Streetsblog Los Angeles

Things are getting very exciting for our March 27th all day fundraiser at the Library Alehouse.  Earlier today I picked up a donation from the Big Blue Bus and got word on a donation from Bikes and Hikes L.A.  Remember, if you want to support our expansion into Santa Monica, all you have to do is show up at 129 Main Street a week from today and buy something to eat or drink.  I’ll be there all day selling raffle tickets, t-shirts and bags, so say hello while you’re there.   Oh, and buy some raffle tickets, t-shirts or bags while you are there.  Or the heck with me, our Santa Monica writer will be there for a lot of the evening as well.

The fun really starts at 6:00 when the Alehouse staff will tap some kegs of  Deschutes Beer: Abyss 2011, Black Butte XXIII and The Stoic.  A huge thanks to the Alehouse and Deschutes Beer for their support.  And now, enjoy the wall of sponsors and read on after the jump for details on our three raffles.  We’ll announce the raffle winners at 9:00 P.M. next Tuesday at the Alehouse.  You don’t have to be present to win, but who wouldn’t want to be there to get their bike?

Read more…

New Bike Corrals At Main St. & Kinney. Photo Provided By Santa Monica Spoke.

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This week, Santa Monica opened it’s first on-street bike corrals located within business districts, with two prominent locations on Main Street. At Main St. and Kinney St. there are 2 corrals on each side of the street, with a larger full space on the east side of the street, and a smaller corral with 4 racks on the north side. Another full size corral with 7 rubberized staple racks is located in front of the Peets Coffee at the Edgemar Center between Ocean Park Blvd. and Hollister Ave.

The corrals occupy what were previously red zones marked to ensure visibility of pedestrians at the busy adjacent crosswalks. Since bikes do not obstruct sight lines nearly as much as parked cars do, these corrals could be safely installed directly in front of the crosswalks. This allowed the bike corrals to be squeezed in without the politically contentious move of removing any street spaces for cars yet. If these locations are successful, they will hopefully open the door to considering trading out car spaces in the future.

New Bike corral at Edgemar Center on Main St. Between Ocean Park Blvd. and Hollister Ave. Photo Provided By Santa Monica Spoke.

The bike corrals are a natural extension of the character of Main St. and it’s growing bicycle ridership that needs secure places to park their bikes. Although the hard data available for the economic impact of bike riders in Santa Monica is limited, it has become clear to me that Main St. in Santa Monica is one of the most successful microcosms of bikenomics in action within the Los Angeles region. Read more…

New Climbing Bike Lane & Descending Sharrows On Arizona Ave. New Climbing Bike Lane & Descending Sharrows On Arizona Ave. New Climbing Bike Lane & Descending Sharrows On Arizona Ave.

Lately it seems like every week in Santa Monica there is something new happening that makes it easier and more pleasant to get around without a car. New sharrows there, a new bike lane here, bike racks popping up at shops all over town. New pedestrian oriented mixed use developments are going in several at a time along the future Expo Line corridor and revamped Big Blue Bus shelters are waiting in the wings.

Click on the image to learn more about Bike Center

The latest reconfigurations of street space that I’ve spotted include the introduction of two new bike lane types not used in Santa Monica prior to the adoption of the new Bike Action Plan (pdf). The first is a climbing lane, which is a treatment that incorporates a bike lane in one direction, the one with the most elevation gain, and sharrows on the opposite side. This allows a bike rider to have dedicated space when they are at their slowest, and are reintegrated with traffic on the down slope, where they are able to keep a faster pace more comparable to cars on neighborhood streets. On streets that are too narrow to include bike lanes in both directions, climbing lanes are a way to fit in more than just sharrows.  This configuration also slightly constrains the space for driving, which has a traffic calming affect since drivers must exercise more caution in passing each other.

Arizona Ave., which has a standard bike lane in both directions from Ocean Ave. to 26th St., now has a climbing lane and sharrows from 26th St., where Arizona narrows in width and experiences reduced traffic volume, out to Centinela Ave. Centinela defines the border between Santa Monica and the City of Los Angeles. Prior to this upgrade, this stretch of Arizona was marked as a bike route, but the only indication of such was the bike route signs reminding everyone to “share the road”. Hopefully the City of L.A. will connect this route with improved bikeways on Texas Ave. and S. Westgate Ave. to Ohio Ave., an important route option to get across the 405 without using an arterial. Read more…

As we’ve struggled just to provide in-depth coverage of transportation issues in Los Angeles, Streetsblog’s coverage of Santa Monica has been uneven.  Every now and then a story about something really cool, or really stupid, would demand that we write a full story; but we were never able to create a consistent narrative for the city.

Click on the image to learn more about Bike Center

Today that changes.

Later today, Streetsblog will publish our first story written by Gary Kavanagh.  In a field with several well-qualified candidates, Kavanagh stood out as the best choice in-part because he was already wired into the local advocacy community, in-part because Gary Rides Bikes is one of our favorite bike blogs, in part because he had just completed a successful one year run writing about transportation and Santa Monica for Patch and in-part because we all really like Gary.

If you’re not familiar with Santa Monica, but Kavanagh’s name seems awfully familiar, there’s a lot of good reasons.  In addition to his personal advocacy and volunteer work with Santa Monica Spoke, Kavanagh received a measure of fame in the world of transportation reform because the whole #BikevFlight race during last year’s Carmageddon began as an amusing idea between Kavanagh and MSNBC contributor and book author Tom Vanderbilt on Twitter.

Not content with just being one of the people that thought up the now legendary race, Kavanagh documented and took part in the race.  Riding the Blue Line, he tweeted out updates and people around the country ended up tweeting about #BikevFlightvMetro.  For the record, Kavanagh arrived after Wolfpack Hustle, but well before the Jet Blue riders.

Kavanagh’s column will be appearing at-least once a week.   The column is being directly supported by Bike Center in Santa Monica through an advertising campaign and by our upcoming fundraiser at the Library Alehouse.  So if you want to support our work in Santa Monica and elsewhere, drop by the Alehouse on March 27, grab a bite to eat, and enter one of our raffles.   Or, take advantage of the variety of services offered by Bike Center.  It’s a lot more than just bike parking.  Or, you could just make a donation through the website by clicking here.  Make sure your donation goes to L.A. Streetsblog, and make a note that you want to support Santa Monica.

If you don’t live in Santa Monica and want your community to get the locally-based coverage that Santa Monica, Boyle Heights and South L.A. do, drop me a line and we’ll figure out how to raise the funds together.

And if you do live in Santa Monica, and don’t want to read through all this “Los Angeles stuff,” we have a mini-website set up for our Santa Monica coverage at http://smstreetsblog.com

But for now, welcome to the team Gary Kavanagh!  And welcome to Streetsblog, Santa Monica.

Photo: LA Wad/Flickr

Los Angeles Streetsblog is hiring a writer to contribute a weekly column covering transportation and livability issues in the city of Santa Monica. The winning applicant will have a knowledge of progressive urban planning and transportation policy as well as a familiarity with Santa Monica city government. Stories can cover new transportation projects, political and community leaders in the area, transit oriented development, open space and parks and other issues that impact the public health and access to public space – all specific to the city of Santa Monica.

The position is a freelance contractor, publishing at least once a week. Funding is secure for at least one year at this time. Depending on Streetsblog raising additional funding, there some possibility for extending and/or expanding the position.

Anyone interested in the position should contact Damien Newton at damien@streetsblog.org.  All applications should include a letter of interest and two writing samples.  Applications are due by the Close of Business on February 7.

Signage at Santa Monica Boulevard and 14th Street in Santa Monica. Thanks, Andrew Ellis Miller

After years of being considered the most bike-friendly city in the Southland, Santa Monica fell behind Long Beach in recent years both in terms of infrastructure and cyclists imagination.  However, in recent months, the city once known as the People’s Republic of Santa Monica for embracing many of the most progressive ideals imaginable (at least in America) is playing catch-up.

First, there was the widely-praised release of a Bike Plan that promises miles of new bike lanes and more progressive designs to rival Long Beach.  Next was Bike Center.  Today, cyclists are noticing signage, on the street and on the poll, that give bikes a chance to be counted at intersections and get their own greens.

Reader Andrew Ellis Miller sends the picture to the right and reports that he’s noticing bike markings at intersections along Wilshire Boulevard.

Giving cyclists an equal chance to cross the street is one of the signs of a bike friendly city.  Not only does it increase safety, it decreases the number of times drivers will witness a fed up cyclist, frustrated at a long wait, choosing to cross against a red light.

This week’s been a big one for bike parking in L.A. County with the opening of Bike Stop in Burbank and Bike Center later this morning in Santa Monica.  Meanwhile, the Culver City Bike Coalition is looking at plans for the Expo Line stop in Culver City and wondering “what about us?”  Streetsblog presents a quick tale of three public cycling centers:

Santa Monica, Bike Center:

The outside of Bike Center. Photo via The Source

We start with today’s opening of what might be the largest bike parking facility in all of the United States of America.  The mammoth $2 million full-service “Santa Monica Bike Center,” is a joint product of the People’s Republic and Metro.  Bike Center is actually two locations (Parking Structure 7 at 320 Broadway and Parking Structure 8 at 215 Colorado) in the center of downtown with a combined 5,300 square-feet of space and nearly 360 secure bicycle parking spaces.  To the best of my research, the next largest bike parking facility, Chicago’s McDonald’s Cycle Center, has “only” 300 spaces.

The Center will provide secure bike parking, retail, bike repair, bike rental, attended bike parking, and could serve as a center for other bicycle related activity in the same way Long Beach’s Bike Station hosts classes and is the starting point for bike stores. For more information, check out the Bike Center web site.

Anticipating the light rail that is on it’s way, Bike Center is also built close to the future terminus of Phase II of the Expo Line.  Metro staff talks about riders being able to bike to their closest Expo stop, take the bike with them on the train, and then having a safe and convenient place to park if their plans don’t include taking their bike with them when the line is completed.

A grand opening event is scheduled for later today and will be followed by an all-weekend open house featuring free bicycle parking, free bicycle rides and tours of the facility.  For more information on the events, click here.

Burbank, Bike Stop: Read more…

Some Neighborhood Council Members wanted separated bike lanes, similar to the ones pictured here, for Main Street in Venice. LADOT wouldn't commit to that design, and the NC gave a conditional go ahead to go forward with standard bike lanes.

Last night, the Venice Neighborhood Council agreed  to the Main Street Road Diet/Bike Lanes plan proposed by LADOT.  The new road striping ought to be on the ground “in the next couple of weeks.”  Despite its approval, the Neighborhood Council had some concerns with the project and wanted LADOT to return with more safety measures to protect cyclists and calm traffic.  The Road Diet will run on Main Street from Navy St. to Windward Circle, and will extend the Santa Monica bike lanes and road diet into Venice.

There was a minor change from the original plan.  Currently, Main Street has four eleven foot through travel lanes with seven feet on each side of the street for car parking.  The original road diet changed the configuration to two eleven foot travel lanes, one eleven foot turn lane, two 5 foot bike lanes and two seven foot car parking areas.  Some cyclists, notably Alex Thompson at Bikeside, complained the new configuration had cyclists planted squarely in the door zone, especially since many vehicles in today’s world are larger than seven feet wide.

LADOT  responded that eleven feet was the minimum for the car travel lanes because Main Street is a regularly traveled route for both the Santa Monica Big Blue Bus and Metro buses.  However, the new design does take a foot out of the turning lane to make the bike lanes five and a half feet larger.  This 10% increase will give cyclists more room to maneuver when car doors are (illegally) opened in their path, but doesn’t completely solve the problem of door zone bicycle lanes.

As we saw back in January, the debate over the plan was because members of the Neighborhood Council wanted a more progressive plan for Main Street than LADOT was willing to provide.  Questions about extending the lanes all the way south to the Venice Street Bike Lane or separating the lanes as they did on 3rd Street and Broadway in Long Beach and in Portland were dismissed.  The Main Street Road Diet is designed to link up with the three lane with bike lanes configuration of the road north on Main Street. Read more…

All our rowdy friends are here on Monday morning. Photo: Metro

Sometime in the late 1980′s, the last Southern Pacific Freight train rumbled along Exposition Boulevard in West L.A. and Santa Monica before voters passed Proposition C and the newly formed Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit Authority purchased the entire right of way.  What followed was two decades of studies, public hearings, lawsuits, Phase I of the Expo Line going through what seemed an infitinte amount of delays and passage of a new transit tax (Measure R).

Earlier today, a groundbreaking ceremony in Santa Monica, at the terminus (or start, depending your point of view) marked the beginning of the end.  The Expo Line Phase II, from Culver City to Santa Monica is under construction.  When it’s completed, transit riders will be able to hop a light rail in Downtown Santa Monica and travel to Downtown Los Angeles or vice-versa.

We’ve talked about Expo Planning, Expo Construction, Expo Lawsuits, the Expo Bike Lane, Expo Crossings, Expo Phase I delays, and probably one hundred other Expo subjects in the three and a half years that L.A. Streetsblog has published. For today, we’re going to take a cue from Darrell Clarke, the founder of Friends for Expo Transit. Clarke might not be in the above picture holding a shovel, but he’s done more than anyone to push the line from an idea to construction.

Read more…

In the fall of 2007, a pair of high school students in Santa Monica High School (Samohi), decided to organize their own Bike to School Day.  Somewhere between 80 and 100 high school students took part that first year, which is a respectable number for a student-run event with no budget, but nobody could have0for seen what’s happened since.

To see last spring's flyer in English and Spanish, click here.

In 2008, the event doubled in size.  In 2009, so many students walked or biked to school, that the school’s bike racks were overflowing not just on what was then called Bike It! day, but everyday and the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District vowed better bike facilities.  In 2010, Bike It spread to schools throughout Santa Monica and in June the event (the event is held twice annually in the Fall and Spring) had over 3,300 students from thirteen different schools around Santa Monica.

“Since 2007 it’s grown into a bigger success with just about half of the school participating,” explains Charlotte Biren, co-president of the Samohi Solar Alliance, a super-group that is responsible for solar panels warming the school pool and for programming Bike It! .  “We’ve also expanded the program into walking, and taking the bus.”

Santa Monica doesn’t have a school bus program, increasing the pressure on parents to drive students to schools, so a Bike to School Day is an important exercise to show parents, and students, what is possible.

“Simply put, the goal is to get people out of their cars,” adds Jenna Perelman,  the other Solar Alliance co-president.

100 students is good enough to get the attention of the local school board.  3,300 is enough to get the attention of the President.  This summer, the Office of President Barack Obama awarded Biren and Perelman an Official Presidential Commendation for their work programming Bike It! Read more…