Streetsblog Los Angeles

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. Read more…

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.

BikeTalk this Saturday featured an extended discussion about the technicalities, challenges, and beauties of a bike share programs. On the show we had Phil Brock, Santa Monica Parks and Rec commissioner, Ryan Rzepecki from with Social Bike, who are developing the intelligent locking system which can operate independently of return stations, Todd Loewenstein, Co-owner of Baiku Bikes, who will roll out a few stations in Manhattan Beach soon. Todd shared a lot of insight into the economics of these systems proposed a system of 12 criteria for a successful system. Also participating was Michael Cahn from Sustainable Streets, who raised some questions about the costs and specific benefits of these systems, and Andrea White from Long Beach Bike Station.

The early data is in on one of the country’s pioneering bike-sharing systems, and it brings some encouraging news.

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 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.”

Read more…

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.

Read more…

The City Council met today and discussed two cycling related issues.  The first was the ongoing discussion of whether or not the city should have a bike sharing program.  Second, the Council debated how to create an ordinance that would better protect cyclists from harassment.

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.

Bike Share: After a lengthy public comment period, we finally reach the "bicycle" portion of the meeting.  Senior Bike Coordinator Michelle Mowery is called to the front.  Apparently, Metro is also looking at a bike share program and have already identified an investor.  Metro and their investor are most interested in bringing bike share to Hollywood.  Meanwhile, despite bike share being brought up over a year ago, the LADOT still doesn't have an idea of where it would do its own pilot program.  If there were a community as excited about bike share as they are about Sharrows, this would be as large a scandal in the cycling community as the stall on Sharrows is.

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.

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.

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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.

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.

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