Streetsblog Los Angeles

Photo: Lisa "no relation" Newton/Flickr

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Occidental College’s UEPI Blog announced earlier this morning that this year’s keynote speaker for the Bike Summit will be none other than New York City’s Livable Streets Hero Janette Sadik-Khan.  For those of you that have never read the original Streetsblog or any of my New York-related stories; Sadik-Khan rose to be Commissioner of NYCDOT and immediately changed the department’s goals from car-culture defenders to Portland-esque urban planners.

The recently announced completion of two hundred miles of new bike lanes over the last two years is but one of the high-profile changes that the city’s streets have undergone during her tenure as commissioner, but rather than gush for paragraphs and paragraphs, I’ll let Bike Summit Planner Joe Linton take over:

Sadik-Khan currently serves as the Transportation Commissioner for New
York City. She has overseen an unprecedented effort to make New York
City friendlier for bicycling and walking. From Summer Streets ciclovia-events to Madison Square to Ninth Avenue,
New York’s streets are being transformed from auto-centric to
people-centric. It’s an inspiring story, and Sadik-Khan is the
department head that’s making it happen

There’s no date or time officially announced for her public appearances, but both UEPI and Streetsblog will keep you posted.

(Full disclosure: Sadik-Khan served on the Board of Directors for the Tri-State Transportation Campaign for most of the time I worked as their New Jersey Coordinator.)

(editor’s note: I’m told to expect more of these videos from the Bike Summit and as they are finnished, I’ll post them here at Streetsblog.)

My favorite panel from last week’s Bike Summit, "Bike Safety in the Inner City," featured a group I’d never heard of, City Lites, sponsoring and event so large it rivals the Bike Coalition’s River Ride.  After the panel, I was mystified, how could a group be doing something so large in my coverage area and I was completely clueless about them?

For those of you that aren’t going to make the time to watch the entire 52 minute video, although if nothing else you should watch the introduction, allow me to sum it up for you.  Citi Lites is an organization in South Los Angeles that, amongst other things, is trying to get children and young adults on their bikes by holding a twenty one and five mile community bike ride on the weekend after Memorial Day.  The purpose of the ride is to have people ride in their communities, so the twenty one mile ride begins and ends in South L.A.’s Jesse Owens Park.  Sixteen miles into the ride, they meet up with the smaller children for the five mile ride to the finish at Magic Johnson Park.

This year’s ride is May 30th.  For more information on the ride or to sign up to either participate or volunteer, click over to their website.

Following up on one of the suggestions I received last weekend at the Bike Summit, Los Angeles Streetsblog has created a twitter account named "labikes" which will inform cyclists of action alerts, public meetings, and action alerts to help the community get more involved with issues as they come up.  Unlike Streetsblog or other bike tweets, these will be "just the facts" to connect people to the meetings and issues.  For example, labikes just tweeted:

LABAC Planning SubCommittee - 2:00 P.M. Today at Caltrans Building Agenda: BMP, Expo Path, Bike Parking, and NBC Universal

If I can find a place online which has the meeting agenda or a direct link to an action alert, it will be provided in the tweet.  You can sign up to receive our twitter feed at twitter.com or sign up for the RSS feed here.

Bernardo Baranda Sepulveda addresses over 300 Los Angeles bike advocates.

Four very different speakers, with different backgrounds and from three different cities, traveled to Los Angeles to inspire local cyclists to bring change to our streets.  While each of these leaders told different stories and had different experiences, each had a common theme: to see the change we want, we need an educated and inspired city leadership.

Lest this sound as though they just came to town to rail against our local politicians, the speakers, Portand's Elly Blue, New York's Noah Budnick and Mexico City's Bernardo Baranda Sepulveda and Dhyana Quintanar Solares, all encourage the cycling community to reach out to our elected officials and think outside the box on how to get across our point that we need and deserve a safe and comfortable environment to ride in city limits.

In other words, just because Mayor Villaraigosa, who so far hasn't shown much innovation or support when it comes to cyclists, got re-elected doesn't mean we have to put our hopes and dreams on hold for four years.

The first speaker was Noah Budnick from New York's Transportation Alternatives.  Budnick spoke of how the city government was seemingly transformed overnight from one who catered to car traffic to one that wants to create a true bicycle network and reclaim streets for pedestrians and people that just want to spend time outside.

However, while the government may have done an about-face on policy, it only came after decades of activism from Transportation Alternatives and its partner organizations though out the city.  Budnick pointed to community activism from 2005, when a series of crashes left cyclists killed throughout the city.  T.A. and community groups worked together to create an uproar over the unsafe nature of New York's streets gaining the attention of the media and the Mayor's office.

Highlighting crashes is a grim and gruesome, but proven effective way of bringing about political change.  But Budnick's main point was that we need to think outside the box to move politicians to see things our way.  He finished his comments with this thought about what constrains city planners, "It’s the politics that impose the limits, not the curb lines."

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Now I know there are those among you that can't make the Bike Summit tomorrow for whatever reason.  Don't worry, for those of you that can't make it, Streetsblog will have full coverage of all the keynote speakers on Monday as well as links to other writers takes on different happenings throughout the course of the weekend. 

If you can't make it tomorrow, but also can't wait until Monday, you still have options.  First "Bike Talk" is rumored to be broadcasting live from the Summit at KillRadio.org from 10:00 A.M. until Noon.  You can also read two blog posts by some of our guest speakers at Occidental College's UEPI Blog.  The first is by Noah Budnick and discusses "Safety in Numbers."  The Second from Elly Blue is about looking closer to home to find solutions to our problems.

And of course, as we've been saying over and over, the Summit is a multi-day event.  At Nate Baird's blog Ensie, not to be confused with Enci, he takes a look at Budnick's presentation yesterday at Metro Headquarters.

See you tomorrow!

From left to right: Ron Milam, Elly Blue, Denise Fairchild, Robert Gottlieb, Jennifer Klausner and Noah Budnick

Yesterday, Bike Summit Weekend kicked off with a press event at Los Angeles Trade Tech and meetings between the visiting dignitaries and public officials.  The press conference was a mix of press conference and college lecture, as dozens of students sat in classroom formation while New York's Noah Budnick and Portland's Elly Blue talked about the changes going on in their respective cities while local advocates exhorted the students to get and stay involved. 

Perhaps the strongest case for increased bike investment was made by Los Angeles Trade Tech professor Denise Fairchild who noted that "For many communities of color, bicycling is the only way to get around.  To not have infrastructure for them is just part of the social injustice that is experienced."

Occidental College Professor Robert Gottlieb noted that Los Angeles wasn't always trailing cities such as Portland and New York when it comes to bike amenities.  In fact L.A. was once thought of as the bike capital of America...as recently as the 1890's.

But our out-of-town guests urged us to think beyond the challenges and hurdles put up on our streets and by our governments and take a more worldly view.  Budnick talked about a world-wide community of urbanites and how we can share and learn from each other.  "We're thinking of cities around the world and that everyone that lives in a city has something in common: common lifestyles, commone experiences...and common problems."

Budnick also noted that some areas in Los Angeles already have part of what they need to transform the city into a less car-dependent place.  Just across the street from Trade Tech is a transit hub and the campus itself was covered in bikes, most of them not owned by people attending the press conference.

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While the Bike Summit is scheduled as a conference from 9 A.M. to 4 P.M. on Saturday, the events surrounding the summit begin tomorrow morning and extend through Sunday afternoon.

Tomorrow morning, cyclists and our guests will be meeting with the press at 8:30 A.M. at LA Trade-Technical College before heading downtown for a separate meeting with city officials.  Included in tomorrow's press event are many of the keynote speakers from Saturday's Summit including New York based advocate Noah Budnick of Transportation Alternatives, and Elly Blue from BikePortland.

Afterwards, Blue, Budnick and other local advocates will pedal to a 9:30 meeting at the Los Angeles County Bike Coalition's offices to discuss national transportation issues as well as what needs to be done locally.  They will be joined by other keynote speakers from the event, Bernardo Baranda Sepúlveda and Dhyana Quintanar Solares from Mexico City. If you are interested in attending this meeting, please contact Ron Milam at rpm@ronmilam.com

While tomorrow's events were just announced earlier this week, we've known the rest of the schedule for awhile.  For a complete listing of the rest of the weekend's events please visit the Bike Summit website or check out this Streetsblog story from February 24.  If you're just interested in reading more about tomorrow's events, read on after the jump.

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