Streetsblog Los Angeles

Just a quick note before we get on with the rest of the day’s news.

I’ll be speaking tonight as part of a panel discussing the Road Rules for Bicyclists, along with Sgt. Jon Aufdemberg, LAPD South Traffic Division, Bicycle Liaison; James L. Pocrass, Attorney, Pocrass & De Los Reyes, LLP; Cynthia Rose, Co-Founder, Santa Monica Spoke; and Lt. Marjory Jacobs of the LA County Sheriff’s Department.

Presented by the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, the panel discussion will mark the official unveiling of the coalition’s excellent new Bike Safe Rules of the Road pocket guide. Free refreshments and bicycle parking will be provided.

When: Wednesday, May 22; 7 – 8:30 PM
Where: LACBC Headquarters, Edison Room (1st Floor) – 634 S. Spring St., Los Angeles, 90014
Admission: FREE for LACBC Members
 / $10 General Public

Hope to see you there!

The Planning Committee of Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition just opened a “wiki” webpage to help local advocates navigate the complex waters of bicycle policy and planning in Los Angeles County. Wiki’s allow anyone to add information as is done on the gigantic Wikipedia website, where nearly all of the content is user create.  You can visit the LACBC wiki by clicking here.

Niall Huffman, who also comments here at Streetsblog, uploaded this picture of the proposed 4th Street/Norton St. Roundabout. Photo:LACBC Wiki

So here’s the thing. It’s hard to maintain a good wiki website. It takes a lot of volunteer hours to add content and even more hours to edit the website to make certain the information is accurate.  Bikeside tried to maintain a high quality wiki website and it didn’t work out in the long-term. And that’s not a knock on them, Streetsblog tried to do it too, and it ultimately didn’t work out either.

Here at Streetsblog, we think that wikis are a great way to spread information and take advantage of the online format. To encourage people to explore the Wiki, and in a shameless piece of self promotion, we are offering an L.A. Streetsblog bag or t-shirt to the first five people to update the LACBC wiki page that I created for L.A. Streetsblog.

Of course, to do that one has to register and learn how to post and edit entries. While you’re there, I would check out the other parts of the website. Maybe you’ll want to stay and hang out a little longer.

The River Ride is a good time to join the LACBC, but so is right now. Photo:LACBC

It’s only been five years since Streetsblog began publishing in Los Angeles. In that time, we bore witness to major changes at LADOT, Metro and city politics. But perhaps the biggest change has come in the form of more professional, better-staffed and powerful advocacy organizations.

Nowhere is that more true than with the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition. Under the guidance of executive director Jennifer Klausner, the organization grew from a bare bones advocacy organization that also managed the bicycle locker program for Metro to an organization capable of managing multiple programs at once and has a pro-active legislative agenda.

Last week, I sat down with Kelly Martin and J.J. “River Ride” Hoffman with the Bike Coalition to talk about 2013. The non-profit fundraiser in me noted that their fundraising appeal focuses on the programs they can control. For example, the LACBC can advocate that the city strip another 75 miles of bike lanes, but they can’t force them to. So when it comes to their end of the year appeal the focus is on “Operation Firefly,” “Bike Counts” and “Bicycle Ambassador Program.”

This is not to say that the LACBC doesn’t have an aggressive agendas for elected officials and LADOT, just that the organization had grown so that it can do much more than lobby.

To join or renew membership with the Bicycle Coalition, click here. The LACBC hopes to raise $125,000 from donations and membership over the course of a year. Read more…

Edmundo Rea from the LACBC conducts a survey with a recipient of lights from Operation Firefly. (photo: sahra)

I don’t know about you, but I feel naked riding a bike at night without lights.

On the few occasions I have found myself out later than expected or sporting dead batteries, images of the myriad unpleasant ways in which I was sure I was going to die played in my head the whole way home.

Lightlessness doesn’t seem to bother some people. I often see young guys bombing their way through stoplights along busy streets like Sunset Blvd. with little thought to the fact that nobody can really see them coming or going until they are almost on top of them. Some commuters are a little more fearful of being without lights and might take refuge on the sidewalks, where they are prone to having close calls with pedestrians or cars turning in to and out of driveways or side streets.

The prevalence of the lightlessness always surprises me, especially because these days you can get pretty cheap lights just about everywhere. My own front light is a 99-cent gem that I power with the same rechargeable batteries I’ve had for three years. Even cheaper lights are available at swap meets and informal markets in places like MacArthur Park, where people will lay out used back lights with the other goods they are hawking. They might be junky, but they are functional.

When asked why they aren’t riding with lights, young riders will often tell me they don’t know. They didn’t think about it, or they don’t have them, or they aren’t worried. Sometimes they laugh at me for being such a mom and take off into the dark.

Hoping for more concrete answers, I went down to 103rd and Central last night, where the Los Angeles County Bike Coalition (LACBC) and the East Side Riders were handing out lights to the lightless as part of the LACBC’s Operation Firefly. For this program — intended to reach out to riders caught without lights since the switch to daylight savings time — the LACBC does weekly street distributions of approximately 40 light sets and educational materials. The materials, including spoke cards in English and Spanish, offer a summary of the California Vehicle Code requirements for night riding, along with additional tips for enhanced visibility. Read more…

Members of the South L.A. Neighborhood Bike Ambassadors discuss the infrastructure improvements they would like to see in their community. (photo: sahra)

Last night, between 15 and 20 members of the South L.A. Neighborhood Bike Ambassador (NBA) group gathered in the (amazing!) Civil Rights Museum at the Watts Labor Community Action Committee to talk with Jane Choi (Dept. of City Planning’s LA/2B), David Somers (Dept. of City Planning’s Bicycle Planner), and Nate Baird (Dept. of Transportation’s Project Coordinator for Bicycle Outreach and Planning) about infrastructure needs in the community.

Participants (myself included) benefited from hearing about the process behind the development and implementation of the Bike and Mobility Plans and the role we could play in promoting our interests. Then, we spent the next hour poring over and marking up the plans.

“It would be great if we could get a bike lane on Imperial,” Nicolas Ruiz of Los Ryderz suggested shyly as we stood looking at the map of the draft Bike Plan.

Sensing he had more insights to offer, I pulled him up to the head of the table where the LA/2B maps of the area were laid out. Together, Nico, Javier Partida (the leader of Los Ryderz), and Stalin Medina (owner of the Watts Cyclery) talked to Choi about unsafe pedestrian crossings at 103rd and Success Sts. and how cars often speed along the narrow corridor of Wilmington Ave. between the Rosa Parks station and 103rd. That kind of input is invaluable, particularly in the case of Wilmington Ave. Although pedestrians and cyclists are often hit (or narrowly missed, as in my case) along that corridor, few of the incidents are reported to the authorities, making it hard for planners to know the area needs some sort of intervention.

I moved over to where the East Side Riders were discussing the bike lanes they wanted to see prioritized in the area. We were all excited to learn that funding had been won to implement the lanes along Central Ave. But, given the boom in riding in the area and the tendency of riders to prefer main streets over side streets, the club felt there was a real need to get some of the lanes slated for implementation prioritized sooner rather than later. They also requested Normandie Ave. — not currently part of the plan — be considered for a lane. Similarly, NBA members from the West Adams area pushed for prioritization of the striping of a lane along Jefferson and for the rest of Adams to be marked with Sharrows. Read more…

Fred Buggs, Tafarai Bayne and Chuck Standokes on Florence Ave. in South L.A.

As a child, I had dreamed of becoming a diplomat. A product of the cold war who occasionally had nightmares involving mushroom clouds, I threw myself into Soviet Studies in college, honed my skills in several of the UN’s official languages, and prepared intensely for the foreign service exam. When the cold war ended (with no help from me, I might add), I shelved my ambassadorial aspirations.

Thanks to the LACBC’s Neighborhood Bike Ambassador Program, it looks like I will be able to dust off those lofty aspirations and put them to use in South L.A.

Admittedly, bike ambassadorhood is not on the same level with preventing a nuclear holocaust. Still, I enjoyed the first meeting, convened last week at USC, and look forward to working with the LACBC and others in South L.A. to engage local communities and officials about cycling issues.

The program, as presented by LACBC Policy and Campaigns Manager Alek Bartrosouf, seeks to build grassroots support among neighborhood councils and community groups for the implementation of bike projects. This support is necessary, the LACBC contends, to ensure that the city follows through on promises to implement elements of the bike plan and other bike-related projects. Without voices in favor of these projects, loud voices complaining about the inconveniences of bike lanes, bike corrals, and the like may be the only ones heard, giving the city an excuse to back away from its promises to cyclists.

Ambassadors will be tasked with building that support in four key ways: advocacy (attending neighborhood council meetings and pressuring local officials), communication (educating cyclists and non-cyclists about the benefits of bicycle infrastructure, bike etiquette, etc.), events (holding fun events to attract people to and inform communities about cycling), and membership (building a base of members within the LACBC to give it a greater presence in the political process). Read more…

Spring Street. Photo: Joe Linton/Eco-Village

Yesterday, the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition released “2011 City of Los Angeles Bicycle & Pedestrian Count Report” and a separate study on bicycling on Spring Street in the Green Buffered Bike Lane.  The result?  Cycling in the city is on the upswing, as positive press, CicLAvia and new infrastructure are encouraging more people to embrace two-wheeled travel.

The stats from Spring Street, via LACBC

Nowhere is this more true than Spring Street.  Bike counts taken before and after the creation of the city’s first green lane and first buffered bike lane, show a 52% increase in cyclists on Spring Street.  This included a mammoth 250% increase in cyclists on weekends and a 161% increase in female riders.

LACBC conducted baseline counts on Tuesday, November 1st and Saturday, November 5th. The Tuesday counts were conducted from 7:00 A.M. to 9:00 A.M., 11:00 A.M. to 1:00 P.M., and 4:00 to 6:00 P.M. The Saturday count was conducted from 11:00 A.M. to 1:00 P.M. The after counts were conducted on Tuesday, April 24^th  and Saturday, May 28^th at the same times as the before counts.

“So glad to see people who bike in Downtown L.A. embracing the new lane,” exclaims Valerie Watson, the Chair of the Downtown Neighborhood Council’s Parks, Recreation and Open Space Committee.  ”(we’re) thankful to LACBC for offering this invaluable data that allows us to see these trends and apply this knowledge to future Downtown Bike Network planning.” Read more…

Each purple dot is a location surveyed by the LACBC in 2009. The more purple, the more cyclists.

This September, the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition (LACBC) will be conducting the 2^nd City of L.A. Bike Count.  In 2009 we counted over 14,000 cyclists at 50 intersections throughout the city.  It’s time to hit the streets and do it again!

Over the last two years, many of the count locations have seen significant improvements from a batch of new sharrows to the freshly painted bike lanes on 7^th Street.  This second round of the Bike Count is vital because beyond pinpointing the busiest intersections, for the first time we will be able to track changes in ridership.  We have the opportunity to collect the hard data to show the positive effects of improved bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, and to continue advocating for more projects.

The more volunteers we have, the more data we can collect and the more improvements we can make!  We need your help to get out and count again. We’ll be conducting counts during the week of September 12^th and holding orientations sessions across the city on Saturday, September 10th. The following shifts are available for over 50 locations:

Read more…

Bike Commuter John Vu from his Facebook Page

(Angelika Sjostrom is a senior at California State University Northridge where she studies journalism. A recreational bike rider, doing research for the story has inspired a budding interest in cycling culture. Angelika resides in LA’s historic Angelino Heights.  This is her first contribution to Streetsblog.  Any opinions found within are that of the author. – DN)

In a city with a population of four million, the majority of whom commute via car or bus, Los Angeles resident John Vu does not follow the crowd. An avid bicycle rider, he travels his 12-mile commute to work on two wheels. “Riding a bike is an important part of getting around the city for me” said Vu.

Vu, 36, is a living, breathing testament to the social, economic, and health benefits of traveling by bike. “I started cycling in 2006 and haven’t looked back since,” Vu said. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Vu learned to drive a car as a teenager and never entertained the idea of using a bike as his main mode of transportation. That is, until two of his friends convinced him to try it out. “It was definitely an evolutionary process,” Vu said, who started riding for fun and eventually began using his bike to commute to work.

Now, Vu rides his bike to work five days a week (weather permitting) and even uses Twitter to keep statistics of his ride. For example, one Tweet read: “Rush hour Beverly Blvd. to Santa Monica Blvd. ride to work. Least contentious commute ever. Door to desk in 52 minutes.” Read more…