Coming soon to a street near you? B-Cycle (pictured), Bixi and Bike Nation present in front of Metro headquarters. Photo: Dave Sotero/Metro

Will Los Angeles County have an integrated bike share system in the next five years?  Metro is taking the first steps to become a coordinator for bike share efforts already underway so that L.A. County could have one integrated bike share program instead of many local bike share systems.

Earlier today, Metro’s Planning and Programming Committee approved a bike share strategy for the agency that would create a mechanism for municipalities and cities to work together and create a county-wide bike share plan.   Metro’s bike share strategy needs to be approved by the full board before it becomes policy.

Cities that have bike share programs funded and on the way, such as Santa Monica, and that are hopeful to bring bike share at some date in the future, such as South Pasadena, attended the hearing to voice support for the motion.

Before the hearing, B-Cycle, Bixi, and Bike Nation put on a demonstration of what bike share is and how it works.  Through a bike share program, people can rent bikes at a docking station and ride it to another station located somewhere else.  Systems can be publicly or privately owned and sometimes require renters to be members of the bike share program.

Bike sharing systems have been installed in many of the most progressive cities around the country.  Modeled after Velib in Paris, France Washington D.C. is widely credited for having the first bike share program in America.  New York City will launch a large bike share program of its own later this year including a GPS program that will be used to inform transportation planning decisions.

Locally, Long Beach, Los Angeles and Santa Monica all have plans and funds set aside for bike share programs.  Los Angeles’ is mainly planned for the Downtown sometime in the next two years.  Long Beach has two phases planned, 160 bikes and 16 statsions within the next two and a half years with another 500 bikes and 50 stations coming in the next five years.  Santa Monica plans for 250 bikes and 25 stations in 2016 or 2017.

Above chart from handouts from today's committee meeting.

Los Angeles has larger plans for bike share, but the funds for that plan were won by the Community Redevelopment Agency, the embattled agency that will fold either by the end of the month or April 15.

Los Angeles has been discussing bringing bike share to Downtown Los Angeles and Hollywood since then Transportation Committee Chair Wendy Greuel attended the 2008 Democratic National Convention where Bikes Belong had created a temporary demonstration project to show delegates and elected officials what a bike share program could look like.  In July 2011, Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky penned a motion for Metro to consider creating its own bike share program that led directly to today’s demonstration and committee vote.

I’m proud to have set up the first known bike share program in the city of Los Angeles and thankfully welcome Streetsblog as the non-profit conduit for donations to this program. With this generous arrangement, the bike share program will be entering a new phase of usefulness and service to the community.

I put my bike where my mouth is. - DN

I set up the OccupyLA bike share with the intention of bringing the active transportation message to the occupiers themselves as I believe that we need to be the change we want to see in the world. If Occupy LA is to achieve some of the most important goals of the movement, people are going to have to learn to reduce their oil dependency – the very addiction that keeps our country involved in endless foreign wars. The taxpayers of the United States of America have spent trillions of dollars to bomb broke people on the other side of the earth for “cheap gas.” It stops with us.

I would like to thank Alex De Cordoba, Mikey Wally, Joseph Bray-Ali, Cat Campion and Damien Newton for their kind and important donations thus far. I would like to thank the Bikescum collective for maintaining the bike share program thus far.

One of the challenges of any bike share program is keeping theft issues to a minimum. This program is not different. However, from the outset I decided that the only way to implement this program was through the honor system. The occupy movement is fluid, people come and go and to keep track of some kind of deposit system would not be feasible. I was therefore resolved to lose all of the bicycles eventually to theft and be ok with that since, after all, we could assume that whom ever decided to steal the bike would be using it.

I paint each of the bikes with gold paint to identify them and with a combination lock, multiple people at the bike camp can access them to loan out to those who make face to face contact and ask for their use.

What we need:

• variable combination u-lock
• Cable
• Simple beach cruiser style bikes or single speed adult size bikes.
• helmets
• lights
• tools

If you’re interested in making a donation, contact roadblock@midnightridazz.com

Sincerely,

Roadblock

Goodbye old friend...you'll be well loved by Occupy L.A. Yes, that's the same bike we used to teach Bill Rosendahl the basics of bike safety.

“They poison our air, water, land, bodies, mind and dreams,” reads the sign held by a member of Occupy L.A. as thousands of bicycles shoot past. Many of the riders ring their bell, pump a fist, or stop to engage the protester as he stands in the streets and sidewalk in front of City Hall during last Sunday’s CicLAvia.

Across the street, the iconic Roadblock is hanging out at the Bikeside Speaks stage chatting with many of the bike advocates who are stopping by to listen to the speakers, chat with friends or wish Stephen and Enci Box well on their upcoming adventure.

“Natural fit, a natural fit,” Roadblock says of the convergence of CicLAvia, the largest car-free party in North America, and the Occupy movement. Roadblock has been involved with the local cycling movement as the face of Midnight Ridazz and has been a fixture at City Hall as part of the Occupy Movement.

Roadblock is combining his connections in the bike community with the needs of Occupy L.A. In a couple of years when the City of Los Angeles or Metro triumphantly announce that they’re bringing L.A. its “first bike share,” remember that Occupy L.A. had one first. Last night, I dropped in on Occupy L.A. with a pair of beach cruisers that have been collecting dust in our bike storage area the last couple of years.

While Roadblock was busy at a meeting last night, he directed me to “the big yellow tent” that serves as the Bike District for Occupy L.A. There, a group of twenty-somethings were wrenching on a bike. The group, which included a Bicycle Kitchen Cook, has been repairing and maintaining bikes for free to any Occupier that asked for help. To identify the bikes that will be part of the Occupy L.A. Bike Share, the team is painting the donated bikes gold.

It’s not a surprise that Los Angeles’ bike advocates and Occupy L.A. mesh so well together. For years the Boxs, Alex Thompson and the rest of the Bike Writers Collective (a sort of pre-Bikeside) organized “Storm the Bastille” rides to public hearings casting cyclists as the scrappy underdogs taking on the machine. Outside of political activism, locally organized bike rides have benefited everything from AIDS and Cancer research to homeless shelters to advocacy websites.

Towards the end of CicLAvia, I chatted with the occupier who was waiving the poison sign about his day. “A great day,” he smiled at me.  It’s no surprise, bikes and social movements have a long history together.

If you have a bike you want to donate to Occupy L.A.’s bike share, contact roadblock@midnightridazz.com.

Cantor's reasons wanting cuts to bike share.

Just last year, Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor proposed eliminating the federal Safe Routes to Schools programs in his YouCut program, where people vote on their least favorite projects on a special website.  While Safe Routes to Schools didn’t “win” that election, Cantor is now proposing to eliminate federal bike share subsidies.

Even if the federal government eliminated funding for bicycle and pedestrian programs altogether, it wouldn’t do much of anything to reduce the federal deficit.  Note in Cantor’s proposal there are hard figures for savings if the grants to Worstel Wool Manufacturers or a scholarship and research program to promote green technologies were eliminated.  That’s because there’s no line item in the federal government for “bike share” programs, which is probably why bicycle and pedestrian projects are blamed for the bankruptcy of the federal transportation trust fund. 

In the 2011 fiscal year the federal government granted $53 billion in grants through the transit and highway trust funds.  Less than 2% of that was spent on bicycle and pedestrian programs, and barely any of that was spent on bike share programs.  The expansion of Washington D.C.’s program was the big bike share expenditure at $1.9 million.

I suppose it could be worse.  At Cantor he didn’t refer to bike sharing as a communist plot.

The bike share program at Emory University asks the key question.

In September of 2008, Los Angeles was beginning to move towards creating a bike share system for Los Angeles.  It was a hot topic at the time after then City-Council Transportation Committee Chair and now Comptroller/Mayoral Candidate Wendy Greuel championed the idea after experiencing a successful temporary bike share program at the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

There was only one problem…nobody else thought Los Angeles was ready for a bike share program.  Some thought that biking in L.A. was just too dangerous to encourage novice cyclists to rent a bicycle.  Others just thought there were more pressing infrastructure needs at the moment.  When I say nobody thought it was a good idea, I’m including leaders with the LACBC, Councilman Tom LaBonge, and even the LADOT (and especially the majority of Streetsblog readers in 2008.)

The LADOT simply wrote:

…the City still lacks a continuous network to accommodate bicycle use for the bike sharing program.

And that wast that.  Bike share has more than caught on nationally, just check out the roster of recent films at Streetfilms, but it hasn’t been a major issue here in the Southland outside of an occasional reference in a report or government document.

Until last week.

A motion by County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and Santa Monica Council Woman Pam O’Connor ordered Metro Staff to examine the possibilities of using Metro stations as bike share hubs. While L.A. has made some pretty impressive strides the last couple of years, the infrastructure on Los Angeles’ streets aren’t that much different than they were when Wendy Greuel was the bike share champion.  On the other hand, as city’s around the world try bike share, we’re discovering the benefits of a working system are pretty impressive.

So I ask you all again, is L.A. ready for a bike share program?  We’ll forward your messages on to Yaroslavsky, Villaraigosa and O’Connor.  We’ll also make sure to ask the city’s Deputy Mayor when he fills out our reader Q and A later this week.

Villaraigosa re-emerges as a leader on bus issues. Photo: Los Angeles Times

This morning, Mayor Villaraigosa’s last term as Chair of the Metro Board of Directors got off to an efficient and relatively controversy-free start as Supervisors passed motions on studying the impacts of Metro’s bus cuts and Bus Rapid Transit expansion, a second study on the costs and benefits of a bike share program, the approval of a green construction program and even a preferred route for California High Speed Rail.  The only real debate among the Board Members came when Director Diane DuBois challenged Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas on the definition of “local” in the local jobs program and on whether or not to give free Metro passes to uniformed Girl Scouts during the group’s 100th birthday party.

Here’s a quick roundup of the major happenings.

Review of bus service and Bus Rapid Transit Opportunities – Nobody can accuse Mayor Villaraigosa of thinking small.  The new Board Chair introduced a motion to examine the impacts of the hundreds of thousands of hours bus service cuts that have occurred since the expiration of the Consent Decree between the agency and Bus Riders Union in 2007.

“We see this as a tremendous opportunity to reverse some of the damage that has been done in South L.A.,” testified the Bus Riders Union’s Sunyoung Yang.

To secure unanimous passage, Mayoral Appointee to the Board Richard Katz clarified that this motion “doesn’t undo anything that this Board has already done.”  When questioned directly, Metro CEO Art Leahy confirmed with this interpretation.

A second part of the motion called on staff to examine the possibilities to expand the agency’s Bus Rapid Transit program.  Yang confirmed the BRU’s support for this strategy, “We should continue building on the victories and the massive breakthrough we had on the Wilshire Bus Only Lanes.”

Also testifying in favor of the motion were other BRU members, the Sierra Club Transportation Committee, and Kymberleigh Richards of the San Fernando Valley Service Council.  The LA Times had more on the Mayor’s bus plans in this morning’s paper.

Green Construction Program – Even critics of Metro have to concede the agency has become a leader in promoting green transportation.  Metro was the first big-city transit agency in the country to have an entirely natural gas bus fleet, and they’re beginning to move towards a zero-emissions fleet.  Today, they finalized a “green construction policy” for Metro projects.

Support for the policy was near universal with the Clean Air Coalition, NRDC, Sierra Club, Bus Riders Union, and East Yard Community Groups for Environmental Policy all voicing support.  No construction or contracting groups expressed opposition.  In fact, the only complaint about the program was that it doesn’t apply to LADOT or Caltrans projects.  The policy passed unanimously.

Basically, the new policy is just what it says it is.  Metro contractors now have to use construction equipment, vehicles, and generators that meet modern clean air standards.  This will improve health for residents and construction crews by requiring equipment that emits significantly less air pollution than older models.  Contractors can meet either retrofit old equipment or purchase new equipment.  The NRDC Switchboard has more details on the program.

Bikes and light rail and high speed rail, all after the jump.

Crenshaw Light Rail - This month’s installment of the battle over the Crenshaw Light Rail was the simple acceptance of the staff report on Metro’s progress in creating a community benefits/protection program.  Last week, his office expressed support for Metro’s work, and their were no fireworks between the agency and his office today.  As mentioned earlier, Director DuBois wanted a definition of what “local” in “local hiring” meant noting the high levels of unemployment in places such as the City of Industry.

While Supervisor Ridley-Thomas expressed hope that “local” for the Crenshaw line would be similar to what it was for the Expo Line (i.e. a five mile radius surrounding the line), there was also discussion of a larger definition based on unemployment levels or the impact line construction has in the local areas.

Bike Share – In 2008 then Council Woman Wendy Greuel attended the Democratic National Convention and fell in love with bike share after utilizing the temporary program instituted by Bikes Belong.  Her enthusiasm led to several studies, but no actual bike share program for Los Angeles.

Three years later, Bike Share has certainly gained traction around the country.  If you need proof, just check out the recent Streetfilms on bike share expansion in Minneapolis and Washington, D.C.  So maybe a proposal by Zev Yarosalvsky, Pam O’Connor and Antonio Villaraigosa might go somewhere besides the creation of a power point presentation.  The three directors propose that Metro study the costs and benefits of a system of bike share hubs at Metro rail and Bus Rapid Transit terminals.

Glendale Councilman Ara Najarian, after voicing support for the proposal, asked for other transit agencies to get involved in the study including Metrolink and local transit agencies.  Staff is due to report back before the end of the year.

High Speed Rail - The Metro Board affirmed its support for a High Speed Rail route that travels through Palmdale.  I was expecting a lot of debate about routing because nothing involving High Speed Rail has been easy, but after brief testimony by a Palmdale staffer and Supervisor Antonovich the motion passed on consent.  The Source already has a story on the Board action on High Speed Rail.

Anyone who claims that bike-sharing is a European-style transportation innovation has clearly never set foot in Hangzhou, China. The 50,000-bike system in this southern China city of almost 7 million people (about 1.5 million people fewer than New York City) blows all other bike-shares off the map. As Bradley Schroeder of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy said, “I don’t think there is anywhere you can stand in Hangzhou for more than a minute or two where you wouldn’t have a Hangzhou Public Bike go past you.”

Hangzhou’s 2,050 bike-share stations are spaced less than a thousand feet from each other in the city center, and on an average day riders make 240,000 trips using the system. Its popularity and success have set a new standard for bike-sharing in Asia. And the city is far from finished. The Hangzhou Bicycle Company plans to expand the bike-share system to 175,000 bikes by 2020.

Minneapolis’s Nice Ride, which launched this summer, topped 100,000 trips in its first five months. Crash rates and vandalism were very low. Perhaps most interesting was the effect on driving, reports The Bike-Sharing Blog. Nice Ride surveyed 680 users and found that nearly 20 percent used the system instead of driving:

Attendees of a designers' conference take a spin on Minneapolis's bike-sharing system, Nice Ride. Photo: UCDA Design Conference

That’s outstanding and is quite higher than other cities’ mode shift percentages from bike-sharing, which includes Lyon, France with only about 4% shifting away from driving, according to the NICHES publication on bike-sharing. Not too shabby.

Regarding theft and vandalism, it’s clear that Minnesotans and Minneapolis’ visitors are honest and good riders and drivers. There were only two bikes lost and three incidents of vandalism causing damage greater than $100. Take THAT, Paris with its horrendous theft and vandalism record! (I’m only kidding, j’aime Paris.) Also, there were no reports of injury and only one reported crash.

As we’ve reported before, American bike-sharing systems are trailing their European counterparts in station density and overall ridership. Many European cities have made more substantial commitments to expansive programs.

But the promising numbers coming out of Minneapolis could help provide the basis for the future expansion of bike sharing in the U.S.

Elsewhere on the Network today: Burning the Midnight Oil asks whether the imperiled passenger rail systems in Ohio and Wisconsin could be self-supporting or even profitable. Bike Portland looks to Europe for inspiration on reducing distracted driving. And Sprawled Out reports on a survey of East Coast developers who reported that Smart Growth is the new “safe bet” financially.

A website developed by Oliver O'Brien maps bike-share systems in real time. London's full bike-share stations are represented here by red dots and empty stations by blue dots.

A fantastic new visualization of 16 bike-share systems around the world lets you see how people are using public bikes from London to Melbourne. You can watch animated graphics, for example, of bikes getting picked up in one part of town and dropped off in another during rush hour. The site, created by Oliver O’Brien, a researcher at University College London, also lets you compare bike-share usage from city to city.

While a few American cities have made big strides in bike-sharing this year, with Denver, Minneapolis, and Washington D.C. all committing to systems with 500 or more bikes, O’Brien’s site indicates that people aren’t using them very much. These systems occupy a middle ground between totally impractical pilot projects and the more robust bike-share networks that have recently sprouted in major European and Asian cities. For bike-sharing to take off here, improvements like increased station density, better bike infrastructure, and interoperability with transit systems will probably be necessary.

In cities with large-scale systems and densely clustered stations, huge numbers of people get around on shared bikes. For example, as of 1:30 p.m. yesterday afternoon (Eastern Standard Time), 1,342 bikes were checked out from Barcelona’s Bicing system. At the day’s peak point, 2,425 Bicing bikes were in use all at once, out of a total of around 5,000.

In contrast, D.C.’s new Capital Bikeshare program had only 23 bikes out at 1:30, with 50 in use at the day’s peak. Nice Ride in Minneapolis had only five bikes in use, with a high for the day of 26. The two systems had a total of 648 and 588 shared bikes at all of their stations, respectively. Over the course of the day, that adds up to fairly marginal ridership. Denver’s usage rates, too, were quite low.

So what’s standing in the way of American bike-share success? One factor offered by bike-sharing consultant Paul DeMaio is that Americans need some time to get used to bike-sharing. D.C.’s system is just a month old today, he noted, and not even fully built out, while Denver’s opened in the spring and Minneapolis’s in the summer. That said, London’s Barclays Cycle Hire system launched at the end of July, but yesterday had a high of 815 bikes in use at once, according to O’Brien’s site.

“Enough cannot be said about scale,” said Michael Kodransky, a research associate with the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy. “Station density is key.”

At this point, D.C.'s Capital Bikeshare program is far smaller and less-used than leading bike-sharing systems.

The more places to pick up and drop off a shared bike, the closer people can get to their ultimate destinations, and the more useful the system will be for riders.

Paris’s Vélib system has 20,000 bikes at 1,450 stations, with stations an average of 300 meters apart in the city center. As Greater Greater Washington has noted, for D.C. to reach that level of bike-sharing saturation, it would need around 5,400 bikes in its system. That’s an order of magnitude more than what the system provides today.

DeMaio agreed that increased station density would greatly boost bike-sharing ridership and called on government — federal, state, and local — to help fund full-scale programs. The D.C. area applied for a TIGER II grant to add 3,000 more bikes to its bike-share program, he said, but learned yesterday that it wasn’t picked as a winner.

Kodransky also highlighted the importance of interoperability between mass transit and bike-sharing systems. “In Paris, you use the Navigo card on mass transit and then when you get off, you slap it on the bike-sharing station and ride,” he explained. That makes bike-sharing feel as integrated with transit as, say, New York City’s subways and buses.

Finally, Kodransky said that many American cities lack the well-developed bike infrastructure that other cities boast, which keeps people off bikes, shared or otherwise.

Bike-sharing has the potential to be a game-changer for cycling in American cities, if we get it right. But if ridership remains anemic because the system is too spread out, the lack of use will become an arrow in the quiver of bike-share critics. Incremental progress can be made, of course — Capital Bikeshare was preceded by the pilot program SmartBike DC, which only had 10 stations and an average of 77 to 163 total trips per day — but as London is showing right now, starting off big is the best way to prove the concept works.

Maybe we should have made the bike less obvious. Red bikes? And what’s with the communist star? Photo: Treehugger

Comrades,

I write to you with bad news.

Just as our campaign to undermine American society was beginning to bear fruit in places such as Irvine, Minneapolis and even the Capitol of this society, our plot has been revealed.

From an article by the Capitalist Associated Press article:

Maes made the comments at a rally where he criticized Democratic Mayor John Hickenlooper’s initiative to increase bicycling in the Denver through the bike-sharing program. B-Cycle allows people to use about 400 bicycles at dozens of stations around the city for a daily or monthly fee.

"This is bigger than it looks like on the surface, and it could threaten our personal freedoms," Maes said in comments that were first reported Wednesday by the Denver Post.

It’s true. Our plan to undermine American Freedom through devious bike sharing programs has been exposed. I will contact Comrade Gandy in Long Beach to see that he can travel safely. I will also contact товарка Greuel and inform her to stop talking about bike share less she be exposed.

Do not worry about me. I will continue to try to push communist bucket bikes on an unsuspecting populace using my adorable child as a prop. If you need to contact me, send coded messages through the Bike Share Blog.

Yours in the Revolution,

D

Senator Barbara Boxer, in her ULI TOD Summit appearance, invoked the “Rule of 60″ when she made the claim that 60% of our economy is made up of small businesses and that 60% of the small businesses in our community are struggling with credit and regulatory issues. Bearing witness to the validity of her claim is Bechir Blagui of Hollywood Rent A Car, a local merchant on Hollywood Boulevard, who has a dream, a vision, a commitment to offering local, sustainable transportation solutions to the locals who live here and the to tourists who visit. But…

When Bechir attempted to bring electric community car share to Hollywood Boulevard, he hit a roadblock, an obstacle that could not be moved, the City of LA’s bureaucracy. From City Council President Eric Garcetti to Councilman Tom LaBonge to Assemblyman Mike Feuer to the Department of Water and Power to the Department of Transportation to Street Services to Building and Safety, Bechir took LA’s famous “Small Business Pachinko” ride that typically results in migration to Burbank, Glendale, Santa Clarita, Santa Monica, Culver City, West Hollywood or anywhere else but here. Bechir did not leave.

Bechir stayed and maintained his commitment to a local, sustainable transportation solution and as he continues to work on getting electric charging stations installed on Hollywood Boulevard, he simply invested in electric bikes and now supplements his car rental business with bikes-for-rent. If only he had some bike racks!

Again comes the magic and charm of LA’s Bureaucracy as Bechir discovers that the City of LA has suspended their bike rack program, purportedly because of the city’s budget crisis. (The racks are in a warehouse, the installation is done by a contractor who is funded through a “special” fund, there is no impact to LA’s General Budget) Bechir now has bikes-for-rent but is unable to get permanent curbside bike parking on Hollywood Boulevard.

Bechir maintained his commitment to a local, sustainable transportation solution, this time by hiring a local welder to fabricate some bike racks and then by installing then in front of his store on Hollywood Boulevard. Again, he learned to survive by going DIY.

Senator Barbara Boxer was effective when she invoked the “Rule of 60″ claim (when making a point, use the 60% statistic, it’s reasonable, it’s convincing, it’s acceptable, even to skeptics, 60% of whom accept the Rule of 60 as sensible) but it seems that she would be even more effective if she begins to invoke the “Rule of DIY” in her next LA
speech, after all, DIY products are LA’s only local export these days!

Earth Day is coming around the bend, and cities are
timing their new green initiatives to coincide with the public’s
heightened eco-consciousness. Here’s one we’re partial to: In Denver,
Mayor John Hickenlooper and city leaders are using the occasion to
launch their 500-bicycle, 50-station bike-share system. It will be the
largest bike-share system in the U.S. until Minneapolis and Boston roll theirs out later this spring.

Denver will launch its bike-share system this week with 500 bicycles at 50 stations, aiming to expand to 1,100 bikes in 2011.

While Minneapolis and Boston selected the company behind Montreal’s Bixi to run their bike-share systems, Denver went with B-cycle, a joint venture between Trek Bicycles, health insurer Humana, and PR firm Crispin, Porter + Bogusky. B-cycle had a demo station
set up at Pier 84 on the Hudson River Greenway yesterday, where I had
to the chance to talk to company president Bob Burns about how the
system works.

In Denver, B-cycle will be financed by ads and
user subscriptions, with annual memberships priced at $65. Members get
RFID cards that they can swipe at individual docks to check out
bicycles. The first 30 minutes of each ride are free, with each
additional hour priced at one dollar.

The stations can
run on solar or A/C power. Denver has chosen to place their kiosks in
plazas and other pedestrian spaces, not in parking lanes like they do
in Paris.

One of the interesting features that
distinguishes B-cycle is its tracking system. Each bike is equipped
with a GPS unit, so users can access their member profiles online and
see where they biked, how far they rode, and how many calories they
burned. The cumulative GPS data from the entire system should also
prove to be a valuable resource for transportation planners. "It gives
cities a lot of information on where cyclists are going and which
routes are being used," said Burns. "They can make more intelligent
decisions about where to invest in infrastructure."

Buoyed by Ray LaHood’s recent statements of support
for bicycle infrastructure, Burns was appropriately bullish, for a
bike-share exec, on the future of bike-share in American cities. "Once
people see it can happen and that it can work, and people in those
cities appreciate it," he said, "we think it’s gonna explode."

As predicted, Councilman Rosendahl moved to "re-open" the public record on the anti-harassment ordinance so that the cyclists present can speak.   But first, the Council heard an update on the effort to bring "Bike Share" to Los Angeles.

A shot of a rack of Velib bicycles in Paris. Photo: SlimmerJimmer/Flickr

While Mowery and Rosendahl skimmed the idea of bringing bike share to "around our college campuses," Council Woman Jan Perry is already ahead of the game.  Responding to a question from Councilman Tom LaBonge, Perry announced that her office is already working with a private investor to create a bike share corridor between USC and the Downtown.  This seemed to be news to Mowery, who asked that Perry's office coordinate with her and Metro to make sure that their plan is integrated with other efforts.

There were some other general comments on bicycling from Councilmen Dennis Zine, Ed Reyes, Eric Garcetti, Tom LaBonge and Greig Smith.  All of the Councilmen offered some praise for bike sharing and cycling in general.  Garcetti noted that his staff is also working on a bike share plan for Hollywood and mentioned the "S"word (Sharrows.)  Reyes offered praise for cycling and noted that the city needs to do more for its bicycle dependent population and praised the "City of Lights" Program.  LaBonge noted that an easier way to encourage cyclists to take transit and bike for the "last mile" is to make it easier for cyclists to take their bikes on buses and trains.

The Council was just hearing a report on the potential of bringing bike share to Los Angeles and was not asked or required to take any action.

Believe it or not, this was done with the offier's cooperation. Photo: digablesoul/Flickr

Anti-Harassment: The Council opted for what we've been calling the "three step process," but did so with Rosendahl's consent and gave a real time line for a process to bring new laws designed to protect cyclists on our streets.  In other words, it seems that the Transportation and Public Safety Committees have agreed to work together on the best-possible ordinance.

Councilman Greig Smith, the Chair of the Public Safety Committee, kicked off the debate by re-stating his preference that the Council should require a joint report from LADOT and the City Attorney to create a report on what kind of ordinance the city could pass to better protect cyclists.  This plan, which was also backed by Councilman Rosendahl, will include opportunities for cyclists to provide input on what kind of harassment they see and the final report would say whether the law could be changed locally or would require a state fix.

When it was Rosendahl's turn to talk, he outlined the timeline.  First, the LADOT and City Attorneys will meet with cyclists to determine what the major issues are on the streets while drafting a report on where are local opportunities and where are state opportunities.  Next, and perhaps the highlight of the process, will be a February 24 "special" City Council Transportation Committee Hearing that will only deal with bicycling safety issues and will be attended by LAPD Chief Charlie Beck.  There will also be a joint hearing between the Transportation and Public Safety Committees to hear the report by the City Attorney and cyclists before the final ordinance is drafted.  Speaking of his goals for the process, Rosendahl stated that "We have to change our culture about bicycling.  We have to work together."

Following the discussion from the Council Members, a score of members of the cycling community spoke about harassment, "hit and runs," and downright ignorance by the LAPD when it comes to enforcing the law. 

One speaker, Ian M., recounted how after being involved in a Hit-and-Run crash, he was able to get the driver's information, but not able to get the LAPD to take a report.  One officer told him he was "biking the wrong way," because he was biking with the flow of traffic and not against it.  As he moved up the chain of command, that logic was abandoned by the police, but officer insisted that no law had been broken despite the car driver assaulting him with a vehicle and fleeing the scene.

Speaking for the LACBC, Aurisha Smolarski urged that the ordinance include training for motorists in how to share the road with motorists and pushes the idea of a "three foot passing law" for motorists.  "In the work place we have anti-harassment law to protect us from sexual harassment.  No LAPD officer needs to be present.  But on the road cyclists have no such right."

After public comment was completed, three more Council Members, Reyes, Anthony Cardenas, LaBonge and Rosendahl spoke.  Reyes noted that the most common response to a cyclist being physically harassed or assaulted on the road is, at-best, indifference from the LAPD and that cyclists deserve more.  Earlier Reyes spoke about the vulnerability of seniors on bicycles, but this time he focused on younger cyclists who bike because it's their only option as "working-poor."

Cardenas asked the City Attorney to clarify that threats of physical harm, be they at someone on a bike or someone at a super market, constitute assault already in our municipal code.  The City Attorney commented that of course it is.  Cardenas also noted that a big reason to push this kind of law is to use it as an educational tool.

Councilman LaBonge pushed for greater cooperation between the LAPD and LADOT on the anti-harassment issue.  He also commented that cyclists are also endanger from "a public works standpoint" because theft of copper wire has left the L.A. River Bikeway to be without lights before Garcetti brought him back to the issue of anti-harassment.  LaBonge joked, "But I was being harassed by the darkness."  He then took a moment to grandstand asking that "Share the Road" signs be replaced with "Watch for Bikes" to cheers from the audience.

Rosendahl wrapped up the discussion with a crowd pleasing closing statement.  "The culture of the car is going to end now!  The purpose of this ordinance is to protect cyclists in a way that they haven't been protected before.  The LAPD hasn't been part of the solution, but sometimes has been part of the problem.  We're going to pass an ordinance that isn't going to be challenged and protects cyclists."

Check Back Here at 2:00 P.M. for updates on the Speed Limit Increases that will be in front of the Transportation Committee this afternoon.

Speed Limit Increases:  At the request of Councilman Paul Krekorian, in who's district the speed limit increases would occur, the two speed limit ordinances for Chandler Boulevard and Riverside Drive were temporarily pulled from the agenda.  As you might remember, Paul Krekorian, when he was an Assemblymember, sponsored legislation that would have allowed communities to control traffic speeds instead of the commuters traveling through the streets.

However, Dorothy Le of the Los Angeles County Bike Coalition, Donna Casset, Stephen Box, Jay Goldberg, from the local neighborhood council, and Krekorian himself were permitted to speak against the ordinances.  Because the motions were not passed, there will be another chance to give public comment before a new vote occurs.  Bryan Gallagher, a senior transportation engineer for LADOT's Valley Division, testified that these studies and limit increases are necessary because of state law that requires that limits are set at the eighty-fifth percentile of drivers.  Under questioning from LaBonge, Gallagher gave a revealing look at LADOT traffic programming, when he discussed the theory of "big streets, big traffic; little streets, little traffic."

LaBonge rhetorically asked if "safety is the number one goal, right?"  Gallagher responded that, "Safety is the number one goal, but if studies show that if you set the speed too low, then you're actually increasing accidents."  This caused Councilman Paul Koretz to sarcastically comment that we should just stop enforcing the speed limits altogether if we're just making the streets less safe.

When Streetsblog spoke with Councilman Bill Rosendahl about his priorities as Transportation Committee Chair, he promised a number of sweeping changes and regular "bike themed" committee hearings.  Next week he is going to make good on some of his projects when he chairs his first "bike-only" City Council Transportation Hearing.  You can read the full agenda here, or just read on as we'll preview each issue that will be discussed.

Already, Rosendahl's proposal to create a law prohibiting the harassment of cyclists is generating buzz.  Some are comparing it to a "hate crimes" law for bicyclists and others are just happy to have someone recognize that many cyclists, be they commuters, Ridazz, or just people trying to get around, run into regular harassment from some of our larger road users.

While Rosendahl's efforts to better protect cyclists within the law is more than laudable, we have to point out that we're at the start of the process to create a new ordinance.  At this point, the Council is just directing the City Attorney and LADOT to create an ordinance.  How long it will be until we see one is anyone's guess.

If this leads to the creation of a strong law protecting cyclists, Wednesday's meeting could be a major moment in the history of cycling in Los Angeles.

Serving almost as a companion piece to the ordinance protecting cyclists is a return of a discussion with the LAPD concerning our law enforcement's relationship with cyclists.  At the last Big Bike Meeting in May, the Committee and cyclists slammed the Department for its poor reporting on an April incident where a hummer crashed into a cyclist and ran off with another bike under its grille.  Amazingly, the police report blamed the cyclist for "running into the hummer," even though damage to the bike clearly showed that the bike was side-swiped from behind.  Even though it was the second time they appeared in front of the Council, the LAPD failed to bring a copy of the report, and photos provided by cyclists contradicted many of the "facts" from the crash that the LAPD claimed.

The LAPD claimed this hummer had license plates and other untrue "facts" from their report on April's "Hummer v. Bike" crash.

Now, we have confirmation of a "Bike Working Group" sometime next year and a clash between the LAPD and Critical Mass downtown last week to further spice up the public comment.  Since the announcement of the working group last week, I've tried to pin down what the LAPD is doing to improve their relationship with cyclists and have found the process somewhat maddening.  Lieutenant Andre Dawson, who will head the working group, isn't up to speed on the issues yet and didn't even know what the Bicycle Advisory Committee is.  It's small wonder that the LAPD hasn't attended the last several BAC meetings.

Hopefully, the LAPD will come prepared to discuss what they're doing to address their relationship.  Is Commander Jeff Greer's internal effort that we briefly discussed earlier this week the most important effort on going?  Will Lieutenant Dawson's Working Group be empowered to make real changes or at least clarify how reports should be written and how cyclists should be detained when they do break laws?  These are just some questions for which we need an answer.  And let's face it, our elected leaders can pass all the ordinances they want. If the support for cycling doesn't exist with beat cops, cyclists won't benefit from safer streets.

Another new piece of legislation is an ordinance directing city planning to re-evaluate bike parking requirements  in the zoning code.  While this ordinance could be the beginning of something big, just as the "anti-harassment ordinance" above, on Wednesday the Committee will only be discussing whether or not to study whether or not to change the current bike parking requirements.

Also on the  agenda are some items that seem to pop back up every time it's time for another "Bike Only Meeting."  I can play psychic and predict what's going to happen based on what we've seen at past meetings.

Update on City's Draft Bike Plan: The city will claim victory in its public outreach based on the number of comments received and happily note that they've extended their comment period into next year.  Cyclists will point out that the rollout of the plan was convoluted, the plan is a step back from the 1996 plan (which wasn't very good), the plan doesn't incorporate the Cyclists' Bill of Rights, and a laundry list of other complaints.  Most of which I feel are completely valid.

Update on City's Study of Whether or Not to Bring Bike Sharing to L.A. - I don't know if I've ever seen a Department as unenthusiastic about a proposal as the LADOT is with this one.  In their report for the Council, the LADOT says that they're going to go out with a "Request for Information" which would allow private industry to let the City know what is fiscally doable in Los Angeles.  Of course, they also note the deplorable state of our bike infrastructure, although they somewhat understate the problem when they claim it will be "several years before the network is completed."  Cyclists present won't agree on whether or not bike-sharing is a good idea or not.

Update on effort to bring Sharrows to Los Angeles - As we noted earlier, since the last time the committee discussed this, Long Beach and Hermosa Beach have had Sharrows programs go from engineers heads onto paper and on to the street.  If LADOT can't commit to a timeline to put paint on the ground, we should just dust our hands on working with the Department because they're clearly stone walling us.  At some point the LADOT will remind us that "This isn't Long Beach" in response to complaints about how long this is taking.  No kidding.

Still, there's no mistaking the overwhelming sense of schadenfreude emanating from this new Times story (headline: "French Ideal of Bicycle-Sharing Meets Reality"). Francophobes all over America are relishing the tale of Parisian comeuppance.

But bike-sharing is a global phenomenon. So why we do only seem to read alarming stories about the problems in Paris? Part of the reason appears to be that bike-share operators in other cities have few alarms to sound. In Montreal, 5,000 public bikes are available through the Bixi system, launched earlier this year. Responding to the Times story, a Bixi spokesperson told the Montreal Gazette that theft and vandalism don't affect the system very much:

“Our bikes are very robust and Montrealers have a great respect for the Bixi program,” said Michel Philibert, a spokesperson for Stationnement de Montréal, which oversees the bike rental program.

“Montreal is not Paris. The theft of bikes here is not a major challenge.”

The Bixi operators also brought down theft rates thanks to a technical fix: They reinforced segments of the docking stations, and fewer bikes were stolen.

Vélib showed the world what a bike-share network can accomplish, but the appeal of public bicycle systems has never been limited to Paris or France. In the past few years, cities in China, Brazil, and the United States have launched bike-shares of various size. London is looking at a 6,000 bike system, and Dublin recently launched a network with about 500 bikes. Boston may be on the verge of rolling out the first truly robust American bike-share network. Even in Australia, where it's illegal for anyone to ride without a helmet, bike-share is on the way.

Like any good invention, bike-share tech is going to evolve over time. The first telephone looked like a fat brick with a hole in one end, and there was no way to tell if someone else was calling you. So it makes sense that Vélib has some kinks -- it marked a huge step forward for bike-share systems, on a scale no one had ever tried before. Inspired by the Vélib model, cities all over the world are also trying to improve on it.

In an editorial earlier today, the Daily Breeze, a newspaper covering the area between LAX and the Harbor, praised the city for moving ahead with a car sharing program and studying bike share.  In its own words the Breeze made the case for shared vehicles and managed to do it without calling supporters communists:

With a down economy, people throughout the Los
Angeles region are looking for ways to cut costs and save money. Now
the city of Los Angeles is working on programs to help folks do that -
through the concept of sharing cars and bicycles…

…The program is designed for urban residents who
no longer want to be burdened by the costs of car ownership, which
include fuel, financing, maintenance, insurance and related taxes.
These folks would use a combination of public transit and car sharing
to go about their daily lives. They can reserve a car online or by
phone in 10 minutes. And with a membership, they can quickly check out cars whose keys are stored in their glove compartments.

After similarly praising and explaining bike share, the editorial then ventured into Streetsblog territory by calling on the city to reduce its take home vehicle fleet and invest in car sharing for downtowners and government offices.

For example, instead of financing city-owned cars
for council members, why not just offer them paid Zipcar memberships
and access to bikes when why need to travel around the city? After all,
if the idea is good for average residents, it should also apply to city
employees and elected officials as well, especially when budget cuts
are on the horizon.

Is a movement growing to begin to truly pare down the fleet of vehicles that are treated as private property by city employees?  When Mayor Villaraigosa proposed cutting the size of the executive car fleet in 2008, the response was horror and outrage from City Council Members who claimed they were really concerned about the environment.  With the city and state in a full budget crisis, and with a recession slamming Southern Californians the response from our elected leadership might not be so tone deaf it the idea comes up again.

Photos: Sally M and jm3/Flickr

The
city has put out a request for proposals to create a bike share
program. The proposal envisions a network of 150 stations scattered
across the city with 1,500 bicycles available to students, commuters
and visitors with the swipe of a card.

Officials eventually hope to expand the network to 600 stations in the greater metropolitan area with 6,000 bikes.

Talk about a turnaround. Boston streets didn’t even have any bike lanes until last year. But Mayor Thomas Menino has become an avid cyclist himself, and the city’s first bicycle coordinator, Nicole Freedman, is not short on ideas. Good thing they’re not afraid to succeed. The Boston announcement stands in marked contrast to San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom’s plan for a pilot bike-share with — count ‘em — 50 bikes.

For
Boston (population ~ 600,000), a system with 1,500 bikes would merit
comparison to the flagship bike-share systems in Europe. Barcelona’s
Bicing, for instance, launched with 3,000 bikes and about 200 stations
for a city with more than twice the residents and a land area about 25
percent bigger than Boston. Bike-share is more ubiquitous in Paris,
where Vélib supplies about 20,000 bicycles to a city of just over two
million inhabitants. (Matthew Roth at Streetsblog SF has a great post about ideal bike-share specs, and promo site B-Cycle provides a slick way to see the optimum numbers for your hometown.)

Elsewhere in the U.S., Minneapolis plans to launch a 1,000-bike system later this year, and Denver has a 500-bike system in the works. In New York, DOT signaled its interest in launching a bike-share system last year, but nothing so specific as Boston’s RFP has been released.

So is Vélib destined to burn brightly only to flare out after a short time? Hardly. Vélib is here to stay, according to officials and transportation experts familiar with the details of its operations. The BBC's portrayal of a mortal threat, they say, is best understood as a negotiating ploy on the part of JCDecaux. (Note that the JCDecaux representative is the only source quoted in that story.)

"Decaux is using media sensationalism in order to obtain more money from the city of Paris," said Denis Baupin, who as Deputy Mayor for Transportation oversaw the Vélib launch in the summer of 2007.

The basic structure of the Vélib contract works like this. JCDecaux runs the whole system in exchange for the rights to 1,600 outdoor displays, making its profit from selling that ad space. The city of Paris keeps the revenue from Vélib user fees, so it can claim to provide the service at no taxpayer expense. Now, with the full Paris network of 20,600 bicycles fully built out, penalties for inadequate maintenance are in the process of taking effect. Hence the hue and cry from JCDecaux.

"It's in large part a PR issue," says Luc Nadal of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy. Some aspects of the Vélib contract are still in flux, and the sky-is-falling press coverage gives JCDecaux a stronger hand in those negotiations. "Their bargaining position depends on the public's perception."

Not that bicycle abuse is a phantom problem. It exacts a real toll, but much of that cost has been anticipated and accounted for. Last July, the city of Paris agreed to pay JCDecaux 400 euros for every bike stolen in excess of four percent of the total fleet. Given the enormous popularity of Vélib -- users have taken 42 million rides since its debut -- the cost of those payments is minimal. Using the BBC's figure of 7,800 missing bikes, the pricetag for the city comes to less than 2 million euros annually, out of 20 million euros in user fees.

"It averages out to about 15 stolen per day, out of 80,000 daily users," says Eric Britton, founder of the Paris-based New Mobility Agenda. "It's like skinning your knee."

Not only does the city already pick up a big part of the tab, but JCDecaux reportedly hauls in about 80 million euros per year from its outdoor displays, according to estimates cited by Britton. It's difficult to know the exact figure -- and how much is profit -- because JCDecaux guards the data like a nuclear secret. Even the precise cost of replacing one Vélib bicycle remains unknown to the public. Inquiries we sent to JCDecaux's headquarters in Paris have not been returned.

Public support for Vélib remains unflagging. "Vélib has been totally embraced by Mayor Bertrand Delanoe himself," said Nadal. What politician wouldn't jump at the chance to be identified with a program that enjoys 94 percent satisfaction among constituents?

This is largely a testament to JCDecaux's success in operating the system. According to Baupin's office, however, Vélib maintenance workers report that management has let upkeep slide in order to amplify the perception of vandalism.

JCDecaux's media gamesmanship "is short-sighted," said Baupin, in a statement translated from the French. "One should not lose sight of the remarkable success of this transportation mode due to a slightly underestimated rate of vandalism." 

Then there's the matter of JCDecaux's own self-interest, and whether the rumors and exaggerations will hurt the company's attempts to secure bike-share contracts in other cities. Said Britton: "Why would they run away from a golden goose?"

From this week's Los Angeles County Bike Coalition newsletter comes news that one major employer in Los Angeles is bringing bike sharing for their employees.

Bike Sharing At Good Sam
Good Samaritan Hospital in Downtown Los Angeles has launched a bike-sharing program that allows its approximately 1,500 employees to borrow bicycles for traveling around the hospital campus and nearby destinations between 7 a.m. and dusk. The hospital currently has three bikes available for use, but may expand the program if it proves popular, said Good Samaritan President and CEO Andy Leeka. The bike-sharing plan is meant to complement existing programs at Good Samaritan focused on employee wellness, including on-campus exercise and weight-loss classes and healthy cafeteria food. "We can't really espouse to our community to stay healthy if we don't set the example ourselves," said Leeka, who bikes 30 miles to and from work three times a week. "A bicycle is the most efficient means of transportation out there, and it's non-polluting." Good Samaritan also hosts the annual Blessing of the Bicycles each May.

Speaking of the Bike Coalition, this would be a good time to consider a membership for 2009 as a Holiday Present for that Special Someone in your life.

Photo: Robjtak/flickr