier.

In the past couple years, Long Beach has implemented the United States’ second green sharrow lanes, Southern California’s first green bike boxes, and L.A. County’s first bicycle boulevard and first bike corral. Conventional bike lanes are becoming more and more common there. Playful bike parking hitching posts are ubiquitous in business districts. All this has contributed to bicycling becoming noticeably very common for all kinds of Long Beach residents: elderly, middle-aged, young, students, laborers, immigrants, citizens, Latinos, African-Americans, women and men, thin and not-so-thin. Sure there are still lots of cars, and some bicyclists still ride on the sidewalk, but the bicycle is visibly part of the fabric of urban Long Beach.

All that bike-wonderfulness takes a great step forward this week.

For readers unfamiliar with protected lanes (that would likely be most Angelenos), also called cycletracks or physically separated bike lanes or separated bikeways, they’re a roadway treatment that provides a buffer – an actual curb – between cyclists and car traffic. While popular and common in much of Europe and Canada and South America, these facilities are only beginning to be embraced in the United States. The basic concept is to take the on-street bike lane and swap it with the parking lane – so parked cars (and typically a small curb) protect the cyclists from adjacent traffic. The cross-section is: sidewalk, bike lane, parking lane, traffic lane.  A Streetfilm is worth more than a thousand words – to see protected lanes in action, watch Ninth Avenue Gets a Physically Separated Bike Lane (or the longer Physically Separated Bike Lanes.) Read more…

(Update 12:34 – Just received word this event was postponed because of the threat of rain.  We’ll let you know when it’s rescheduled – DN)

As much as I regret that my travel schedule keeps me from the River Ride, tomorrow’s Bike-a-Thon may be the bike ride I’ll most miss this year.

Click on the image for a larger shot of the poster, or click here to download the poster.

The basic idea is to raise awareness of the damaging local impacts a proposed widening of the I-710 (not the Big Dig) near Long Beach will have on the people living near the widening itself.  The ride has two start points, one in Long Beach and the other in Los Angeles.  The riders will ride the L.A. River Path and meet in the middle, at Coolidge Park in North Long Beach, just south of Artestia Boulevard, on the west side of the river.  Proponents of this widening, which would over double the highway capacity, insist that it will improve air quality by reducing congestion.  Advocates are not convinced of that claim.  Nor should they be.

The Coalition for Environmental Health and Justice, East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice, Communities for a Better Environment, Natural Resources Defense Council & Long Beach Alliance for Children with Asthma.  The Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition is also providing a boost.

Much like a Streetsblog fundraiser, the event has a suggested donation, but the organizers won’t send anyone away that can’t pay the $5.  There’s also a heck of a lot more scheduled than just a bike ride.  It looks like a heck of a party as well.  Here’s the lineup for the day. Read more…

You have one last chance to hear the presentation and ask questions or provide feedback directly, Tonight, Wednesday 3/23/2011, start at 6:00 PM in the Mark Twain Library, 1401 E. Anaheim, Long Beach

Long Beach, California – The self-proclaimed “most bicycle friendly city in America” is moving a step closer to living up to that claim. For the past 3 years, a core of dedicated bicycle advocates in the city government and transportation department have worked to implement the Bike Plan passed in 2000. After a slow start until 2006, momentum picked up with many miles of new bike facilities installed, especially in the past 12 months. In fact, Long Beach has nearly to exhausted the planned bicycle facilities on the original map, and is now making an updated, more ambitious map of future bike lanes, paths and bike-friendly streets.

This year has seen the introduction of three innovative facilities that were not in the original plan: a “Bicycle Boulevard” on Vista Street in Belmont Heights, “Sharrow lanes” on Second Street in Belmont Shore, and protected bike lanes (or cycletracks) on Third Street and Broadway thru downtown Long Beach, which are being finished at this time. All of these facilities had been described in the original bike plan documents, but no lines were drawn on the map. Thanks to the initiative of community members and staff, Long Beach wrote grants and received State approval to try out these projects, common in Europe but new in California, on an “experimental” basis.

Generally, the response to these three projects has been positive, but already, there have been a few complaints about the process. Fortunately, the city decided to do a series of meetings and community bike rides, to present ideas for a greatly expaneded bike network for the city. The draft map was posted online, and meetings every week have been taking place in different neighborhoods. Read more…

When last we heard from the organizers of Long Beach’s ongoing bike recycling program, they outlined how the program came together, helping to save bikes from being discarded and providing transportation to area families. Now in part 2 of this series of videos, we hear advice on how other communities can initiate bike recycling programs of their own.

As you might imagine, organizing a bike program does involve a considerable amount of effort. While Long Beach’s organizers are generally upbeat in this video, they do make note of the difficulties involved as well, some of which are included in this extended version of the video. But the overall effectiveness of recycling bikes was enough to motivate them through to the finish.

Many people watching this video might not currently be in the position to organize a bike recycling program. But an equally important lesson to be learned is the vast potential of bike-related organization in general. Throughout Southern California there are numerous community bike groups working on many different ways to improve biking. Get involved, and perhaps you can make bike recycling a part of your community too.

Streetsblog contributor Drew Reed sends along this excellent video for a bicycling recycling project being put on in Long Beach by the city, the local bike co-op, The HUB, and the city’s sanitation department.   This video is both a great lesson on what can be done when a public agency and non-profit can work together to do something as simple as finding a way to get good bikes into the hands of people who need them and a companion piece to our 2009 Streetfilm on Los Angeles’ three storefront co-ops.

Reed sent along some text highlighting a second bike recycling drive that the HUB is putting on.  For any Long Beach bike enthusiasts looking for more information, read on after the jump. Read more…

As unlikely as it may seem, the City of Long Beach has taken significant steps this week to making the above rendering a reality – or at least having it redone by a much more expensive design team. Last week, the Long Beach City Council succeeded in convincing the port to commit to building a bike/pedestrian pathway on its proposed replacement for the Gerald Desmond Bridge.

Initially, the news looked bad. The Port’s Final EIR released in July had no plans for a bike or pedestrian pathway, despite the fact that the existing bridge does. This EIR was appealed and put before a council vote last Tuesday, with many members of Long Beach’s cycling community in attendance. And though the council voted to keep the EIR as is, they insisted the port include a bike/pedestrian lane during the upcoming design phase.

Robert Garcia , Councilmember from Long Beach’s first district and a staunch advocate for the bike lane, had this to say the following day:

The Port has agreed to include a dedicated bike and pedestrian lane into the design plan that will go out to bid. This is a huge win for those of us who support increased bike and pedestrian mobility.

Daniel Brezenoff, Garcia’s legislative director, elaborates on what the Port has agreed to do. Read more…

And now for a quick photographic update from the one bicycle project you’ve all been waiting to hear about: Long Beach’s new bike boulevard on Vista Street. There have been a few hangups along the way; additional money needed to be allocated to remove unwanted concrete from under the street, and apparently the painters had difficulty spelling “yield”. Nonetheless, the project appears to be progressing nicely, with construction of a new stop light at Redondo scheduled for next month – providing there aren’t any more typos.

This photo tour is going west to east for 1.3 miles of bike boulevard

More pictures after the jump. Read more…