Are they out of their minds?!!!!!.  This is the vulnerable on-street bike lane portion of the Orange Line bike path, the most important bikeway in the Valley.  This bike lane connects the last station on the Metro Red Line (the NoHo subway station) with the Class 1 shared use path of the Orange bike path   NoHo is the highest density transit and bicycle hub in the Valley.  If they need 80% percent or whatever to drive the limit before they can give tickets, hasn’t anyone in the City of LA ever heard of traffic calming?  Ventura Boulevard is 35 mph.  Why should the Orange Line bike lane be any higher?

Did we just spend multi- millions of dollars creating the Orange Line bike path just so we could pretend it doesn’t exist?  Who puts these things on the agenda?

Note this treatment in Boston, if youre on a bike, youre always in a bike lane, theres no question about placements
http://g.co/maps/3w54k

Educating adults about better cycling techniques is something vital that needs to happen. There is always a noble focus on kids, but the reality is that adults are the primary users of these lanes, and are deserving of an education in safe riding techniques. We do this for drivers, we should do it for cyclists.

That’s a problem, not one that applies to bike lanes everywhere, but something we should learn from when it comes to some of the newer bike infrastructure that goes in.  The Spring Street Buffered Bike Lane received how much media attention vs. the Boyle Heights lane?  That media attention was generated by a community that was working with LADOT/Mayor’s office/whoever on the project for years.  No such effort happened in BH and it created a level of confusion that could have been avoided, maybe even just with a press conference or a flyering effort or something.

I strongly disagree with an implication that less-than-perfect bicyclist usage should stand in the way of bike lane implementation. Did we stop building streets/freeways because drivers used them incorrectly/unsafely? (I hear those “scofflaw” car drivers sometimes exceed the prescribed speed limit… sometimes don’t come to full stops at stop signs.) 

That some cyclists don’t use bike lanes in the best and safest way (in Boyle Heights where bike lanes have only since what September 2011 – all of nearly 6 months) – is not a big problem. My suggested solution: build more bike lanes! Then riders will come to expect the lanes and will observe more folks using them – and over time more cyclists will feel safe using the bike lane correctly.

Yes – there should be better and more outreach – but keep building the new lanes while we improve the outreach.

I think this post raises an interesting issue, but there’s a fundamental trade-off between more outreach on each new facility and more facilities implemented, period. It seems to me that the bike community has really pushed for “more mileage per year,” and that’s what DOT is responding to. The cheapest, quickest way to maximize mileage implemented per year (given a total budget for bikeways that is probably effectively fixed) is to do it lean and mean, with little or no outreach. I’m not advocating this strategy, necessarily, just pointing out the dynamic. 

All that said, we bike advocates can and should keep pushing for more mileage AND more outreach.