Streetsblog Los Angeles

Originally Stephen Villavaso of the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition was scheduled to be the guest speaker at the Southern California Transit Advocates May 14th meeting, only to have a conflict force him to request to be rescheduled to our June meeting. As I scrambled to seek a replacement Nick Matonak who handles the Facebook page for SO.CA.TA suggested we have Stephen Box as a speaker. And upon being contacted Box with great enthusiasm said yes.

Given the tight timing Box has carte blanche to talk on whatever topic he wants. And of course afterward we’ll have a period for q&a with the audience.

The meeting is held at Angelus Plaza in downtown Los Angeles, 255 S. Hill Street, on the fourth floor. The location is served by numerous transit lines including the Pershing Square Red/Purple Line station. Box’s presentation begins at 2:15 p.m. The business portion of the meeting starts at 1 p.m., with a break from 2 p.m. to 2:15 p.m. The meeting is free and open to the public. I’m looking forward to it.

For those in the livable streets advocacy community, no city council race has taken on more significance than this one. Here, LA Streetsblog presents a rundown of the two candidates and the livable streets issues at the heart of the race, so that you can make an informed decision.

The Incumbent: Tom LaBonge is an avid cyclist who organizes rides throughout the city and is a regular presence during Bike Week.  He’s also served as a stand-in for Councilman Huizar on the Metro Board of directors and has advocated for better bus only lanes on Wilshire Boulevard as well Olympic, San Vicente and Venice Boulevards.

The Challengers: Stephen Box was awarded LA Streetsblog’s 2009 Livable Streets Person of the Year Award for his leadership in the movement to make Los Angeles a better place for pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit riders.  Tomas O’Grady is a second challenger and also has a strong record of community advocacy.   As Councilman, O’Grady will focus on improving L.A.’s crumbling infrastructure.

The District: Council District 4 is geographically diverse swath of Los Angeles in the heart of the city. Its physical center is the Hollywood Hills and Griffith Park, but its boundaries spill out erratically, capturing Toluca Lake, Universal City, and North Hollywood to the north, and bits of Hollywood, Hancock Park, Koreatown, Los Feliz, and Silver Lake to the south.

The Race: Over the last decade, a great deal has changed in the district. In 2000, the Metro Rail Red Line finally reached its terminus in North Hollywood, while advocates have spearheaded the transformation of 4th Street into a bike boulevard, and CicLAvia grazed the southeastern tip of the district.

Since elected to the City Council in 2001, Councilman Tom LaBonge has been a supporter — albeit an inconsistent one — of a sustainable transportation network that includes bikes. Read more…

With all the bleak news about the City of Los Angeles' budget woes, and the ridiculously poor state of the same city's Transit Oriented Development program; the last thing one might expect to hear out of city hall is a fight over how the city spends its "Street Furniture Revenue Fund."  Yesterday, when Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced a veto of Councilman Tony Cardenas' request to use street furniture funds to pay for his office staff, that's exactly what we got.

First, some background.  The city collects revenue from the advertising on bus shelters within city limits and those funds are to be spent on, in the Mayor's words, "...transit-related projects, sidewalk repair and other community beautification projects."  Fourteen of the fifteen City Council members use their local funds for just that purpose.  However, Cardenas requested, and the City Council approved a transfer of those funds to pay for two staff people, who Cardenas says work on local transportation issues.

In total, Cardenas sought to move $142,000 from the Street Furniture Revenue Fund to his district office funds.  KPCC reports that only $38,000 of that is under any mayoral control, so the veto only applies to to that amount.

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At City Watch and his personal blog Soap Box, Stephen Box punched an SUV sized hole in the Mayor and Police Chief Charlie Beck's claim that the City of Los Angeles has become the "second safest big city in America, after New York."  Box's contention is that because the city assumes that most traffic crashes are "accidents" even when there is plenty of evidence to the contrary, that the city can keep its official statistics low and avoid having to spend resources to keep the city safe.

As long as we refer to the mayhem on the streets as "accidents" Villaraigosa will be allowed to continue the charade but the reality is this, the streets of Los Angeles are a Public Safety nightmare and the people of LA stand a greater chance of being killed by a motorist than by a gangbanger.

Police Officers stand a greater change of dying in a car crash than in a fight with a criminal.

As LA celebrates its "2nd safest Big City" status, it's important to acknowledge that Los Angeles is also a national leader in hit-and-run crimes.

Los Angeles is a City under Hit and Run Seige. The Mayor needs to get out of the Yukon and onto a Schwinn if he wants to truly impress on the people of Los Angeles that we are a city that puts a premium on Public Safety. Public Safety that is for everyone including LA’s growing cyclist community.

Powerful stuff, but outside of his typically robust verbiage, Box breaks down the multiple errors made in the handling of the "Cayenne v Cyclist" crash that left an East Hollywood activist hospitalized and a hit and run Porsche driver back on the street.  You can read a summary of the LAPD's five sins or head over to Soap Box to read Box's article in full and have a chance to comment.

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Some see it as a niche ride for activists.  Some see it as Stephen Box's attempt to get on television and continue his feud with Councilman Tom LaBonge.  Still others as a ride that engenders mire bad will with city agencies than it's worth.  After all, how many hard core cycling activists really want to ride through car choked streets to look at a bunch of holiday lights?

But those critiques of the now annual Festival of Rights ride through the Festival of Lights are missing the point.  Box and his fellow riders are riding against the city of Los Angeles, or really any governmental body, being able to randomly decide that cyclists cannot ride on a road.  The attempts to justify the decision to tell cyclists that they cannot ride the road have ranged from laughable, such as when Councilman LaBonge waived an unsigned memo, not on city stationary, from the City Attorney's office to non-existent such as this year's efforts by a Park Ranger to explain he was enforcing the ban because, "he was told to."  However, it would appear that California law doesn't have any allowances for municipalities to decide when and where cyclists can ride on the road with motor vehicles.

"We are so far beyond 'I'm just doing what I was told.'" Box told me on the phone, expressing frustration with law enforcements inability to justify their ban with laws.  "We are now in an era where officials are expected to take responsibility for their actions.  People are expected to do what is right, nut just "I'm doing what I was told."

So let's break this down.  Every year the Department of Water and Power, in an effort to be visible from space bring Holiday Spirit to Griffith Park, hosts the DWP Festival of Lights.  Just because the city is so broke that another department's General Manager is making the rounds explaining that they can't afford for traffic engineers to email Neighborhood Councils before destroying their street life, is no reason for the DWP, a department funded by your electric bills, to consider ending the Festival.  Every year the city comes out with a new schedule for the Festival and recently has been expanding the access for cyclists and pedestrians to view the lights on certain nights.  For example, this year there were actually more nights dedicated to pedestrian travel through the Festival than car-only nights.  Even cyclists get a couple of extra half-hours on Saturday nights in addition to the now-traditional bike-only night.

Some would say that's a step in the right direction.  I agree to a point.  It would be great if the entire festival were pedestrian only.  Then I would agree that cyclists were inappropriate.  In the mean time, there is still no legal justification to ban bicycles from local roads open to cars in the state's vehicle code.  Go ahead, look it up.

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Starting on Thursday, the City of Los Angeles will hold the first of five "official" public meetings on the Draft Bike Plan that was released for public viewing after some draft maps were released earlier this summer.  It's been a long road for the Bike Plan from the scoping meetings held in February of 2008 and a process that has brought a groundswell of hope and the seeds of change in other cities has been one full of anger, accusations and a near complete lack of trust.

It's gotten so bad, that Stephen Box and Alex Thompson, two well-featured members of the advocacy community, have started a Bike Working Group to create an alternate to the Bike Plan.  They held their first meeting this weekend and attracted dozens of cyclists from around the city and county.  At his personal blog, Box explains the difference between the Bike Working Group and the Bike Plan.

The BWG opened up the Draft Bike Plan for discussion and then drew the participants into the process of actually creating a real Bike Plan, rather than simply commenting on somebody else's version. From the opening vision to the need for imperative language, to the standards and designations to the tools for implementation, the entire document is open to revision or replacement.

Between now and the Halloween meeting of the Bike Working Group, the city will hold four meetings on the official Bike Plan.  A fifth meeting, that was promised me at a City Council meeting, will be held in Northeast L.A. on November 4th.  For a list of all five official meetings, visit the Streetsblog calendar.  For more information on the next Bicycle Working Group Meeting, visit Soap Box.

But as we get ready for the Bike Plan and Bike Working Group meetings, let's look back at the last 20 months that have led us to where we are.

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I find it hard to believe that anyone who regularly reads Streetsblog doesn't know who Stephen Box is.  Either he, his wife, or one of the groups he leads seem to make news just about every week somewhere in Los Angeles.  But for those who don't know, Stephen Box is a Bike Activist and Community Organizer who lives in Hollywood with his lovely wife, Enci. Stephen says "I believe that our streets are the new ‘public space’ and our ability to share that space is one of our greatest opportunities for revitalizing and redefining our communities.”

Today Stephen provides Streetsblog's first look at the completed Draft Bike Plan for the City of Los Angeles and reviews a unique bike ride, the Crenshaw Crush that ran through South L.A. on Sunday.  Like Joe Linton, Stephen will be writing on multiple days so be sure to check back again to see more of his work.  He can also be read at City Watch and SoapBox L.A.

Last Saturday night, transportation activists Stephen and Enci Box arrived at the Hollywood and Western Metro Red Line station and found the station in shambles.  A homeless encampment had moved onto the top floor, five of the six escalators were out of order and the "emergency intercom" was broken.

After assisting an elderly "reluctant pedestrian" up the steps, the Box’s began a series of phone calls to try and get some rectification to the situation and discovered a bureaucracy that is unable to deal with problems on a Saturday night.

I called the LASD Watch Commander at Metro Rail HQ to let him know of
the five inoperative escalators, the broken emergency intercom, the
stench of urine and feces, the overflowing trash cans, and the homeless
encampment, pointing out that they all indicate a significant failure
on the part of the LASD.

Sgt. Bedogne explained that staffing
was thin on Saturday nights and that their focus was fare evasion. I
pointed out this seems to be in sharp contrast with the Metro’s
position as articulated by CEO Art Leahy who has indicated that public
safety and customer service are his priorities for the Metro.

Crickets chirped.

Read more…

She may not have filled out our CD 2 Candidate Questionaire, but fresh from his trip to Austrailia Stephen Box brings us this video of Benson rallying to the virtues of biking and walking in L.A.  To the cheers of supporters, Benson says:

Hi, I’m Mary Benson and I’m running for Los Angeles City Council.  I want to give a big shout out to my friends at the Bike Writer’s Collective and bicyclists in the City of Los Angeles who deserve to be safe on the streets as do pedestrians and every other person that dares to stand up to a car.  Thank you, and vote for me on September 22.

While it’s always great to hear a candidate talk the talk on alternative transportation; it doesn’t give us a lot of details.  Box, in his introduction to the video on his facebook page, fills in some of the gaps.

Mary Benson is running for the open CD2 seat and tonight I caught up with her in Tujunga.

Mary
is a strong community advocate and I have worked with her on the
California State Parks Common Ground Committee. She is powerfully
knowledgeable about land use, environmental and public space issues and
she is a strong advocate for the community.

I have also worked
with Mary on Neighborhood Council issues city-wide and she has always
been a fervent believer in grass roots politics and local
representation.

Most recently, Mary has worked with me to push
for the release of LA’s Bike Plan and to fight to ensure that the Bike
Plan lays down a real vision with real standards and that it truly
support cycling as a transportation solution.

Visit Benson4CD2.com for more information.

(note to Benson’s staff on the questionnaire: I mailed it to you, but if you lost it you can find a copy of it here.  Just fill it out and email it back to damien@streetsblog.org.)