First, he named Carmageddon, than he rescued the Bike Plan. Good year for the Supe. Photo: Brian Watts/KPCC

The motion, available on the Supervisor’s website for the last week, picks up many of the suggestions made by bicyclists at a recent meeting of the County Planning Commission, including language that allows the County to build cycle tracks when permitted by state law, requires conformity with the recently released “model street manual” by the L.A. County Department of Public Health and UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, and allows the use of other innovative bicycling design as they become approved by Caltrans.

“The bicycle plan has come a long way since the first draft, but there improvements are still needed to really address safety,” testified the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition’s Alexis Lantz before passage of the motion.  ”We want the County Bike Plan to not only be a guide for implementation but a visionary plan for the next 20 years that will help create safer streets, encourages a diversity of people to bicycle, and maximizes our planned and proposed transportation investments so LA County becomes more mobile, better connected, healthier and a more livable county.

We feel the motion before you today gives the guidance needed to staff in order to do just that and we urge you to support it.”

The L.A. County Bike Plan requires the approval of the Supervisor-appointed County Planning Commission before a full vote by the Supervisors themselves.  At the November meeting of the Commission, they voted to send the most recent draft back to the drawing board to incorporate many of the changes that are now clearly supported by the Supervisors themselves.  The Supervisors are expected to vote on the plan’s passage in March of next year.

“It is critical that the Board of Supervisors not wait to send a clear message that we expect this plan to do more to make the County a better, safer place to bike,” the motion reads.

For more on the motion, visit ZevWeb, here.

To read the plan, click here.

This Wednesday morning (full event details at the end of the post), the County Planning Commission will meet at 9:00 A.M. to discuss the draft Bike Plan and the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition is urging cyclists to urge the Commission to send the plan back to the staff for further revisions.  To help advocates better lobby the County Planning Commission, the LACBC created an action alert on Google Documents for individuals or organizations.

The LACBC summarizes on its blog:

“…while this plan does provide 816 miles of new bikeways  for the many unincorporated communities in LA County, the majority are bike routes (458). We feel the plan still needs a number of improvements, including more miles of bike lanes and bike boulevards (also referred to as bicycle friendly streets) before any action should be taken on it.”

The Bike Plan has been in the works since 2009, but this run to the L.A. County Planning Commission feels a bit rushed with recent developments not being taken into account.  Most notably, we’re just weeks removed from the triumphant launch of a “Model Design Manual for Living Streets” written by a team of experts including bike planner Ryan Snyder.

The manual showed how any municipality could embrace a living streets philospohy to encourage greater physical activity and a more equitable mix of transportation modes.  Funding for the Manual came from the L.A. County Public Health Department, yet neither the manual nor its street designs are part of the L.A. County Bike Plan.

It’s time for the County’s left and right hands to get an idea of what the other is doing.

But that’s not the only problem with the current plan.  Repeating the mistakes of the rejected draft of the city’s draft plan one year ago, the County Bike Plan is wobbly on a timeline and hard goals for the project.  In January of 2010, I wrote about the difficulties facing a Bike Plan, or any plan, that doesn’t have firmly defined goals, objectives, strategies and tactics.  Of the then-draft of the City Bike Plan, I wrote:

My main concern with this plan doesn’t have to do with what routes do or don’t appear, there are many cyclists more familiar with Los Angeles’ streets than I am and I would pay close attention to their comments on this matter.  Instead, I am worried that this isn’t really what can be considered a “plan” at all.  A plan has deadlines, designates who is responsible for what, has a list of goals, objectives, strategies and tactics, and most importantly identifies a source or sources of funding to make the goals, objectives, strategies and tactics of the plan a reality.

Bike Plans are needed by municipal and county governments before they can apply for bicycle project grants from the state and federal governments.  The L.A. County Plan does the minimum that it has to to meet that objective, but L.A. County hasn’t passed a Bike Plan in 30 years, and the 11 million residents of the county deserve a plan that does more than outline a series of projects.  It should create a vision for a bicycle friendly county, and then the projects are designed to meet that goal.  For now, L.A. County is missing that mark, and for that reason the LACBC wants staff to take another crack at improving the plan before it moves on to final approval at the L.A. County Board of Supervisors.

Meeting Information:

LA County Planning Commission

Where: Hall of Records - Room 150
320 West Temple Street
Los Angeles, CA 90012

When: Wednesday, Nov 16th – 9am

A conceptual rendering of what the buffered bike lane down Spring St may look like as the design is being close to finalized with a ground breaking planned for early December 2011 (Photo: DLANC)

(I was on the road yesterday and missed the big announcement of L.A.’s first buffered bike lane coming this December.  Streetsblog contributor Brigham Yen caught the news first and announced it on his personal blog at BrighamYen.com – DN)

Valerie Watson, the At-Large Director of DLANC (Downtown LA Neighborhood Council), who has been heavily involved with making the Historic Core in Downtown LA a much more pedestrian and bike friendly community, sends me this rendering (and more info) of a fully separated bike lane down Spring St that will also be painted green (like those coveted ones in bike-friendly Portland or New York).

With a ground breaking coming as soon as December (as in this year 2011!), the 1.5 mile bike lane will stretch from Cesar Chavez to 9th Street and be 6 feet wide with green paint to mark very clearly for motorists to see, and there will also be a 4-foot stripe buffer zone between the bike lane and car lane for further cyclist protection. Full time loading and parking will be available on the west side of the street next to the bike lane (as you can see in the rendering).

Here are some benefits of having the bike lane down Spring St:

• Better access to businesses along Spring St by patrons walking, biking, using transit, and driving
• Full time parking and loading will be added on west side of Spring St
• Increased crossing safety for pedestrians

The design of this project can still be tweaked and refined by the community’s input and feedback is encouraged.

And even more good news.

After further studies, a second phase with another bike lane on Main St (parallel to Spring St) may be implemented from Cesar Chavez to Venice Blvd.

For more information you can contact:

Paul Habib, Planning Deputy
Councilman Jose Huizar, CD14
213-473-7014 | Paul.Habib@lacity.org

Marie Rumsey, Senior Deputy
Councilwoman Jan Perry, CD9
213-473-7009 | Marie.Rumsey@lacity.org

Image: Los Angeles Link

It seems like every time the City of Los Angeles and bicycles are mentioned in the same sentence, some controversy is involved.  Yesterday, the League of American Bicyclists released its list of “Bicycle Friendly Communities” and the City of Angeles received an Honorable Mention for the second time in four years.  The League’s Award has proven somewhat controversial with some seeing it as a sign that things are getting better, while others are wondering what in the world the League was thinking.

The League of American Bicyclists regularly awards communities, states, universities and other organizations awards for bicycle friendliness.  The awards are bronze, silver and gold.  The Honorable Mention category is more of an encouragement for city’s on the right path to keep trying.  A League spokesperson tells L.A. Weekly that the Honorable Mention is for the quality of the Bike Plan, and not because of the actual state of things on the streets.

For a full size image, click here.

Glendale PLACE Grant Coordinator Colin Bogart shows off the new tri-lingual pedestrian safety markings at an intersection adjacent to Glendale City Hall.

This week’s series on the grants from the L.A. County Department of Public Health’s Policies for Livable and Active Communities and Environments (PLACE) Grants focuses on Glendale and their groundbreaking Safe and Healthy Streets Plan.

Glendale’s grant was different than most because it wasn’t the city that was actually awarded the grant, but the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition (LACBC). The LACBC and the city worked together on the grant application. We’ll discuss the unique collaboration between the LACBC and Glendale tomorrow. On Friday we’ll discuss some of the physical changes that have happened over the last three years and that are currently underway.

Today, we’ll focus on Safe and Healthy Streets, the planning document passed unanimously by the city in June and how their plan sets a new bar for clean and green transportation planning in Los Angeles County.

For their part, the City of Glendale professes confidence and optimism that Safe and Healthy Streets will bring a change to the city’s transportation grid.

“People in Glendale are really frustrated by our record on traffic safety,” provides Mayor Laura Friedman. “It’s a way to get a grip on traffic safety in the city, and it’s probably the most cohesive effort we’ve ever had.”

The Baseline: Glendale knew it had a problem and was open to change.

When she first joined the City Council, Laura Friedman (pictured above) pushed for bike parking at City Hall. Now the City's racks are partially filled everyday by staff with a few spots held for visitors. The LACBC's Jen Klausner calls the racks "beautiful."

By its own admission, Glendale was in desperate need for a new approach to transportation planning. The unintended consequences of a transportation network that emphasized moving cars can be seen in the statistics. In Glendale, approximately 17.4% of adults (age 18+) are obese as are approximately 15.8% of children. An additional 46. 2% of adults and 17.9% of children are overweight. Many of Glendale’s health problems could be solved by a transportation system that emphasizes “people powered” transportation, but for years they weren’t ready to make the change. In 2008, almost 40% of adults in Glendale engage in minimal to no physical activity and 66.4% of adults drive to go on an errand less than one mile from their home.

Street safety for pedestrians and bicyclists is another major issue. Mayor Friedman, admits that Glendale has an “abysmal record of pedestrian safety.” From 2004 through 2009, there were 671 reported motor vehicle collisions involving pedestrians and 275 reported motor vehicle collisions involving bicyclists, according to data provided by the state. Of the pedestrian collisions, the primary collision factor (cause of the crash) was assigned to the motorist in 64% of the collisions; to the pedestrian in 22% of the collisions, and 14% of the collisions reported remain unknown or unclear.

Some residents believe that fear is one of the reasons that more people in Glendale don’t bike. “This is a unique city. We have a huge driving problem here, and the speed and the recklessness is beyond comprehension sometime,” commented Nathalie Winiarski. “We need a huge campaign to battle this.”

So how does Safe and Healthy Streets address those problems? Instead of a traditional transportation planning document, the kind that lists what streets get what treatments, Safe and Healthy Streets proposes a series of policy changes which shift the way the city views transportation, reprioritizes funding allocation that will ultimately lead to a changed city with a progressive transportation plan. Of course, a plan is only as good as the follow-through, but in the short-term Glendale staff and elected leaders seem serious about creating a different Glendale.

Which isn’t to say that Glendale abandoned traditional planning all together. Safe and Healthy Streets identifies the traditional “5 e’s” (education, enforcement, engineering, encouragement, and evaluation) of transportation planning, and then outlines specific policy changes to turn streets designed for cars into streets that are safe for all road users and to promote healthy lifestyles. The Safe and Healthy Streets plan closes with a section on implementation which is somewhat vague. Whether the plan becomes reality depends on the political will of Glendale’s elected leadership, which is currently committed to the vision.

While Safe and Healthy Streets embraces all 5 e’s, where it differs is how it treats engineering programs. Safe and Healthy Streets calls for an overhaul of transportation planning in Glendale so that the needs of bicyclists and pedestrians. Even before the plan was passed, this new commitment was embraced by the planning and street services departments.

Engineering

The now-famous Mercedes dealership bump out. Work goes on in the street.

When it comes to the design of Glendale’s streets, the city didn’t wait until the plan was finalized to begin the long project of retrofitting its transportation network to accommodate bicyclists and pedestrians.

“We’re happy with the document,” explains LACBC Executive Director Jennifer Klausner. “… we’re also happy with the real on-the-ground changes we saw during our partnership.”

The saga of the efforts of the LACBC’s efforts to get Shared Lane Markings (Sharrows) on streets in Los Angeles is familiar to most regular Streetsblog readers, but for those who are new here is a quick summary. It took over five years, dozens of public meetings, before LADOT finally relented. In Glendale, the third largest city in L.A. County, it took one private meeting. Sharrows are now on five streets in Los Angeles (although 20 more miles of Sharrowed Streets are in the works) and on five streets in Glendale.

The city’s success with Sharrows had another, almost psychic benefit to the city. Every single person I spoke with to prepare for this series brought up an attempt to put bike lanes on Verdugo Avenue over ten years ago that led to such a backlash that city staff literally cringed at its mention. But for Sharrows, the reaction was different. Mayor Friedman commented that “98%” of the feedback she received was positive.

Mike Nilson with City Planning, took it one step further, “Before Sharrows, people looked at bike projects as ‘taking away parking’ or ‘taking away car travel lanes.’” And now the city is ready to move beyond Sharrows and try adding bike lanes again. Plans are in the work for bike lanes as part of the Riverdale-Maple Greenway and a separate project is scheduled for Main Street.

As for the Sharrows, the city plans to continue to use them when bike lanes aren’t appropriate and has even placed them on some streets without car parking, a move that other cities in L.A. County believes violates the federal standard because Sharrows were originally designed to place bicycles in the safest part of the street.  In Glendale, they also serve to remind drivers that streets are for cyclists too.

Safe and Healthy Streets also calls for better crossings at intersections. When Glendale was planning to improve the intersection of Maple and Riverdale, the intersection was due for a new traffic signal, but thanks to the intervention of city staff and LACBC’s Place Coordinator Colin Bogart, the intersection underwent a dramatic change. Bump outs shorten the length of the Riverdale crossing so pedestrians aren’t as daunted and car traffic is slowed by the narrower street. Bike detectors are under the concrete so that cyclists don’t have to hop on and off the sidewalk to press a button or wait for a car to come along to get a green light. Signs direct cyclists how to navigate the difficult turn to stay on the existing bike route and future Greenway.

Another example is that when a Mercedes dealer was fixing the sidewalks in front of the dealership as part of an expansion project, City staff informed the dealership that they had to provide better pedestrian access along the street including bump outs to slow car traffic and provide pedestrians a shorter crossing along the city’s dealership row.

These small changes begin to add up to a changed street life in Glendale. It’s not as though the city has transformed from a car dominated transportation system to Copenhagen, but small changes add up over time. Sharrows, better crossings, traffic calming, these are all things that weren’t a part of Glendale’s plan a couple of years ago, but are all in the mix now whenever a transportation project is considered.

“I do believe the public works department is taking this very seriously,” Friedman says of the change in direction. “When I ask them ‘is this a complete streets project?’ they almost always say yes…That’s a change in policy for the city.”

City staff readily agrees. “The philosophical change is that now giving consideration to the bikes and pedestrians is standard,” provides Kevin Carter with the city’s Public Works and Engineering Department. “Every project that comes through, we’re looking at what can be done for bike and pedestrians.”

The next immediate step is the construction of a series of Greenways to connect Glendale’s three main parks. Construction of the Riverdale-Maple Greenway is part of their PLACE Grant, and is designed not only to connect parks but provide an east-west pedestrian and bicycle connection through a part of the city that is less affluent and has higher percentages of minority residents. Streetsblog will have more on the Greenway on Friday.

The next steps for Glendale are to revise its Master Plan to reflect this new commitment and pass a Complete Streets policy. Both items are currently being worked on by city staff.

In addition to clarifying Glendale’s policy of safe streets for all users, Safe and Healthy Streets also recommends major changes in how the city counts traffic to mirror the commitment to safe streets. Much as we see in Los Angeles and other cities around L.A. County, excluding Long Beach, Glendale traffic engineers decide whether a street is working based on a Level of Service calculation of how many cars the street moves. More progressive cities are embracing the idea that traffic counts should be people counts and the number of pedestrians, bicyclists and people on a bus are just as important as the number of people riding in cars.

The city believes all these changes will lead to more people walking and bicycling for local trips and history with other cities, both in L.A. County and around the world, backs up that claim. Or, put more succinctly the city believes that “If you build it, they will come.”

Enforcement:

Too subtle? Photo: Glendale News Press

In some ways, Glendale has become a state leader in the battle for safe streets. Over the past several years, the Glendale Police Department (GPD) and local Assembly Members have pushed for new legislation that would allow the city greater control over local speed limits. While larger cities have mostly stayed on the sidelines, the City of L.A. passed an ordinance and held a press conference in 2009 but failed to actually show up in Sacramento to lobby or testify in support of the legislation, Glendale has pushed and kept pushing for legislation that would make their streets safer.

Safe and Healthy Streets calls for the GPD to remain a leader in this fight, and calls for better training of officers on the rights of bicyclists and pedestrians. It also calls for a lighter touch when dealing with cyclists, especially younger cyclists, so the Department doesn’t discourage bicycling by cracking down on riders for minor violations. For example, the GPD will seek funding for lights and bike helmets to give to young riders instead of just ticketing them.

But cases over the last two years demonstrate the difficulties of enforcing traffic laws fairly in a world where many drivers routinely violate the law and many parts of the legal code are unclear.

In the days leading up to Easter of 2010, one Glendale officer literally dressed as the Easter Bunny and walked across the intersection of Broadway and Central. Motorists that failed to yield to the bunny were ticketed for their infraction and sent on their way. This outside-the-box thinking led to a lot of free press for the city, in Glendale and beyond, but was ultimately scrapped when City Councilman John Drayman complained. However, it’s an interesting case study in targeted enforcement, and it certainly demolished the argument often heard from drivers who violate pedestrian space. It’s awfully hard to miss a person in a bunny suit.

Would you think of this as a “Business District?” Image: Google Street View

The second story is a lot more tragic, and shows how Glendale law needs a change to protect cyclists. Safe and Healthy Streets explains the problem:

The City of Glendale’s Municipal Code 10.64.025 currently prohibits sidewalk riding in business districts. “No person shall ride or operate a bicycle upon any public sidewalk in any business district within the city except where such sidewalk is officially designated as part of an established bicycle route.” The existing law lends itself to confusion, as there are no specific boundaries in Glendale that outline where a business district begins or ends and most people are not familiar with the default definition of a business district as defined by the vehicle code. It also fails to address the needs of inexperienced or young riders who may wish to ride to a business destination.

California Vehicle Code Section 240 determines if a roadway is in a business or residential district. CVC Section 240 part C reads, “All churches, apartments, hotels, multiple dwelling houses, clubs, and public buildings, other than schools, shall be deemed to be business structures.” This determination means that neighborhoods with multi-family dwellings are considered business districts. This makes the current Glendale Municipal Code even more problematic since it opens sidewalk riders to citation and potential legal problems when riding in such areas.

Thus, when a rider was struck and killed in September of 2008 while riding on the sidewalk. The rider was in a clearly residential area, that is technically a business district under city law, so the slain rider was deemed partially responsible. Changing this law is considered of paramount importance and Safe and Healthy Streets gives several options to do so, including eliminating sidewalk riding completely so that there is no confusion.

While Safe and Healthy Streets provides guidance for the City Council, Mayor and GPD and not hard policy, addressing laws and enforcement issues is not something one sees in a planning report and is an example on how the Safe and Healthy Streets document is an improvement over a traditional Master Plan document.

Encouragement:

From the Safe and Healthy Streets website.

In some ways, the encouragement section reads like a traditional encouragement plan. The city promises to produce bicycle road maps, maps of pedestrian zones, Safe Routes to Schools maps and even mountain biking maps, while promising special events that highlight walking and bicycling. Where Safe and Healthy Streets has excelled isn’t in the planning of these events, but the execution that has happened in recent years.

Glendale doesn’t just have a Bike to Work Day and Bike Week as does its giant neighbor to the south and west, it has a Bike Month that had over 20 free events in 2010. It doesn’t program a Mayor’s ride once a year as part of a press event, it has them regularly (which is easier when you have a mayor that chooses to ride herself), the next one is on September 25. For a mid-sized American city to have a bike calendar similar to Glendale’s is unheard of, with official events on the calendar a couple of times a month year-round.

But Safe and Healthy Streets calls for more special events, so many that the events become less-special and more routine. Why have a “walk and bike to school day” when you can have “Walk to School Wednesdays” or “Car-Free Fridays?” Making these days a regular part of the calendar would require a strong partnership with the school district, but it’s a relatively easy way to combat childhood obesity and studies show that students learn more if they have some exercise before class.
Marc Stirdivant, who worked the LACBC on the initial grant, noted that more came from the rides than new riders, but also a new constituency. “Culture change also came as a result of the rides. Ice Cream Rides. Weekend Rides. Bike to Work Rides. All of a sudden there were 60 people and they all realized they were concerned about the same things.”

Education:

Go to the three minute point to see a PSA made by Glendale Grade Schoolers.

Much of the Safe and Healthy Streets proposed educational campaign is pretty standard fare, but where the plan shows some creativity is that it’s not afraid to grab on to some of the best practices of local municipalities.

In other words, the education component is about more than P.S.A.’s and snap bracelets that encourage cyclists to “ride right.”

For example, when someone gets a traffic ticket driving a car in California, they have the option to go to “Traffic School” to reduce the penalty they receive. Except for a few smaller cities, bicyclists don’t have the same opportunity. Safe and Healthy Streets pushes the city to change that for cyclists in Glendale.
When adopted, Bicyclists that are given tickets for traffic violations would have the option of attending a class on how to safely use a bicycle in traffic in lieu of paying the moving violation fine. Attendance at a Bicycle Traffic School requires a court order granted by the Traffic Court Judge and can only be issued once instead of paying the fine. Cyclists and pedestrians can pay anywhere from $100 to $200 per ticket, depending on the infraction. By attending the bicycle safety class the cyclist can not only save money, but also his or her life by learning essential safety rules. The cost of the program is negligible because the “students” will pay “tuition” to the school to cover expenses.

Safe and Healthy Streets also calls for the city to create bike co-ops similar to the Bicycle Kitchen, Bike Oven, Bikerowave, Valley Bikery and Bici Digna co-ops in the City of L.A. These storefronts serve not just as places where people can learn how to fix their bicycle, but also as social gathering points for cyclists to get together and places to hold bike-themed events.

Evaluation

Volunteer Guillaume Lemoine records a cyclist on Glenoaks at Grandview . Photo:LACBC/SaHS

One of the most important, and oft-overlooked, part of a plan is the evaluation stage and specifically who is going to be doing the evaluating. One of the main short-term recommendations of Safe and Healthy Streets is to create advisory bodies of city staff and residents to review and update the plan and hold the city accountable to implement the plan. Details on the makeup of each body is pending, the City Council will hear a recommendation on how to create the citizens’ committee this month.

Measuring the success of its bicycle and pedestrian program is something new for Glendale. “Before the PLACE Grant, people believed that nobody wanted this,” laughed Stirdivant when I asked about evaluation plans. Now the city is figuring out how to provide for a constituency that it didn’t believe existed three years ago.

However, the document does outline what criteria should be used to monitor the plan’s successes and shortcomings:

• Increasing the mode share of bicyclists in the City of Glendale
• Increasing the number of bicyclists and pedestrians recorded during the annual bicycle/pedestrian count
• Increasing the rate of school children walking or bicycling to school
• Increasing the rate of residents walking or bicycling to work, for errands, and recreation
• Decreasing the mode share of single-occupancy vehicular riders in the City of Glendale
• Coordinating with other programs, such as Safe Routes to School, to include schools as part of the yearly count
• Incorporating a Mode of Travel survey into schools as part of the City’s yearly pedestrian and bicycle count

How Will Glendale Do It?

Of course, the largest issue for any plan, be it a Master Plan or Vision Plan, or a hybrid such as Safe and Healthy Streets, is how the plan will be funded and who will see that it moves from paper to the street.

L to R: Mike Nilsson, Colin Bogart, Councilman Ara Najarian, Marc Stirdivant and Chuck Wike with Mayor Friedman's proclamation that May is Bike Month in Glendale

In some ways, Glendale is hamstrung by what ails every city in North America. The country’s budget crisis has hit Glendale hard with hiring freezes in place so the newly created position of Pedestrian and Bicycle Coordinator will most likely go unfilled for years. The City is looking for grant opportunities to help fund these positions, but so far has come up short. And even as the city embraced Safe and Healthy Streets, the city’s budget for transportation improvements was cut.
While many are enthusiastic about the plan, they’re also worried the funding issue could keep it from becoming a reality. Nathalie Winiarski, a resident of Glendale who worked on Safe and Healthy Streets as a Volunteer, explains. “I do feel the city is behind this. It’s a funding situation. I do believe everyone who I’ve come in contact with is very much in favor of this, but until the money is there we don’t know where it’s going to go.”

Which isn’t to say that funds aren’t available to do some great things. For example, Metro estimates that the City of Glendale will receive as much as $113 million dollars in local return funds from the 2008 county-wide transit sales tax. These funds may be used for a variety of transportation improvements including pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure and safety measures. Safe and Healthy Streets recommends that Glendale follow the lead of Los Angeles and dedicate 10% of that return to bicycle and pedestrian projects. L.A. is planning on its set-aside to cover a lot of the city’s Bike Master Plan, and Glendale could do the same for its Master Plan which is still being designed.

Measure R isn’t the only place Glendale is looking for funding. In 2009 the city received a nearly $900,000 grant from Caltrans to improve safe passing at six local schools. One year later, the GPD received over a quarter of a million dollars to better train officers about pedestrian and bicyclist rights.

The City has applied for and received two grants as part of the Federal Highway Safety Improvement Program for two projects. The first, in the amount $376,200, is for traffic safety improvements at the intersection of Honolulu Avenue, Verdugo Road, Montrose Avenue, and Verdugo Boulevard. This project will be completed in 2012. The second project, in the amount of $322,640, will upgrade traffic signal for motorist and pedestrian safety at the intersection of Wilson Avenue, Harvey Drive, and Broadway. This project will also be completed in 2012.

With funding tight, the city is reliant on outside funding sources and grants to make its streets fulfill the promises of Safe and Healthy Streets. There’s a long way to go, but if the City maintains the political will and manages to find the money, Glendale might, one day, be the model of a safe and healthy community.

Bikeside is right, this "flow chart" explaining bike plan implementation needs to be retired.

Yesterday, the LADOT and City Planning made their quarterly update to the City Council on the progress of the implementation of the Bike Plan.  The Council’s Transportation Committee also moved a motion that would transfer $475,000 to LADOT’s overtime account.  Between the somewhat confounding report offered by the agencies and the revelation that bike projects have to be built on overtime, it’s no surprise that some advocates are anxious.

The funding motion addressed on Wednesday is a sort of good news/bad news motion.  The motion allows the transfer of $475,000 from LADOT project accounts to overtime accounts so that LADOT can install new bike lanes and Sharrows.  The good news is that these funds will see to the completion of eight bike lane projects totaling eight miles and nearly seventeen miles of Sharrowed Streets.

If implementation of these projects really does occur “in the next couple of weeks” it would be a great start for the city in the 2011 fiscal year.  The Mayor famously promised 40 miles of new bike infrastructure a year last March at the Bike Plan signing, a promise which has gotten off to a somewhat rocky start.  Knocking out 25 miles of that infrastructure in the first couple months of the year is a good sign.

But the “overtime” issue is a troubling one.

A couple of weeks ago I stood next to the Green Shared Lane in Long Beach talking with Long Beach’s Mobility Coordinator, Charlie Gandy.  I asked him how much it cost to paint a green lane on each side of a main drag through Downtown Los Angeles.  His answer?  ”$5,000.”  When pressed, he admitted that he didn’t know the labor costs, because “those are fixed costs with the city.”  In other words, painting bike infrastructure is just part of the job in Long Beach, and that saves the city hundreds of thousands of dollars in project costs.

As Bikeside Chris put it, “ As LADOT continues to bill the City for overtime, scarce Measure R, Transportation Enhancements, Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality and Transportation Development Act bike improvement funds quickly become depleted.”  As the city over bills for bike projects now, it means less projects later.

The second major issue is that the LADOT and City Planning issued a report to update the Council on all the new bike plan projects underway and spent more time in the report talking about the public meetings they hold, open to the public but attended by insiders, known as the Bike Plan Implementation Meetings, which they just announced will be held quarterly rather than monthly.

But the update has drawn criticism more for what isn’t in the document than what is.

“We would have liked to see some updates on how they’re trying to fund the program.  What Safe Routes to School grants did the city apply for?  What about the Metro call for projects?” asked the Los Angeles County Bike Coalition’s Alexis Lantz.

Bikeside’s critique is quite a bit harsher, as they point out that nowhere in the update does it actually say when projects are going to be completed, how long the projects are, or how much they cost.  If you poke around the Internet a little, you can find more answers on the LADOT Bike Program website.  At least the documents on that website tell the reader how long the projects are.

No, really...what the heck is this?

So what should an update look like?  Lantz suggests something akin to the quarterly updates of PlaNYC, which not only gives much more detailed project updates, but also discusses the challenges the Apple faces as it tries to move towards sustainability.

But as we wait to see if the City can interpret its Bike Plan updates for the City Council and for the public in general, the bigger question is whether the city is failing to live up to the Mayor’s promise, or whether some shoddy updates are clouding a brighter picture.

We’ll stay tuned.

The city of Los Angeles’ “2010″ bike plan was approved March 1st 2011. The overdue passage received praise from the media, who called it “comprehensive“, “historic” and “[if built, marks] one of the most lasting achievements of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s tenure.” The bike plan won an award from the Los Angeles section of the American Planning Association.

Are the new MLK Bike Lanes the exception or the rule?

Mayor Villaraigosa and others have touted the plan’s 1600 miles of bikeways, and pledged to implement 40 miles each year. Last week, the mayor released a July 1st 2011 Executive Directive on Implementation of the 2010 Bike Plan. The directive reiterates the 40 miles/year commitment, and commits other city departments to include bikes in various city projects.

With the new directive, and the start of a new fiscal year, Streetsblog takes a look at how the “2010″ plan implementation is going so far. Streetsblog readers will recall that the city bike plan includes a “5-year” implementation plan. As noted in the initial Streetsblog review of the implementation plan, the “5-year” plan, based on planned completion dates is actually an 8-9 implementation plan. The implementation plan online includes dates – ie: includes “Year 0″ for “Project Year 2010″, through “Year 5″ for “Project Year 2015.” Though in the final council file version, the dates have been scrubbed and replaced by priority 1 through 3, with no dates specified.

Given that it’s now July 2011, the “2010″ bike plan is, theoretically, a year and a half into its implementation plan timeline, which began with “project year 2010.” Just how many miles of bike lane is the city of Los Angeles implementing? Are L.A. cyclists seeing that “commitment to build 40 miles of bikeway a year” in themayor’s directive? How does recent implementation compare to past performance?

While, overall, the city has been exceeding its past (lackluster) performance, it appears that the 40 miles annually remains elusive.

From 1996 until late 2009, under the city’s 1996 Bicycle Master Plan, Los Angeles implemented a total of 66.7 new miles of bike lane. Dividing the 66.7 miles by the 13 years, the city implemented an average of about 5.1 miles of bike lane each year.

In 2009, the city implemented a total of 4.09 miles of bike lane: (Bike lane projects listings below are in rough date order, with from/to limits in parenthesis.)

• La Tuna Canyon (Sunland-Elden) 2.46 miles
• Myra Avenue (Fountain-Santa Monica Blvd) 0.44 miles
• Reseda Blvd (SF Mission Road-Devonshire) 1.19 miles

In 2010, the city did significantly better, roughly triple its yearly average with15.3 miles of bike lane:

• Hoover St (98th-120th) 1.6 miles
• San Pedro St (115th-120th) 0.4 miles
• Wentworth (Sheldon-Wheatland) 2.1 miles
• Winnetka Ave (Nordhoff -Gault) 2.3 miles
• Louise Ave (Lassen-Devonshire) 0.7 miles
• Reseda Blvd (Devonshire-Parthenia) 2.0 miles
• Wilbur Ave (Nordhoff-Chattsworth) 2.0 miles
• Reseda Blvd (Valerio-Roscoe) 1.1 miles
• Rinaldi St (Mason-Tampa) 1.3 miles
• WoodleyAve (Sherman-Saticoy) 0.5 miles
• York Blvd (Eagle Rock-Ave 55) 1.3 miles

In 2010, in addition to 15.3 miles of bike lanes, the city implemented 8.3 miles of “enhanced bike routes” (sharrows) and 2.6 miles of bike paths (L.A. River), for an overall 2010 total of 26.2 new miles of bikeway.

With 2011 halfway through, the city has so far striped 5.54 miles of bike lane.

• Woodman Ave (Oxnard-Vanowen) 1.0 miles
• Fair Park Ave (Eagle Rock-Maywood) 0.20 miles
• Martin Luther King Blvd (Rodeo-Marlton) 1.04 miles
• Exposition Blvd (Harcourt-Catalina) 3.3 miles

There are additional projects anticipated in 2011. These include 7th St, Vermont Ave (in South L.A.), additional mileage on York Blvd, Reseda Blvd, and Main St (in Venice),  and some others. Even if all those come through, it appears that the city is on a trajectory to fall short of 40 miles in 2011. To get 40 in 2011,  the city will need to implement bike facilities about seven times more quickly in the second half of 2011 than it has done in the first half… which runs somewhat counter to the city’s plan to subject many relatively straightforward projects to lengthy and costly environmental review studies.

In addition to quantity, quality is important. From 2009 through mid-2011, the city has striped two-thirds of its new bike lanes (~17 miles out of ~25 miles, listed above) in the San Fernando Valley, predominantly in the northwest Valley, arguably the city’s most suburban communities. Plenty of Valley folks bike, and bike lanes are welcome and needed in the Valley… but it appears that the city is not necessarily responding to increased levels of bicycling in the northwest Valley, but instead tending to implement bike lanes where there are excessively wide suburban streets that, often, accommodate bike lanes without removing any car lanes.

At the same time, the city has neglected to implement any bikeways in the urban core. The bike lane closest to Los Angeles City Hall (Hoover Street beginning at Venice Blvd) is just over 3 miles bike ride from City Hall. As has been advocated by the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, new bikeways are especially needed in population-dense core communities. In these neighborhoods, where shorter trips are conducive to cycling, many families lack access to cars and large number of working-class residents depend on the bicycle as their primary mode of transportation.

Another quality issue might be widespread downgrading of bike lanes to bike routes. If the city chooses to meet its 40 mile per year commitment primarily by merely posting bike route signage, or by merely adding sharrows, not only would this demonstrate a lack of commitment to safe effective facilities, but it would be a clear attempt to undermine the bike plan. The City Council’s approved implementation priorities include predominantly bike lanes, and some bike boulevards, called “bike friendly streets.”

While it’s good to see the city’s bike facility implementation trend upward, the overall totals don’t quite match city promises. If the mayor and council intend to make good on the 40 new bikeway miles per year they have pledged, it appears that the city needs to step up its bikeway implementation.

Is the Mayor's promise of 40 miles of bike projects a year killed by CEQA studies? Time will tell...

Yesterday the LADOT announced through the LADOT Bike Blog that a series of projects outlined in the Bike Plan would undergo a full environmental review before construction of these projects can begin construction.  Between conversations with City Planning and LADOT, we have a good idea of how the environmental review will go forward.  City staff is concerned about lawsuits brought against projects under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA.)  CEQA lawsuits had delayed the implementation of the San Francisco Bike Plan for four years and continues to stall the Expo Line Bike Path.

In order to expedite the review, the City is creating project packages of a group of projects that will be reviewed at the same time.  The first package will be announced soon, but the Bike Blog’s description of the first packet as “”Bike lanes in Priority 1 of the 5 Year Implementation Strategy and the projects around NBC Universal expansion that require environmental review” gives a pretty good idea of what’s going to be in the packet.

What won’t be included in these reviews are projects that don’t require the removal of a travel lane or parking such as all of the “year zero” projects, including the 7th Street Bike Lanes, the York Boulevard Bike Lanes, and the “Bicycle Friendly Streets.”  Also, bike projects included in other plans that have or will undergo review such as the Figueroa Corridor Study or the Downtown Street Standards won’t need a second review.  City staff felt that the projects included in the NBC Universal project weren’t studied sufficiently.

An full environmental impact report for each packet is expected to take 12-18 months and the study of the first packet won’t begin until the fall of this year.  This means that some of the more controversial projects, such as bike lanes on most streets that are part of the Backbone Bikeway Network, might not even be cleared through the environmental process for two years from today.   The good news is that the first step of the process, completing the Environmental Assessment (EA), will most likely clear some of the projects and could take a couple of months from when the studies begin.

Step one is completing the EA.  The EA is a first look at the project package to see which projects would create enough of an impact on existing traffic patterns to warrant further study.  Yes, this does mean that, under current environmental law, the bike projects will be tested to see if they disrupt the car traffic at all.  Or, as Alexis Lantz, the Planning and Program Director for the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, put it, “No matter how much better a project may improve the overall livablity and safety of our communities or the mobility of other modes, if it predicted to in anyway inconvenience vehicles it requires an EIR (Environmental Impact Review), which is not really the point or intention of CEQA.”

First, the package of bike projects will undergo an “Environmental Analysis” (EA) which will determine which projects will head to a full Environmental Impact Review (EIR) and which will not have enough of an impact to need further study and receive a coveted Categorical Exclusion.  The City is concerned that many projects in the plan could be challenged under the state’s California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) law unless they first undergo an environmental review.

City Planning’s Claire Bowen warns not to get your hopes too high that many projects will be exempted, “We always anticipated that many streets, particularly those on the Backbone Network, were going to require a more in-depth analysis because we could be taking away a (mixed use) lane.  That’s why many of the plans in the 1996 Bike Plan were never implemented.  LADOT didn’t have the money or the impetus to do the environmental review at that time.”

From there, the remaining projects will move into the full EIR stage.  This stage will require the city to create alternate proposals to each of the projects and have them go through an environmental and public review process.  For example, for a bike lane on Venice Boulevard, the city might offer alternatives of Sharrows on the Boulevard, an alternate bike lane on a parallel street such as Washington Boulevard, and a “no-build” option.  Each of these will be studied to show that the city considered all the alternatives, and it is possible that one of the alternatives could move forward as a final project.

One of the main questions that cyclists now have is whether or not the city is already backpedaling away from Mayor Villaraigosa’s commitment to creating 40 miles of bike facilities every year for the next five years.  One cyclists who wished to remain anonymous simply wrote, “the honeymoon is over.”

Bowen conceded that it will be difficult to meet the stated goal, but that with some flexibility it is still doable.  Projects that are tied up in environmental review might be replaced in the short-term by the politically easier projects, i.e. we may be seeing more Bike Friendly Streets and fewer Backbone Bikeway Network projects in the next couple of years.

Back when I was an advocate in New Jersey, a State Senator once told me that if we couldn’t defeat a project, we should focus on “studying it to death.”  I’m sure that at least some advocates of the Backbone Bikeway Network, who will remember the struggle to just get it included in the Bike Plan in the first place, are going to be wary of any plan to put these projects into a lengthy environmental review, but city staff is claiming that they are still really excited about these projects.

Bowen writes, “If we don’t do this environmental process, we won’t be able to do any of those 200 projects, ever.”

If you haven’t been keeping up with the state of the L.A. County Bicycle Plan process, don’t feel bad.  You’re not alone.  Because the plan only covers the unincorporated parts of L.A. County, it’s a plan for small patches of bicycle infrastructure in what would appear to be completely random places unless you’re well versed in the political boundaries of Greater Los Angeles.

Bike lanes, bike paths, bike routes. Nothing more progressive or forward thinking than that.

Another reason not to be enthused about the plan?  It’s kind of really boring.  Or, as Allison Mannos of the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition (LACBC) put it, “It reminds me of where the city’s Bike Plan was two years ago.”

The good news is that the plan does call for hundreds of miles of new bike paths, bike lanes, and bike routes.  The bad news is that many L.A. County roads won’t receive the treatments they deserve to keep routes safe and increase cyclists’ access.

With hearings being held for the plan throughout the rest of the month, now is the perfect time to check in with some of the issues that L.A. County needs to address when editing and improving its Draft Bike Plan.

The largest two problems, as stated by the LACBC, is a county law requiring that mixed use travel lanes be at least twelve feet in width and that most of the “bike routes” are really just streets with signs saying bike routes.  At the 2010 Street Summit, LADOT Senior Bikeways Coordinator Michelle Mowery referred to these kinds of “bike routes” as “useless.”

So what can be done?  The most obvious answer is to allow for mixed use travel lanes to be shrunk to both make space for bike lanes and slow traffic down on streets where bicycles are expected to travel.  “There are plenty of streets that should have bike lanes, that could have bike lanes if we could make the car lanes narrower,” explains Mannos.

If bike lanes are neither a planning nor political possibility, then Sharrows on bike routes are another option.

Another problem is that the public outreach for the meetings has been somewhat lacking.  While emails to the people that requested them have gone out weeks ago, community flyering was done a week or less before the meetings, the meetings aren’t always in easily accessible locations — at least by bicycle — and none of the materials are translated to Spanish.  There are a lot of meetings scheduled, over twice the number of meetings planned for each round of L.A. City Bike Plan meetings for a smaller space, but that doesn’t matter much when the meetings are poorly advertised.

But most problematically, there is no plan to implement any part of the bicycle plan.  In the part of the plan left for implementation the three letters that signify a lack of accountability “TBD” appear next to every part of the plan, whether it be engineering or education.  If every part of the implementation time-line, including cost-free changes to the county code, is “to be determined,” it’s hard to even think of this as a plan.  It’s more like a bunch of lines on a map.

To turn the “TBD” into a to-do list, with a project schedule and attainable goals, could be the heaviest lift of all.  In the meantime, there’s plenty of work left to be done to make sure that progressive bike planning doesn’t stop at city’s end.

Bathed in light, Bill Rosendahl addresses Bikeside Speaks! last May at the Bikerowave. Photo:Sara Bond/Bikeside

Today, we approved a Bike Plan which provides more opportunities for people in Los Angeles.

More opportunities for people to discover the benefits of combining public transportation with a bike to finish that last mile.

More opportunities for parents and kids to ride safely on streets.

More opportunities for people to switch from gas to pedal power, burning fat instead of fossil fuels.

More opportunities for visitors to experience our wonderful weather on two wheels instead of four.

More opportunities to decide between a car and a bike for short trips.

And more opportunities to turn fear into confidence for those who are just plain scared to share the road with cars, like me.

Rosendahl has a history of supporting the counting of all transportation modes. Here he’s at the kickoff of the LACBC’s bike count project last year. Photo:boc/flickr

Sure, these opportunities currently exist for some, but not everyone. The Bike Plan establishes 200 miles of bikeways every five years offering greater mobility by extending the reach of the current network.

With this plan, we created more opportunities, and when I say we I really mean you. The vocal, organized and passionate bike community who demanded a better blueprint for bikeways in LA.

Your commitment and tireless work paid off. After several months of hearings, committees and revisions, our city has a bike plan that some say is as good or even better than most major cities. Because of you, the wheels are in motion for a truly multimodal city.

I want to publicly say thank you to all the people who took part in the civic process:

• Glenn Bailey
• Alexis Lantz
• Joe Linton
• Allison Mannos
• Aurisha Smolarski
• Kent Strumpwell
• Alex Thompson
• Don Ward

And the list goes on…

There are many, many people to thank for their vision and ability to re-think and re-imagine. Because of you, we developed the framework for a multi-modal system, providing for all modes of transportation and not just the automobile.

Regards,

By a 12-0 vote, the Los Angeles City Council approved the Bike Plan sending it to the Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s desk for a signature.  The Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition and Villaraigosa have already announced the signing will take place tomorrow on the steps of City Hall.

Too bad Council Members Alarcon, Parks and Smith weren't present. Especially Alarcon who helped push for progressive planning at the Transportation Committee when the plan was more controversial.

The only drama that remained was how to placate the representatives of the city’s equestrian community who were fighting to get any mention of mountain biking in city parks removed from the plan.  A motion by Councilman Tom LaBonge, which basically re-stated existing city law that any changes would have to go through the parks commission, seemed to mollify the group much to the relief of nearly everyone involved.  There’s already enough progressive transportation planning being held up by lawsuits in this town.

However, if you block out the testimony by the horse people, the meeting was pretty much a love fest.  Councilman Ed Reyes gave shout outs to the Bike Kitchen, Bike Oven and “Pigeon Bike Shop.”  Later, he complimented the LACBC and their City of Lights Program.  Councilman Bill Rosendahl recounted his first story visiting the “Bike<mumble>wave” and twice noted the hard work of Alex Thompson.

While not at today’s hearing, Villaraigosa tweeted his congratulations and released a statement to Streetsblog promising a bright, and well-funded, future for bike planning.

“The 2010 Bicycle Plan is another great example of Measure R funds at work–we are investing in bicycling as a viable transportation option and in the process encouraging Angelenos to lead healthy, active lifestyles. With the addition of 1,600 miles of bikeways, Los Angeles is on the path to becoming a world-class city for bicycling.”

To top it off, city officials were sounding like advocates, or at least adopting our terms.  LADOT Interim General Manager Amir Sedadi referred to the Backbone Bikeway Network and Councilman Paul Koretz talked about the “4th Street Bike Boulevard.”  These terms have been the turf of insiders for years.  But today, everyone was an insider.

As for the plan itself, there are many highlights.  Quoted text via a fact sheet from the Mayor’s Office.

The plan builds on the City’s past two plans (1977 and 1996) by more than doubling the number of bikeway miles to be developed.

The overall goal is to construct over 1600 miles of bikeways and create a continuous north-south/east-west bicycle network in the city.

In order to ensure that this plan does not just gather dust on a shelf, the Mayor’s office insisted on including an aggressive 5-year implementation strategy.

Original Member of Bike Advisory Committee, Alex Baum, motioned for final approval of plan on behalf of LaBonge,

“Unlike previous plans, this plan has an implementation plan,” commented Alexis Lantz of the LACBC.  Basically, this time parts of the plan are actually going to get built quickly.

The implementation strategy includes a commitment to build 40 miles of bikeways a year. This is a fourfold increase over the past average of 10 miles a year.

The implementation strategy focuses on projects that close existing gaps in the network, create new bikeways in lower income and underserved communities and build the foundation of the citywide network.

Staff for Paul Koretz noticed some gaps in the network of “Bicycle Friendly Streets” and successfully moved that these gaps, most noticeably at the end of the “4th Street Bike Boulevard” be bridged so that the final network provides safe and smooth transitions.

The City has created a Bicycle Plan Implementation Team (BPIT) to ensure public participation and transparency for implementing new bicycle facilities and programs.

The 2010 Plan is a joint effort of the Department of City Planning, the Department of Transportation, members of a multi-agency Technical Advisory Committee, and the City’s consultant team, Alta Planning + Design.

Of course, the battle for a safe Los Angeles doesn’t end with the Mayor’s pen stroke tomorrow morning.  Different projects will require outreach efforts and political pressure to go from paper to city streets and of course the plan will need to be modified from time to time.  “This is a work in progress,” Rosendahl reminded the speakers and Council Members, “I’m not going anywhere, at least for a couple of years.”

To see this plan through to the end, cyclists better not be going anywhere either.

Image from today's article in the Los Angeles Times. I'm guessing its from CicLAvia.

I expect that most of the commentary today will be positive, but there’s always a chance that the debate could revolve around whether or not to consider possibly allowing a review of the city’s rules regarding riding mountain bikes on trails in public parks.  As you may remember, the city’s horse riding community is dead set even the mention of a possibility that the city might one day consider holding a discussion about the possibility of one day allowing limited use of mountain bikes on trails.

At the Joint Transportation and Planning Committee Meeting on the plan, Council Member Tom LaBonge attempted to bring those representing mountain bikers and equestrians to a compromise position which is nigh impossible when one side refuses to budge an inch.  Nevertheless, the Councilman has drafted a motion clarifying that no change could occur to the current law, which bans mountain biking in parks, without the input of the city’s Parks Staff.

We’ll live tweet the meeting as it happens and post a story as soon as we can.  In the meantime, the text of LaBonge’s amendment can be found after the jump.

M O T I O N

I  MOVE that matter of mitigated negative declaration, transportation and planning and land use management committee’s report and resolution relative to an update of the City’s bicycle plan , item number #10 on today’s council agenda (CF# 10-2385-S2), BE AMENDED to adopt the following changes to Section 3.3.5. (Chapter 4, Page 103) of the 2010 Bike Plan:

Policy 3.3.5.

Continue the existing off-road bicycle trail and analyze and explore opportunities for additional off-road bicycle facilities and continue to abide by LAMC section 63.44 B16.  Any proposal to consider the use of mountain bikes on City park trails must first be thoroughly reviewed and analyzed by the Board of Recreation & Parks and its staff.

PRESENTED BY:  ___________________                              SECONDED BY:_____________________

TOM LABONGE                                                              ED P. REYES

Councilmember, 4^th District                                                  Councilmember, 1^st District

This picture would be evidence of a crime in many Los Angeles parks. However, this picture is from the San Gabriel Mountains outside city limits. Photo:LoneWhackDotCom/Flickr#

(Note: We’re just covering yesterday’s hearing in this article.  For more on the actual content of the plan, click here.)

Yesterday, the Los Angeles City Council held a joint hearing of the Transportation Committee and the Planning and Land Use (PLUM) Committee to discuss the city’s Draft Bike Plan.  By the end of the hearing, which lasted well over two hours, the Committees had sent the plan to the full Council for final approval along with a five-year work plan and a schedule for City Planning and LADOT to update the Council on the plan’s progress every three months.

But it wasn’t always easy.

Ed Reyes, pictured preparing for an interview at a City of Lights press conference, was credited by Mowery for kicking off this process with a motion for a new Bike Plan...in 2005.

Seven Councilmen sat in the main chambers, Richard Alarcon, Paul Koretz, Paul Krekorian, Tom LaBonge, Bernard Parks, Ed Reyes, and Bill Rosendahl.  All of the Councilmen were supportive of the plan in general terms.  After testimony from Alex Thompson wondering why Sepulveda, a critical North-South route with poor conditions for cyclists, wasn’t in the top ten projects to be completed, Rosendahl became the only Council Member to call for any specific changes in plans for his District.

Also present were LADOT Acting General Manager Amir Sedadi and Planning General Manager Michael LoGrande.  Sedadi didn’t mince words, calling the hearing a “Historic moment in the City of Los Angeles.”  With the exception of staff’s insistence that a plan to extend the Beach Bike Path through Venice not be included in the Final Bike Plan, it would be difficult to tell who was an advocate and who was a staffer.  Even LADOT Senior Bikeways Coordinator Michelle Mowery, who was once the spokesperson for those not wanting to see the Backbone Bikeway Network be a large part of the plan, referred to the Draft Plan, backbone and all, as “the most fabulous plan I could have dreamed of.”

The bulk of the testimony came from cyclists who were happy, if tired, after three years of meetings and public comment.  It seemed another kumbaya moment for the long fractured bike advocacy community as representatives from Bikeside, the LACBC, the BAC all sang from the same hymnal and another dozen unaffiliated cyclists praised the plan’s passage.

However, the bulk of the debate by the Councilmen was over a provision in Chapter 3 of the Draft Plan that calls for further study of a way for mountain bicycles and equestrians to coexist on the city’s mountain paths.  This is apparently cause for outrage amongst the city’s equestrian community, and reason for a lengthy debate that had little to do with the rest of the plan or with making life better for the city’s “transportation cyclists.”

Wearing a cowboy hat, Dale Gibson, the chair of the equine advisory committee, argued that mountain biking should be excluded from the plan because “it’s a recreation issue, not a transportation issue.”  Later, Mary Kaufman with the Chatsworth Neighborhood Council argued that excluding mountain biking from the plan was a public safety issue because of the mixed use nature of the trails.  However, that testimony supports staff’s position that the city has an obligation to figure out a way to provide safe mountain cycling because it doesn’t have the manpower to enforce a ban and cyclists are already unsafely using the trail.

Lynne Brown, of National Trails Incorporated, took the same information and argued the opposite angle.  If the city allows cyclists to use trails not designed for them, it opens the city to liability it doesn’t face while cyclists “poach” those trails today.

Most of the debate between the Council Members was about the Mountain Biking v Equestrian issue.  The most vocal defender of the equestrians was Councilman Alarcon who chastised Councilman Koretz for making a joke about “horsing around” because this is a very serious issue.  However, the Council seemed utterly unable to grasp that the solution that Planning seemed most comfortable with, separate trails for mountain bikers and equestrians, should address the concerns of those worried about bike access to our city’s parks and about safety issues involving bike/horse conflicts.

There was also a debate about extending the beach bicycle path through Venice as discussed on Streetsblog yesterday.  Despite an impassioned plea from Jim Kennedy, with more support added by Thompson, a motion by Councilman Alarcon to include the project  in the plan failed to get a second Councilman’s support so it didn’t even get to a vote.

Also not getting a “second” was a motion by Councilman LaBonge that would ban any plan to create mixed use trails for cyclists and equestrians to use.  For awhile the Councilman seemed to believe he could amend the plan himself.  When he was assured he could not, he seemed shocked that nobody else would second the motion.  Later, some face saving language was added to the plan asking City Planning to come up with a compromise solution that works for cyclists and equestrians.

In the end, the plan was moved and most two-wheeled advocates left the room happy.  However, there was one dark cloud on the horizon.  One equestrian noted that the horse riders have hired an attorney.  Thompson reports that their attorney is a CEQA specialist named Doug Carstens.

Some of the equestrians claim to be representing the local Sierra Club which could create an “only in Los Angeles” moment if a lawsuit actually came to fruition.  Only in L.A. could you see the Sierra Club sue the city over a popular bike plan…

Last time an army of cyclists descended on Van Nuys City Hall, it was in anger over the Bike v. Hummer Crash and the LAPD mis-handling of the case. What a difference a year and a half makes.

In November, the commission’s hearing was contentious and drawn-out, resulting in a vote to continue the plan, essentially sending it back to Planning Department for revisions. Yesterday’s hearing saw near-unanimous harmony between the bicycle advocacy community and the city staff backing the plan. Michael LoGrande and Amir Sedadi, respectively the General Manager of the Department of City Planning and the Acting General Manager of the Department of Transportation, opened the hearing praising city efforts toward greener transportation and the stressing the importance of bicycling in that mix. Commissioners and staff related that the month’s continuance had been productive, greatly improving the earlier draft in a number of important aspects. Those changes have been enumerated here and here in earlier L.A. Streetsblog articles as well as in this Bike Coalition aritcle.

Speakers in support of the plan included representatives from the city’s Bicycle Advisory Committee, Bikeside, the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition (LACBC), the Valley Bikery, BikeRoWave, and the Safe Routes to School National Partnership. Nearly all of these speakers had testified against the earlier draft plan in November.

The only serious outlier concerned mountain bike access to city parks. More than a half-dozen hikers and equestrians rallied against the “extreme sport,” “inevitable conflicts” and threats to “public safety” involved in mountain biking. Speaking in favor of mountain bike access were representatives of Concerned Off Road Bicyclists Association (CORBA), the International Mountain Biking Association (IMBA), and LACBC. Voices in opposition to mountain biking significantly outnumbered supporters. The anti-mountain bicycling contingent also took the serious step of hiring a lawyer to challenge the plan’s environmental review.

The commission took in the comments, concurred with staff to make a few small modifications to the draft, then voted unanimous approval.

During the last month, draft Bike Plan changes have been made at a rapid pace. These include quite a few significant modifications, including some that the cycling community had fruitlessly pushed for for well over a year. Much of this rapid turnaround can be credited to the green-transportation-minded Planning Commision (with credit to Mayor Villaraigosa for appointing them.) When it became clear that the Planning Commission was unwilling to approve a draft plan that a large contingent of cyclists didn’t support, Planning staff stepped up collaboration with many of most vocal bike advocates. The process resulted in broad support for a significantly stronger plan.

Next up for the plan will be mayoral review for the next 30 days. After that, likely in February, it goes before the City Council Planning and Land Use Management Committee, then the full City Council.

The City Council Transportation Committee and Planning and Land Use Committees will not meet again in 2010, so the City Council won’t act on the plan until early next year.  When details on the Council schedule emerges, we’ll post them here.

Streetsblog wishes to congratulate everyone that worked on making the final plan what it is, especially Joe Linton, the LACBC, and Bikeside which made improving the plan their life’s work.  There’s more work to do to get the plan passed, but even six weeks ago it seemed unlikely that Los Angeles was going to end up with a plan this good.

The Backbone Bikeway Network, now part of the plan...

Since November’s continuance, the City Planning Department (DCP) has worked with the commission and with local cyclists and made additional modifications to the plan. The newly modified Bike Plan is anticipated to be approved when it is heard by the City Planning Commission this Thursday December 16th at 8:30am. The meeting will take place at the Van Nuys City Hall, 14410 Sylvan Street, Van Nuys 91401 – located three blocks north of the Metro Orange Line Van Nuys Station.

There are quite a few modifications listed in the staff report on the city’s Bike Plan website. A flurry of important changes were made during negotiations the day of the November Planning Commission hearing, and detailed in this earlier Streetsblog article: elimination of proposed/potential categories implying burdensome environmental review, specifying minimum lane widths, and others.

Perhaps the most prominent change in the latest proposed draft is the inclusion of the Backbone Bikeway Network. The earlier 2010 draft included a largely-arterial bike facility network that appeared to be based on the Bicycle Working Group’s Backbone Bikeway Network, but was watered down and labeled Citywide Bikeway Network. Bikeside‘s Alex Thompson worked with DCP to incorporate a full-featured Backbone, actually called the “Backbone Network.” The draft plan now includes a “707 mile Backbone Network [that] will enable access to major employment centers, transit stations and stops, and educational, retail, entertainment, and other open space and recreational resources.”

This Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition calls it A Plan We Can Support; their article outlines additional recent changes regarding: education, re-paving, accountability, safe routes to school, prioritization of low-income areas, and bike counts.

Once the Bike Plan receives Planning Commission approval, it goes to City Council Planning and Land Use Management (PLUM) Committee, which is expected to hold a joint hearing with the council’s Transportation Committee. Not yet finalized/released for Planning Commission, but expected to be heard by PLUM and T-Committee is a new draft of the 5-Year Implementation Strategy.

After committee approvals, the plan goes to the full City Council, then to Mayor Villaraigosa. At that point, the hard work of implementation gets underway. An activated community can accelerate program and facility implementation, even going beyond what’s specified in an approved plan. Seemingly-visionary plans can also gather quite a bit of dust on city shelves. If Los Angeles’ livability advocates truly want to see needed changes on the ground and in the streets, then they will need to work with communities and city staff to ensure that the new Bike Plan is implemented without delay.

When we last checked in on the Bike Plan, Joe Linton reported that a broad coalition of cyclists took over a City Planning Commission Hearing and managed to delay the plan’s passage until a host of issues were addressed.  Following the meeting, City Planning met with the organizers of the protests at the Commission, Los Angeles County Bike Coalition’s Alexis Lantz and Aurisha Smolarski, Bikeside’s Alex Thompson, and Linton to hammer out the details that were holding up the plan.  The result is that yesterday the plan was released, and for the first time in three year’s, Birk’s long-forgotten promise became reality.  Finally, everyone appears happy.

Looking at this plan, Linton sounds happy, but not overjoyed, “While it’s not perfect, it’s good enough to be a tool for the next phase of improvements to LA streets.”

Granted, the plan is still a long read, and the devil could still emerge from the details.  Streetsblog will have in-depth coverage of the plan next week, and the Bike Coalition promises an in-depth review on Monday.  But for now, let’s take a moment to enjoy not just the progress, but getting to watch everyone celebrate.

The most obvious winner is Bike Working Group, that labored so hard to create the Backbone Bikeway Network (BBN).  The newest draft of the plan is full of references to the BBN, as well as the Neighborhood Network, and the Green Network.  Via email, Thompson writes, “The bike plan has turned around three times now, but this last one was a pirouette.  It’s a great document – this is what can happen when experts of all sorts get together and work it out.”  A full copy of Thompson’s statement can be found at the end of the article.

All of a sudden, it seems like a lifetime ago, not just the summer of 2009, when Thompson was battling LADOT’s Michelle Mowery on KPCC about whether or not the BBN was a worthwhile model for bike planning.

Meanwhile, the LACBC was being a little more cautious until they can read through all those details, but was still feeling good.  In an email to members, they listed their eight concerns they outlined before last month’s planning meeting.  They did note that they expect all of these to be addressed when they finish the plan:

1. A more comprehensive Eduction/Outreach Program affiliated with facility implementation
2. Inclusion of the Backbone Bikeway Network
3. Availability of Repaving schedule and coordination with implementation
4. Removal of EIR requirement and language throughout the Plan
5. Increased accountability and evaluation
6. 10 ft lane requirement rather than 11 ft
7. More committed language for Bicycle Friendly streets
8. A Low-Income Equity based weighing system for prioritizing implementation

Thompson:

The bike plan has turned around three times now, but this last one was a pirouette.  It’s a great document – this is what can happen when experts of all sorts get together and work it out.  Claire Bowin and Heidi Sickler both did an excellent job after the November 4th Planning hearing.  Heidi got all the right people in the right rooms and made sure that all the right issues were addressed, rightly.  Claire, as architect of the plan, found some really smart ways to balance interests and make the pie bigger for everyone.  Somehow she’s got this huge document in her brain and she’s great at seeing how to modify it to get things done.

We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the dogged insistence on excellence by Stephen Box and Joe Linton over 3 long years.  From Alexis to Aurisha to Box to Joe to Josef to Roadblock and Enci Box, this plan is product of every cyclist who made time to be at the hearings and pushed hard for real change.  There’s so many times that we could have all given up on the plan and just settled for something second rate – we almost did at the end there.  Somehow, we didn’t.  And now we’ve finally got an ambitious plan that other cities can be envious of.  Will envy.  This community has a lot of moxy, a lot of guts, a lot of sand, and of course, as we knew all along,

Since we won’t be doing a lot of publishing today, I wanted to give Streetsbloggers something to do besides sending the Petition for a National Search for LADOT General Manager to all of your friends.

Streetsblogger Vicki Karlan had the idea that one way to improve the city’s Draft Bike Plan was to improve the images in the plan. While its not a panacea, it does sound like a fun project. So, Karlan sent the above slide show, in Power Point format, to City Planning. Planning responded that they loved the picture and asked for more.

So here’s your Veteran’s Day homework, find some pictures of cycling in Los Angeles and link to them in the comments section. This entire thread will be passed on to City Planning and maybe your picture will make the plan.

Also, a quick note for parents, if your child is in one of these pictures and you’d like us to remove him or her from the submission.  Just let us know.

Tired but happy, bike advocates and planning commissioners take a moment for a group shot after a marathon meeting of the Planning Commission. Photo:Mark Didia

In a marathon meeting yesterday, the City Planning Commission sided with an unusually cohesive pack of Los Angeles bike advocates and decided not to approve the city’s draft bike plan. The commission voted to continue (delay) the bike plan decision until their December 16th meeting, directing staff to work with commissioners to continue to improve the plan.

The City Planning Commission meeting began at 8:30am, though the bike plan item wasn’t heard until around 12:30pm, and not resolved until just after 4pm. The long wait time led to quite a bit of caucusing in the hallways. These negotiations led to City Planning Department staff making quite a few significant plan modifications. There was a long list of last-minute changes, posted in hard-copy and described verbally. The details need to be confirmed (and sometimes the devil is in those details), but, verbally, City Planning’s Claire Bowin reported that they included:

• Strengthened commitment to more robust bicycle boulevards, though still called “bike-friendly streets.” When the draft plan was released earlier this year, the bicycle boulevard minimum appeared indistinguishable from bike routes; at a minimum they could have included merely signage and no other features. City planning staff later upped this to two features. Yesterday morning the ante was upped to three features of the following five: signage, sharrows, intersection treatments, traffic calming, and diverters.
• Changing the minimum car/travel lane width from 11 feet to 10 feet. This reaffirms current city policy, and makes more bike lanes feasible.
• Modifying project prioritization criteria (and a planned new draft of the 5-year Implementation Plan – which wasn’t on the table today, but received plenty of mentions) to favor implementation of projects in low-income areas.
• Removing the distinction between the plan’s “proposed” and “potential” bike lanes, and deleting references to “required” CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act.) review.  This is actually a very significant change. Instead of the plan dictating a requirement for time-consuming review on all 500+ bike lanes in the “potential” category, these projects can now be reviewed individually, with the easier ones now cheap and quick and the more difficult ones possibly necessitating additional expensive review. The amount of review will be dictated by project specifics, not by heavy-handed clumping. Cyclists will still need to push for these projects and generate support for them. L.A.’s livable street advocates will need to keep their focus on the Department of Transportation (LADOT) which will, lane by lane, determine when more or less rigorous review is needed. The current LADOT practice, though not visionary, is much more affirming of bike lanes than the standard that had been embedded in the draft plan. The LADOT has implemented road diet projects (car/travel lane removal for bike lane implementation) on Myra, Wilbur, Hoover and elsewhere.
• Focusing a revised 5-year Implementation Plan on streets only, with the city’s bike-dedicated portion of Measure R funding directed to street projects only.  (as mentioned above, the 5-year plan was alluded to repeatedly, but no revised version has been released to the public yet.) The city will continue to construct bike paths, but given these projects’ reliance on separate (grant) funding, they will be tracked separately from the 5-year plan.

This last-moment flurry of steps in the right direction met with an activated bicycle community whose battle lines were already drawn.

Though Planning and LADOT staff sounded a few wrong notes (including calling bicyclists an “undeground constituency”), they did respectfully acknowledge the importance of L.A.’s bicyclists in shaping and reshaping the plan. For the first time, planning staff acknowledged that the Bike Working Group’s Backbone Bikeway Network was indeed “the genesis of the Citywide Bikeway Network” in the plan.

More than 20 stalwart cyclists, from Bikesiders to LACBCers (factions of L.A.’s bike community that… let’s just say… don’t always agree), took the stand to decry aspects of the draft plan. Also assembled and testifying were folks from Midnight Ridazz, the city’s Bicycle Advisory Committee, C.I.C.L.E., the Valley Bikery, the Bicycle Kitchen, Pacoima Beautiful, and individual cyclists. Also commenting were equestrian and park advocates concerned about off-road moutain bike use in L.A. City parks.

Members of the Planning Commission listened to bicyclists’ concerns, and expressed a great deal of interest in a plan that would have “teeth” in making L.A. more bike friendly. The Villaraigosa-appointed City Planning Commission has been a very progressive force in supporting livable urbanism, including pushing the Planning Department in its struggle to shift from perpetuating a car-centric past to midwifing L.A.’s multi-modal future.

Late in the day, with multiple issues unresolved, the commission (tired from 8 hours of meeting) questioned senior Planning staff (tired from a year spent re-tooling the bike plan) and ultimately affirmed the concerns of assembled cyclists (tired from years spent watchdogging the bike plan process.)

While there’s still work to be done – for the commission, staff, and bicyclists - yesterday’s continuance marks an important victory. Cyclists flexed political muscles. Commissioners trusted and supported cyclists pleas for a better plan. Bike-sympathetic Planning staff respectfully brokered compromises and fixed flaws. The draft plan on the table jerked a few significant steps toward respectability.

City Staff, commissioners, cyclists and indeed all Angelenos look forward to a revised bike plan being approved by the City Planning Commission, hopefully in December… and the fruits of that plan ripening on the streets of Los Angeles.

An internet search didn’t find any other accounts of the proposed bike plan update turning Los Angeles into a world-class bike city. Critiques of the plan have been considerably less effusive than the staff report, calling it “an entertaining and inspiring experience that bears no connection to reality” (Bikeside) and “a bunch of phoney bloney jargon to hide the fact that there are no real plans [for bike lanes on major streets]” (Brayj Against the Machine.) Even supportive articles include qualifications “… a step in the right direction … we are requesting that Planning and DOT … show further commitment” (LACBC) and “I like a lot of what I see in the draft plan, though.” (Biking in LA)

Though the bike plan generally guides the city’s bike programs, many city bike programs are not in the plan. When the mayor’s collision instilled in him a support for bicycle helmet use, he didn’t turn to the Planning Department and say “we need to update the bike plan to support helmet use.” No, he merely advocated for policies, programs and legislation outside the plan. Similar recent out-of-plan policies and programs have included city support of CicLAvia, LAPD escorting of Critical Mass, and “Give Me 3″ awareness campaigns. Those are all ongoing city bike programs. None of them are in the current city bike plan approved in 1996.

Hence, while it’s good to have good policies in the plan, those policies tend to be limited more by political will than they are by the bike plan.

Other items in the plan are limited by funding. The plan may call for ambitious education programs and lengthy bike paths, but the implementation of those programs/facilities tend to not be limited by the plan specifics, but instead are limited by the city’s success in obtaining outside grant funding. Whether the plan contains 500 or 5000 miles of new bike path (the new draft has about 100 miles), generally the city can only implement 5-10 miles per year due to limited bike path funds available, mainly from the Metro Call for Projects.

Hence, while it’s good to have good paths and programs in the plan, those tend to be limited more by funding than they are by the bike plan.

On-street facilities are limited by the bike plan. (They’re what this author focuses inordinately on, too.)  Generally those on-street facilities are bike lanes. Bike lanes are very cheap; the extent to which bike lanes are implemented depends heavily on what streets are designated for bike lanes in the bike plan.

Here’s a quick score sheet on how the city’s commitment to bike lanes has waxed and waned through recent plan processes. (Follow the links for more details.)

The city has an existing bike plan: the 1996 Bicycle Master Plan. It’s currently in effect. The ’96 plan designated ~227 miles of new bike lane. Of those, the city implemented about 37 miles of planned bike lanes (and about 30 miles of unplanned bike lanes.) None of these planned or unplanned facilities necessitated any documented environmental review. Future approved bike lanes miles remaining in the 1996 plan: 190 miles.

About 5 years ago, the city decided to update the bike plan. In deciding what sort of bike plan was needed, the city formulated a bike plan scope designed to more-or-less dismantle the remaining approved but-as-yet-unbuilt bike lanes and to approve other bike facilities on quieter out-of-the-way streets.

The city hired bike plan consultants Alta Planning and Design, who have a reputation as one of the best bike planning firms in the nation. In late 2008, Alta turns in a draft plan – never made public, despite FOIA requests, but its outline is clear from the remnants of its dismantling. Future approved bike lane miles in the 2008 Alta draft plan: 125 miles.

In 2009, the city spends about half a year dismantling their consultants’ recommendations, and then publishes their initial bike plan draft to near-universal dismay. The plan introduces a new category of “speculative” bike lanes (about 400 miles) - initially labelled “infeasible” later called “potential” later called ”further study.” Future approved bike lane miles in the 2009 city draft bike plan: 28 miles.

In 2010, the city, having exhausted its consultant budget, decides to retool the draft plan in-house. The “speculative” bike lane category balloons to 500+miles. Future approved bike lane miles in the 2010 city draft bike plan: ~60 miles.

There’s a lot more to the 400+ pages in the current draft plan… some of it worthwhile, some of it questionable, some of it despicable… but a commitment to safe streets remains elusive. Many provisions in the draft plan make it more difficult for the city to implement bike lanes.

For the new bike plan to take effect, it must first be approved by the City Planning Commission. If they approve, it then goes before the City Council’s Planning and Transportation Committees, then to the full City Council, then to the Mayor. It’s scheduled to be heard at the City Planning Commission meeting tomorrow - Thursday November 4th 2010 at 8:30am in City Council Chambers – on the 3rd floor of City Hall, at 200 North Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles 90012. Public entrance and bike parking is on Main Street; easy transit access via numerous buses and the Metro Red Line Civic Center station.

Bicycle advocacy groups are encouraging folks to attend tomorrow’s meeting, and to testify - whether in favor of or against the plan. Once approved by the Planning Commission, the plan becomes more difficult to modify as it moves through approval processes, so tomorrow’s meeting is expected to be critical for pushing for possible improvements to the plan.