Nevertheless, we present the Streetsblog voter guide.

Best of luck voting tomorrow. I look forward to reading the results Wednesday morning in a Holiday Inn in West Virginia.

First, let’s start with the obvious. If you’re reading this piece, you probably support Eric Garcetti. When we polled readers in the primary, Garcetti earned a clear majority 50.2%, just enough that we’re not polling again this time (he won our primary straight out.) In addition, he’s won smaller polls where we asked you who gave the better anwers to questions in televised debates, even when I though Greuel gave a better  answer. And why not? After all, he does have a decent track record as a Council Member and President and even helps wounded pedestrians in his free time.

Just to round things out, he filled out our candidate survey. Greuel didn’t. Even if his answers were so generic they made my eyes roll to the back of my head, at least he answered them…

Which isn’t to say that one can’t make a compelling case for Greuel. Decorated Streetsblog contributor Dana Gabbard makes the case for Wendy Greuel and the Crenshaw Subway Coalition smells a rat in Garcetti’s support for a grade-separated Crenshaw Line. In the aforementioned L.A. Times piece, Sunyoung Yang of the Bus Riders Union implies that Greuel was more supportive of efforts on Wilshire and farebox recovery ratio as Transportation Committee Chair than Garcetti was as Council President.

The two also differ on their positions on how best to create a functioning transit line along the 405 Sepulveda Pass Corridor. Despite Metro’s efforts to make the pass completely unusable for northbound traffic the last several years, and their demonstration of how nice L.A. is when the pass is closed; people still drive on the darned thing. Metro plans to one day build a rail corridor through the pass. Both Garcetti and Greuel think a tunnel is the way to go. However, Garcetti wants a massive heavy rail tunnel. Greuel favors a smaller light rail tunnel with a Bus Rapid Transit route over the mountain.

When you compare the answers the candidates gave at the American Institute of Architects forums fifteen months ago (Garcetti, Greuel), and compare those answers with what was said in our video series (listen to the long-form version of their answers, here,) with what they say at debates…it’s clear that neither has spent a lot of time working on the transportation issue these last 15 months and is instead relying on the expertise gained over the last decade in City Hall. The good news is, both have decent records on transit, bicycling, and Livable Streets.

Whether a decade of City Hall experience is enough to keep L.A. moving in the right direction is an open question.

But what we do know is this. At least the election is over tomorrow.

What to do on your bike now that National Bike Week is over? Los Angeles’ Bike Community is an all year round, non-stop sprawling cement roadways of FUN! I am starting a new weekly blog to inform you of the whats and the happenings you can do on two wheels.

Monday nights on the East Side, if you think you have what it takes to go up with the best of the best than Wolfpack Hustle  is who you should be mashing your legs with. Never having missed a Monday night, roadies, fixie foos, spandex, mountain bikers, bike riders from all over the county participate in 40 plus miles of pure adrenaline rush. From Tang’s Donuts at Sunset and Fountain, you’ll find the fearless crew making their way into the valley or to the beach, through LAX, down to Watts, around downtown and back. Recommended that you bring a bike that can keep up, lots of lights, a helmet, stuffs to fix your own flat, etc., etc.

I’ve personally completed ONE. It’s doable. It’s fun. You will see parts of LA that you’ve never even heard of and experience a confidence in yourself you’ve never felt before the next morning. No doubt, it’s tough. But the payoff is priceless. BRING YOUR HUSTLE

Photo: John Prolley/Wolfpack Hustle

Wednesday night, in DTLA, Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition aka LACBC, will be hosting BIKE SAFE: California Rules of the Road. Starting at 7pm, five speakers will be presenting their insight on California’s Bicycle rules and how those affect you, what you should know, as well as your rights and responsibilities as bicyclist. Offering Healthy snacks and refreshments along with free bicycle parking, this LACBC event is free to their members, $10 for general public. 

Photo: Paul de Valera

Sunday, all day: CHOPPERCABRAS!!!! the 12th Annual Spring Thingis presented by the Valley’s Atomic Cycles. Starting at noon, this bicycle event asks you to dress up as your favorite Science Fiction Character and bring a bike in good working order. There will be a leisurely bike ride, BBQ with free hot dogs and witnessing The Ring of Death: where crazy, insane bike events will take place – enter the ring at your own risk!!

If you have an upcoming bicycle event, please contact me or if you’re interested in other awesome bike events, please check out the Midnight Ridazz calendar. And check back next Monday for the what’s to do on a bike in and around and all over the Los Angeles area!

Every year, we struggle with how best to cover Bike Week. The series of special events, culminating in Bike to Work Day, is always something to behold. But at the same time, without a small army dedicating to covering the event, how does a website such as Streetsblog give fair and equal coverage? Is The Blessing of the Bikes more important than Pasadena’s Ladies Night or just getting hug from Long Beach Mayor Bob Foster? Who knows?

So this year, we asked you to get us pictures, or video, from Bike Week and you responded. The above picture collection includes images from our own Gary Kavanagh, South L.A.’s Community Health Council, Metro and even the L.A. Times’ transportation writer, Laura Nelson (the view over the handle bars.) We couldn’t include all of the pictures, although we did our best to include at least one shot from everyone who submitted.

But even as I was uploading this video, I was getting more submissions. So in addition to hitting play, read on after the jump for even more Bike to Work imagery.

Photo: Laura Jardine/Santa Clarita

Photo: Laura Jardine/Santa Clarita

Photo: J.T. Goodman/Left Bank Boutique in Atwater Village

In a debate that seems oddly reminiscant of the Wilbur Bike Lanes controversy from last year, motorists in the South Bay are fuming that a new road diet is “creating traffic” for forty minutes a day and “unsafe conditions” because unsafe drivers are driving even more unsafely.

At Biking in L.A., Ted Rogers explains the controversy:

A pair of underused streets — Westmont and Capitol Drives — recently underwent reductions to calm high-speed traffic, dropping one lane in each direction and installing the typical door zone bike lanes.

And needless to say, motorists are up in arms, even though the streets are almost always empty. And even though it should be bike riders complaining about the lack of buffers between them and flinging car doors.

Meanwhile, the Neighborhood Council has asked Council Member Joe Buscaino’s office to investigate the congestion “caused” by the diet. Apparently the video of Buscaino driving around the area letting everyone know thing’s are o.k. isn’t doing the trick. Not that we should pick on his office for the try, it’s hard to imagine either former Valley Councilman Greig Smith or current Councilman Mitch Englander doing the same.

Tonight, those opposing the lanes plan a scripted media event at 4 pm to draw attention to, I’m not sure what they think they’re going to draw attention to. Meanwhile, a group of local cyclists is planning a short ride up and down the lanes during the protest, so that any media that happen upon the scene can that there are many people who find the lanes safe and important.

If you ride in the San Pedro area, you’re strongly encouraged to meet at the Albertson’s parking lot a tWestmont Drive and S. Western Ave at 3:45 pm this afternoon.

Research has shown that women are more comfortable biking on protected bike lanes, but the male-dominated engineering profession has discouraged this type of street design. Photo copyright Dmitry Gudkov

A study published in this month’s American Journal of Public Health finds that highly influential transportation engineers relied on shoddy research to defend policies that discourage the development of protected bike lanes in the U.S. In their paper, the researchers point out that male-dominated engineering panels have repeatedly torpedoed street designs that have greater appeal to female cyclists.

The research team, led by Harvard public health researcher Anne Lusk, examines four engineering guides published by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials between 1974 and 1999. All of these guides, treated like gospel by engineers across the country, either discourage or offer no advice about protected bike lanes, despite the fact that research has shown that women, in particular, are much more likely to bike given facilities that provide some separation from vehicle traffic.

Lusk found that many of AASHTO’s official claims regarding the purported safety problems of protected bike lanes were offered without supporting evidence. AASHTO refused to consider data demonstrating the proven safety record of protected bike lanes outside of the United States. And since there have been almost no protected bike lanes in the U.S. until quite recently, AASHTO based its position against protected bikeways on domestic street designs like sidewalk bikeways, not real bike lanes designed specifically to integrate physically protected bicycling into the roadway.

The researchers came to this rather damning conclusion: “State-adopted recommendations against cycle tracks, primarily the recommendations of AASHTO, are not explicitly based on rigorous and up-to-date research.”

Lusk and her team carried out a safety study of their own, examining crash reports on protected bike lanes in 19 U.S. cities. They found that protected bike lanes had a collision rate of about 2.3 per million kilometers biked — lower than the crash rates other researchers have observed on streets without any bike lanes. (Those rates vary from 3.75 to 54 crashes per million kilometers.)

Lusk’s research also suggests the lack of gender balance in the engineering profession may have contributed to the resistance to protected bike infrastructure. Researchers found that in 1991 and 1999, AASHTO’s Bikeway Planning Criteria and Guidelines were written by a committee made up of 91 and 97 percent men, respectively.

“The AASHTO recommendations may have been influenced by the predominantly male composition (more than 90%) of the report’s authors,” Lusk writes.

AASHTO’s refusal to endorse protected bike lanes has been a major deterrent to their adoption across the United States and has contributed to the nation’s low cycling rates, undermining public health, the report suggests. Where protected bike lanes have been adopted in places like New York, Washington, and Chicago, cycling rates have increased (as much as 200 percent on one DC street). But many cities with more conservative transportation engineering departments are hesitant to implement designs that haven’t been explicitly endorsed by AASHTO. Even the organization’s most recent bikeway guide does not include protected bike lanes, even though they are now in place in 32 cities around the U.S.

“Without inclusion of cycle tracks in the commonly adopted AASHTO guide, without US-based cycle track research, and without public health and transportation policies in support of cycle tracks, it will continue to be difficult to create cycle track networks,” Lusk and her fellow researchers write. “As a result of these and many other historical reasons, the default bicycle facility in the United States remains a bike lane painted on a road, in which many bicyclists do not feel comfortable or safe.”

TTI may try to paint a picture of ever-worsening congestion, but their own data show that reduced VMT is having a positive impact. Image: TTI

There’s so much to unpack in the landmark report released by U.S. PIRG and the Frontier Group earlier this week on transportation trends. Tuesday, we focused on the disparity between government transportation forecasts and recent realities. We also took a look at a few reasons to believe that the millennial generation – those aged 13 to 30 right now — will continue to drive less than previous generations. One of those reasons is that technology has reduced our need to drive in many different ways.

The report also makes clear the need to recalibrate our strategies around congestion. When roads get congested, calls for highway expansion grow to a deafening pitch. The reality that transit and road pricing are better solutions for congestion don’t compute amid the panic.

The most recent Texas Transportation Institute congestion report came out under the headline, “As Traffic Jams Worsen, Commuters Allowing Extra Time for Urgent Trips.” Lots of doom-and-gloom language when what they really mean is that congestion is easing.

That’s right. Reduced congestion has been one of many benefits of the reduction in miles driven over the past eight years. As of 2011 – the latest year for which data is available – congestion was about as light as it was in 1998. And it had been down at that level for four years. The annual toll on car commuters went from 43.1 hours of delay to 42 hours in 2007 and then dipped way down to 37.6 – and stayed there for the next three years. In 2011 it inched up by less than half an hour to 38.0 [PDF].

So where is all this “urgency” about “worsening” congestion coming from?

Maybe everyone is just so used to talking about increased congestion – and using that to justify costly road-building bonanzas – that they just haven’t wrapped their heads around the new reality yet. And it’s no wonder, per capita driving rose 85 percent, to over 10,000 miles a year, between 1970 and 2004. To mitigate congestion, that driving boom was followed by a highway boom – the PIRG/Frontier report notes that between 1980 and 2010, the nation built the equivalent of “a new lane of freeway stretching from New York to Los Angeles every single year.”

But then VMT started to diminish, due to a number of factors, and voila, traffic diminished too. “Further reductions in driving could lead to additional easing of congestion without massive investments in new highway capacity, as long as roads are maintained in a state of good repair,” they write.

Here’s a caveat about all this good news that congestion is down: Lower congestion has a tendency to induce driving.

“Congestion is a chicken-and-egg kind of thing,” report co-author Phineas Baxandall of U.S. PIRG told Streetsblog. “It’s easier to say that there’ll be less urgency about road congestion than to say exactly what will happen to road congestion.”

The best way to make sure congestion stays down is to implement road pricing. Now that more and more people are driving less anyway, maybe it would be a good time for the U.S. to dip its toes into this practice that’s worked so well in parts of Europe.

Road pricing could also be helpful when it comes to large truck traffic. As Baxandall and co-author Tony Dutzik note in “A New Direction”:

Heavy-duty trucks impose far greater damage on roads than light-duty vehicles. As a result, a future in which there are fewer miles driven overall, but more of them in heavy trucks, could result in similar or greater wear and tear on highways. However, the number of miles driven in the heaviest trucks has actually declined faster than overall vehicle travel in recent years, falling by 11 percent between 2007 and 2011.

Meanwhile, a 2009 government-appointed commission declared that vehicle miles traveled by heavy-duty trucks would increase by an average of 1.8 percent per year.

Freight traffic is likely subject to some the same trends as other driving. As people move to cities, there’s less pressure to get goods farther out to suburbia — though the shift out of the suburbs and into the cities probably hasn’t been pronounced enough yet to make a real impact. Changes like online shopping have brought some changes in trucking, with heavy trucks going to centralized warehouses, rather than individual stores, and then lighter trucks making deliveries. A push toward freight rail and water travel might also be helping reduce the number of trucks on the road.

But truly, lower truck traffic is probably still a result of the ongoing economic slump and might rebound with a stronger economy, even while other driving rates stay low.

It might not matter that much. As of 2011, “combination trucks,” or semis, were responsible for about 5.6 percent of total VMT, according to the FHWA. Although they have a disproportionate impact on road wear and tear – and on congestion – they still make up a fairly small share of total vehicle traffic. So even an economic rebound could see congestion rates stay far lower than the 2005-2006 peak.

A typical pit stop on the Westside

Don’t get me wrong.

I love Bike to Work Day. I had a blast yesterday trying to hit as many Westside pit stops as I could before making my way back to my home office to get down to work.

Which isn’t exactly the point, I know.

The idea is to encourage people who would otherwise drive to their places of employment to try bicycling by providing incentives and information, in the hope that once they try it, they’ll like it. And hopefully, keep doing it.

I get that.

And I enjoyed the opportunity to partake in a free rolling breakfast and gather up mini-Clif Bars and other assorted bike swag, while talking with other riders I might not otherwise meet on the roadway. As well as offering my insights to anyone looking for a little advice on bike commuting while, sadly, finding no takers.

Everyone I met seemed to know as much about the subject as I do.

Which is part of the problem.

As with many bike advocacy efforts, we too often find ourselves preaching to the choir; rewarding those who already ride rather than getting more people to leave their cars behind, if only for one day.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Bicycling, and bicyclists, should be celebrated.

Whether or not some impatient drivers, or even the wider community at large chooses to acknowledge it at times — particularly when it involves removing a traffic lane in order to carve out a little space for those of us on two wheels.

The Santa Monica college pit stop sets up after a gun scare on campus

Every person who takes to a bike, rather than a motor vehicle, on the way to work or to run an errand removes another car from the traffic grid, reducing congestion for those who don’t. And at the same time, helps improve air quality, public health and quality of life for the surrounding community.

Not to mention countless other ancillary benefits, from supporting local merchants to staving off global warming, albeit to an infinitesimal degree.

All of which is reason for celebration and encouragement.

On the other hand, as I observed my fellow riders, I was struck by how similar they were to me. Mostly white, mostly male, apparently middle class.

In other words, people who appeared to have the luxury of choosing to ride a bike.

Missing entirely from any pit stop I visited was anyone who appeared to ride because it was their only personal transportation option. Those who ride to work on a daily basis because, for whatever reason, they can’t afford a car or can’t get a license.

The often immigrant, usually low income riders you see everywhere, but seldom notice.

Maybe it was a function of where I was, riding in a more affluent section of the city at a more traditional commuting hour. Maybe more effort had been made to reach out to Los Invisibles in other parts of town.

But here on the Westside, it felt like a lost opportunity to reach out to a community too often ignored in our attempts to promote bicycling and improve safety for all riders.

I know that’s not the point of Bike to Work Day.

But maybe it should be part of it.

Isaiah (center) speaks with Malcolm Carson (L), Tafarai Bayne (R) and Andres Ramirez (far right) at a bike-to-work-day pit stop sponsored by Community Health Councils and TRUST South L.A. Sahra Sulaiman/LA Streetsblog

Stop any cyclist in South L.A. and ask them their thoughts on bike-to-work day and I can almost guarantee you’ll get a snort, a dismissive hand wave, and an, “Aw, man, I do this every day!”

It certainly describes the reaction I got from most people I spoke with who were riding in the area yesterday. And, it describes a lot of the reactions we got while handing out snacks, maps, and patch kits to commuters heading home on their bikes last night at the corner of Vermont Ave. and Martin Luther King Blvd. in South L.A.

So used to their daily ride were the commuters, in fact, Andres Ramirez and Malcolm Carson of Community Health Councils (CHC) — sponsors of the bike-to-work-day pit stop along with TRUST South L.A. — often found themselves chasing after cyclists and trying to convince them to stop, sometimes without luck.

Andres Ramirez (CHC) points to where new lanes will be along MLK Blvd. to a flower vendor on a bike. Sahra Sulaiman/LA Streetsblog

“It’s FREE!” usually did the trick.

Once they managed to get them to stop, it was the cyclists’ turn to be curious about what we were doing there.

“So, bike-to-work-day is…um…it’s a thing?” a puzzled Isaiah asked, pulling out his calendar.

He regularly rides his bike or the bus between his home in Hyde Park and the south edge of downtown, where he works.

We tried explaining it was a once-a-year thing to encourage people to try cycling.

“Oh,” he said, putting his calendar back in his backpack.

He was suddenly more interested in the “Every Lane is a Bike Lane” bumper sticker.

Malcolm Carson (CHC) speaks with a woman taking her son out to run some errands at a Bike-to-Work-Day pit stop. Sahra Sulaiman/LA Streetsblog

“Can I put this on my bag?” he asked excitedly.

He was tired of people harassing him as he rode along MLK Blvd, he said. Especially because there wasn’t really anywhere else he could ride — he’d recently been cited for riding on the sidewalk near Crenshaw.

“I’ve seen these big billboards saying I can use the lane,” he said, “but people still honk at me to get out of the road.”

He was glad to hear that bike lanes were going in along MLK. Maybe he’d finally be able to ride in peace.

Yes, cars don’t respect cyclists at all, agreed a bicycle flower vendor (above). More lanes were definitely needed in the area.

Even with lanes, one woman (left) with her adorable son in tow wasn’t sure she’d feel safe enough to get in the road.

“My husband rides on the road,” she said. “But I stay on the sidewalks. It’s much safer that way.”

* * * * * *

"This is my car!" Moammar said, patting the handlebars of his bike. We caught him on his way home to Culver City after apartment hunting south of USC. Sahra Sulaiman/LA Streetsblog

We did meet a few people who were cycling by choice.

“I’m going home and then going to work out,” a very fit Moammar (above) told me. He was headed back to Culver City after meeting with a landlord about a new apartment.

Another poised young man who rides with Major Motion was doing an 82-mile loop. He had been training with the group for about 9 months — even racing occasionally — despite being only 16 years old. Time trials were his favorite, he said.

“82 miles…” Tafarai Bayne repeated as we watched the young man clip back in to his pedals and head down Vermont.

At rush hour on Vermont, no less, I thought.

Damn.

Malcolm and Andres speak with a young cyclist. Sahra Sulaiman/LA Streetsblog

While those choosing cycling by choice — especially the young fixie riders — are growing in numbers, they still represent a minority in lower-income areas of color like South L.A.

Thus, the kinds of factors the League of American Bicyclists lists as being behind people’s reluctance to take up cycling don’t always apply, namely: “It’s too far,” “It takes too long,” “No showers,” “No bike parking,” “I have to dress up,” or “It’s raining.”

The concerns of his bike commuting customers (or commuters choosing between transit and cycling) are much more basic, says Stalin Medina of the Watts Cyclery.

Number one is the cost of maintenance.

A list of Bike Commuting Concerns to be Overcome from the League of American Bicyclists. Click image to see photo on their FB page.

“Six dollars is a lot for some people,” he said referring to the cost of changing a flat tire out. Especially because many of his customers are laborers who ride along corridors like Alameda, which tend to be in terrible shape and are often littered with industrial debris.

A few flat tires a month could really set back people who are living hand-to-mouth.

Moreover, it usually isn’t just the tire that is the problem, Medina says. Often, their rims are damaged from riding along bad roads. And, many have cheap second-, third- or fourth-hand department store bikes which are of such poor quality that the upkeep is more than the bike cost them in the first place.

“We really need co-ops in the area,” he concluded.

I had hoped to help him open one last fall. It would have been the first in South L.A. But, just as we began making plans for that, Medina, an Army reservist, got word that he would be sent to Afghanistan to bring the troops and equipment home. So, the co-op plans got put on hold.

Others in the area — the East Side Riders, Los Ryderz, and members of the Black Kids on Bikes — have all talked about launching co-ops, as well, because they recognize the great need in the area. But, as anyone that helps out at or visits other co-ops around L.A. is aware, they require a lot of know-how and resources just to get them off the ground. Keeping them going requires a lot more.

So, maybe if Metro and the city (and the League of American Bicyclists) are serious about promoting biking to work as a viable option, then facilitating the development of co-ops in lower-income areas might be far more productive than offering cyclists tips for how to keep a change of clothes at the office or Clif Bars and Fruit Snacks (although these were yummy and appreciated!).

Biking to work should be one of those things that simplifies your life, not complicates it. The easier, safer, and more cost-effective we can make it for people who would benefit most from having cycling as an option, the more sustainable a form of transit it will be.

Real Ryda G-Man rolling up on his low rider. Sahra Sulaiman/LA Streetsblog

Walk Score's heat map Bike Score of Santa Monica gives an 83/100

Santa Monica was just awarded a bump in it’s Bicycle Friendly Community (BFC) classification by the League of American Bicycling, from bronze to silver. Coinciding with that news the walkability web application Walk Score released a new round of Bike Score rankings which now includes Santa Monica, which received an average score of 82.5 (rounded up to 83), high enough to come 5th in analyzed cities. Now there are probably few people more excited than myself about the real progress being made toward normalizing bicycling in Santa Monica, but I feel compelled to maintain some skepticism toward popular systems of classification for bicycle friendliness.

Relative to other cities ranked in the LAB system, the sliver may be an appropriate and deserved award, but about that bike score putting us in the same league as the platinum awarded cities of Davis,CA and Boulder, CO, I think it’s a little early to pop the champagne bottles just yet. Some e-mail blasts, Facebook shares, and a locals news post have already circulating touting Santa Monica ranking #5 on Bike Score, so I think it’s worth putting this in some needed context.

The first and most obvious issue here is cities are not all alike, and trying to compare them as such often ends up as in exercise in trying to put square blocks in round holes. Santa Monica has a higher score overall than Portland, OR, but Santa Monica is a small city boxed in by the city of Los Angeles in the patchwork of municipalities that form L.A. county. Our score covers a smaller foot print without any isolated sprawl or hilly regions. So while the core of Portland actually scores higher, the number that spits out for each city includes in some cases very disparate areas like steep hillside homes that are tanked with topography penalties in the Bike Score methodology. Even among cities more approximate to each other, comparing averages will always leave out important details.

What is bicycle friendly or bikability, is inherently subjective, and can mean very different things for different people. What’s bikable enough for me is not good enough for many others. We should be asking bikeability for whom? Are we making it accessible for all who wish to, or just certain groups. Do parents feel comfortable allowing their kids to bike to school? At what age? Are facilities only accessible to certain neighborhoods and not other? Are political, social, racial, gender or economic inequities or other differences apparent in where a city makes investment in improving bicycling conditions or who feels they can ride? These questions and many others are critically important, but nuanced and defy simplistic efforts to rank a city as a whole or comparing one city to another.

The League of American Bicycling awards are arrived at with applications judged by a panel that consults with local reviewers for a sense of the on the ground reality of a place. I still recall feeling the bronze designation in 2009 was not deserved at the time, with years of little meaningful progress just prior, and on the heels of the crack downs by the SMPD against the Santa Monica critical mass that burned a lot of people in the local cycling community and the volunteers of Bikerowave, then located in Santa Monica. The acknowledgement this time around at least feels like it accompanies some real positive momentum.

Observing theses Bicycle Friendly Community designations a little more in my time as an advocate, in some ways they seem really to be a carrot approach to entice cities into deserving their status and reaching further. Now this sort of political nudging through awards is not necessarily a bad thing, especially when it really works. However when the bar is rather low as it is the U.S., those sitting at the top also run out of a next level to reach, and I’ve occasionally heard bike advocates in Portland lamenting a sense of complacency that comes with sitting at the top. The league is seeking to address this latter concern with a new diamond ranking that would be more competitive with top bicycling cities in the world, with requirements that would be be contextual and challenging to an individual city seeking the award. How that will really play out remains to be seen.

Now Bike Score is entering the picture with a formulaic data crunching approaching to ranking the bikability or bicycle friendliness of cities and their neighborhoods. The seeming appearance of impartiality and scientific methodology , that spitting out a number derived from other numbers can have, has a certain seductiveness to it. The quest to rank everything and put a definitive number on it is not inherently problematic, and lies at the core of so much of our scientific understanding. However it often leads urbanist commentaries of all kinds, not just bicycling, into unwarranted cheerleading or jeering territory, when we do not critically analyze what sort of data is going in and how it is going out and toward what aims.

There are purposeful or inadvertent intents and biases that underline how data is processed by software into a result, and just because something is data driven, doesn’t make it right, and what “right” is, is not a fixed target. Measuring bikability or bike friendliness isn’t like measuring the CO2 ppm in the atmosphere or the polarity of our planet, it’s a bit more like measuring that famous question of what is pornography, and you know it when you see it (but someone else might see it a little differently). That Bike Score spits out a result that places Santa Monica so much higher than it sits within the LAB system, clearly highlights that the same place can be interpreted in very different ways with different assumptions made.

Walk Score is a company with investors, it is not an organization simply promoting walkablity and bikeability for the sake of doing so. They are selling a product, and their product is providing scores that have become very popular in real estate promotion as the fall out of the sprawl driven housing bust coincided with increasing demand for multi-modal places. This is not a judgement on whether this is necessarily a good thing or a bad thing  (though there are critics like Walk Farce), but there are differing motivations between a membership advocacy organization like the LAB, and a company like Walk Score.

The Bike Score is derived from layering bike facility maps, Census survey data of bike commuters (which is a very simplistic measure), topography, and the proximity to services that is at the core of Walk Scores. I do appreciate that individual heat maps of each attribute can be displayed individually, helping explain what underlines it, but how each is weighted relative to the others and why for the final score is presently rather opaque. How those factors are weighted, and which factors are missing, matter a great deal for people with different outlooks on what bike friendly means for their own willingness or enjoyment to ride.

My skepticism toward all of this doesn’t mean I don’t think there shouldn’t be tools like Bike Score, or that we shouldn’t use them at all, but what concerns me is when such tools and their results are promoted out of context, or their capabilities overstated and hyped. Bike Score at this time is a crude instrument built on inadequate data.  Results, especially those that compare very different cities with different contexts, should be taken with a grain of salt. Too often the urge is to celebrate any exceedingly positive result, no matter how weak the foundation, and I would like to see bike advocacy dialogue elevate with it’s growing presence to a more critical and discerning view of where we are at, and where we aim to go.

Santa Monica is making progress, and stands out particularly within the region. On that much I think there would be little debate and the city and the advocates working to foster those changes deserve credit and acknowledgment. I just urge taking a cautious approach before getting too far ahead of ourselves with buying into city rankings that aren’t fully baked yet. Really the whole project of trying to number cities into neatly sequential order is rarely a helpful enterprise on complex or subjective subjects, and I wish we get away from that mentality all together.

A 2011 study by Insurance Institute for Highway Safety comparing cities with red light cameras to those without them found that in the 14 largest U.S. cities, the cameras reduced fatal red-light-running collisions by 24 percent. Click to enlarge. Image: IIHS

Gawker dished out some richly-deserved ridicule to Tennessee State Senator Jon Lundberg yesterday, following reports that he is co-sponsoring legislation to outlaw the specific speeding camera that nabbed him doing 60 in a 45 zone last October. Lundberg denied that the incident had any impact on his decision to sponsor in the legislation, and contested the violation to boot.

But the case is a telling one. State governments around the country have demonstrated hostility to automated enforcement programs. Twelve states specifically forbid the use of speed enforcement cameras, except in very limited circumstances, according to the Governor’s Highway Safety Association. Nine states prohibit red light cameras. Others, like New York, have yet to enact legislation that would enable cities to use these traffic enforcement tools.

A proposed ban in Iowa failed narrowly in the Senate last year and one is currently under consideration in Ohio.

The Ohio legislation, framed as a defense of due process and privacy, has received mostly favorable coverage in the press and has enjoyed the support of groups like the Ohio ACLU and Ohio PIRG. One Ohio PIRG official characterized speed cameras as “cash cows designed to rip off drivers.” Ohio Lawmaker Ron Hood went so far as to assert that red light cameras are themselves a safety hazard.

Adrian Lund, president of the Insurance Institute on Highway Safety, told the Washington Post last year that these kind of debates tend to get distorted: “Somehow, the people who get tickets because they have broken the law have been cast as the victims.”

Lost in these debates is the fact that automated enforcement saves lives. A 2011 study by IIHS comparing cities with red light cameras to those without them found that in the 14 largest U.S. cities, the cameras reduced fatal red-light-running collisions by 24 percent. Even more impressive, they seemed to promote safe driver behavior more generally. The researchers found that cities with red light cameras saw 17 percent fewer fatal crashes at signalized intersections, per capita, than cities without cameras.

Between 2004 and 2008, that added up to 159 lives saved in those 14 cities alone. If automated enforcement had been installed in all 99 of the U.S. cities with populations over 200,000, some 815 lives would have been saved over those four years, the report found.

More than a dozen states have outlawed using cameras to enforce speed limits or red lights. The red and green areas of the map show where camera enforcement is in effect. Image: Insurance Institute for Highway Safety

Russ Rader, vice president for communications for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, calls the backlash “a lot of hot air from a vocal minority.” According to Rader, the debate about whether traffic cameras improve safety is settled.

“Study after study demonstrates that automated traffic enforcement works to make streets safer,” he said.

As for the claim that speed cameras are unsafe, Rader says that’s simply “not true.”

“That’s not supported by any of the research that has been done by traffic safety experts, the federal government, and universities,” he said.

A few studies have found that red light cameras do increase rear end collisions, but the data is not consistent. In addition, these types of collisions tend to be minor fender-benders, which pose far smaller risks than the type of high-speed, side-impact collisions that the cameras prevent, says Kara Macek, a spokeswoman with the Governor’s Highway Safety Association.

“I know it’s a contentious issue,” she said. “But typically the arguments against it — ‘It’s a revenue generator,’ ‘It’s a privacy concern’ — are outweighed by the safety benefits.”

Macek’s organization recommends some precautions that can help communities avoid controversies like the one in Ohio. Macek says cameras should only be installed in problem areas, like dangerous intersections, and only after a public information campaign. The GHSA also recommends that all revenues from the ticketing be returned to programs that improve street safety.

Macek added that the cameras are an important tool for communities, especially as resources for law enforcement become more strained.

In Ohio, irate drivers have tended to drown out messages like that. But local governments, law enforcement agencies, and victims’ advocates have testified that an outright ban on automated traffic enforcement would be a major setback.

Officials from the Toledo Police Department reported a noticeable decrease in traffic collisions after the cameras were installed. The city of Akron, which instituted the program after a 10-year-old boy was killed, uses the cameras only in school zones. All of the half million dollars generated was used to support child safety programs in that city, officials say.

Meanwhile, at a recent hearing in Columbus, Sue Oberhauser, co-chair of a national group that advocates for traffic safety, spoke for victims who can’t testify — including her daughter, who was killed by a reckless driver.

“If our daughter Sarah could be here today, she would ask each of you, ‘What about my right to live my life and raise my children?’” Oberhauser said, according to a report in the Plain Dealer. “She cannot be here today because she was killed by a man running a light at 55 miles per hour.”

• Did NFSR Make Their Case Against Expo EIR? One Legal Blogger Thinks So (Thomas Law)
• Op/Ed: Expo Brings New Opportunities to South L.A. (Wave)
• L.A.: The Worst City in U.S. for Dog Attacks on Letter Carriers (NBC4)
• Is it time to panic yet? The 405 will be closed overnight on Friday and Saturday (Metro)
• Movement underway to lower BAC limit for drunk driving to .05 (LA Weekly)
• Why is isn’t California more bike friendly? Calbike points a finger at the Governor (Examiner)
• USC students map the money in Tuesday’s mayoral election (LA Curbed)
• Angry motorists plan protest over San Pedro road diet (Daily Breeze)
• Meanwhile, cyclists plan a peaceful counter protest (BikinginLA)
• It ain’t in the budget, but Bunker Hill Metro Station could get pedestrian walkway (The Source)
• Interactive map shows which L.A. neighborhoods bike to work (LA Curbed)
• $25k reward offered in violent attack on Metro bus driver earlier this month (KTLA)
• Daily carnage: Carson driver killed in fiery crash (Daily Breeze)
• Daily carnage 2: Fleeing motorists arrested after crashing into gas pump (Daily Breeze)
• If you think Toronto’s anti-bike mayor must be on crack, you may be right (Toronto Star)

Eric Garcetti at the Empowerment Congress Forum on January 19

Earlier this morning, the Crenshaw Subway Coalition, the umbrella organization for South L.A. groups fighting for grade separated light rail from 48th to 59th Streets for the future Crenshaw Line, released grades for both leading candidates for Mayor of Los Angeles. Both candidates scored an “A-” for their support for adding a Leimert Park Station, but Wendy Greuel scored a “B+” for her support for grade separating the entire line while Eric Garcetti scored only a “C.”

Damien Goodmon, the executive director for the Crenshaw Subway Coalition, explains why the grades on the tunnel are more important than the grades for the station.

“…the MTA board is currently scheduled to decide the fate of the Leimert Park station at theirJune 27 meeting, which is before the next Mayor takes office, so their positions on the station may be moot. The more revealing question regarding the candidate’s willingness to put their political capital on the line for the Crenshaw community is where do they stand on the 11-block Crenshaw tunnel,” said Goodmon. . “Both appear committed to making the Leimert Park station happen if it doesn’t in June, but there are key differences in Greuel and Garcetti’s written positions on the Crenshaw Blvd tunnel.”

In May of 2011, the Metro Board of Directors voted to approve the environmental documents for the Crenshaw Line which included grade separated light rail except for the 11 blocks between 48th and 59th. The Board also watered down an amendment authored by Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, who represents the Crenshaw community, that would have required a station to be built at Leimert Park. The approved motion cleared the station environmentally, but didn’t require the construction to be part of the bids from companies.

In other words, if a contractor could build the station inside a budget designed not to build the station, it could be built. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa declared a victory. Journalists (myself included) were confused because a written copy of the amendment wasn’t available. The nearly 600 Crenshaw residents were not. They booed.

Wendy Greuel two days earlier.

Currently, the Metro Board is scheduled to approve a construction contract at their June 27 meeting, but has not released the details of said contract to the public. With the Mayor’s race decided next week, and the new term of office beginning July 1, the timing of the release and meeting just happen to relieve pressure on the candidates to make a decision.

Isn’t it funny how things work out that way?

As for the report card, the Coalition’s leaders felt that what Councilman Garcetti says in public and what he’s willing to commit to in writing are too different things.

Garcetti has said in multiple community forums that he “supports undergrounding the line,” but when the Coalition requested he put his verbal statements in writing the candidate added several conditions that he did not include in his previous statements at forums. You can read the letters from both candidates Garcetti and Greuel at this link, but here are the most relevant paragraphs. Note that both letters are signed by the candidates.

Garcetti:

I have always supported under-grounding the line from 48th Street to 59th Street, and  just as I have regarding the Leimert Park station, I have advocated for this throughout  my campaign and as a longtime policy priority of my Council office. Under-grounding,  however, is unfortunately not part of the current EIR. I will continue to advocate for  under-grounding the line, and if elected will immediately confer with Supervisor Mark  Ridley-Thomas and carefully assess new options to see how we can achieve this goal  without delaying Line construction or impacting the completion of the Leimert Park  station.

Greuel made a list of what she would do to support the Coalition:

1. Make the revitalization of Crenshaw a top priority of my administration by  dedicating the financial and human resources critical to long term planning  and community economic development to the corridor;

2. Champion the effort to ensure that the Crenshaw LAX Line project includes a  station at Leimert Park Village and an underground tunnel along Crenshaw  Boulevard from 48th Street to 59th Street;3. As soon as possible upon taking office as Mayor, direct staff to review the  design options in the EIR/S as well as funding opportunities for  undergrounding portions of the Crenshaw/LAX line, including the section of  Crenshaw Blvd between 48th and 59th streets;

4. Work in consultation with the Crenshaw Subway Coalition and other stakeholders to ensure that South Los Angeles’ voices are represented on the  Metro Board;

5. Demand that construction of the rail line minimize inconveniences to existing  businesses and residents;

6. Include complete street elements in the implementation of the rail line in the  community for a holistic approach to revitalization, including pedestrian and  bicycle enhancements and streetscaping; and

7. Maintain an open dialogue and meet regularly with the Crenshaw Subway  Coalition.

“As we clearly articulated, this is solely an issue of political will – nothing else,” said Goodmon.

Transit's mode share in the DC region grew 30 percent between 2000 and 2011, with growth in every jurisdiction. Image: National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board

We’ve been writing a lot this week about the national shift away from car travel and toward transit, biking, and walking. Yesterday, Washington area officials released new data that indicates the DC region is at the forefront of that trend.

The region added half a million new workers between 2000 and 2011, according to a report by the National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board [PDF]. During that period, transit was the fastest-growing mode of travel for commuters, soaring from an 11.8 percent mode share to 15.4 percent, nearly a one-third increase. That’s an additional 162,000 regular transit commuters across the greater DC area.

More than half of that increase has occurred since 2007, probably spurred in part by the recession, though undoubtedly helped along by many other factors.

Puzzlingly, the major exception to that rule was among federal government workers: All of their increased transit ridership happened between 2000 and 2007, when mode share jumped from 19 percent to 28 percent, where it remained in 2011. That means transit ridership among federal employees wasn’t affected by the transition from a Republican to a Democratic administration or by the recession.

Region-wide, 65.8 percent of commuters drive alone, a slight drop from 67.2 percent in 2000. Driving alone decreased or stayed the same in every jurisdiction but Prince William County, where admittedly unreliable data shows it rose from 74 percent to 77 percent.

The changes in the region are happening even more intensely in the city of Washington alone. In DC, 40.2 percent of workers commute via transit, compared to 32.3 percent in 2000. Meanwhile, the share of DC workers driving alone shrank from 39 percent to 33.6 percent.

The hunger for bicycling grew from 0.3 percent across the region in 2000 to 0.7 percent in 2011, with far higher numbers in the urban core. Image: National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board

And the city’s investments in bike infrastructure seem to be paying off. In DC, cyclists now make up 3.5 percent of commuters, a big jump since the 1.2 percent mode share of 2000. The next-highest bike mode share is in Arlington, with 1.2 percent, frozen since 2007. Across the region, biking has a 0.7 percent mode share — an increase from 0.3 percent in 2000, but with such a low percentage, it’s hard to read much into the numbers.

Walking to work hasn’t grown the way biking has, but it enjoys a relatively stable 3.2 percent mode share regionally, with 11.5 percent within the city limits. Again, Arlington is the closest runner-up with 5.5 percent mode share.

Carpooling in the region continued its decades-long slump, declining precipitously from 13 percent in 2000 to just 9.7 percent in 2011. The report author confirmed that slugging in the HOV lanes does count as carpooling, making that decline even more shocking.

And then, there’s that wonderful commuting option: not commuting. The work-from-home crowd has grown from 3.7 percent to 4.7 percent of all workers, with growth in every jurisdiction. In some areas, however, there was a steep rise between 2000 and 2007 and then a decline between 2007 and 2011, suggesting that working from home may have become less prevalent during the recession.

All of these statistics suffer from the problematic phrasing of the Census and American Community Survey questionnaires, which ask how the person “usually” got to work the week before. If more than one mode of transportation was used, the person is directed to only report the one used for the greatest distance. Biking to transit, for example, only counts as transit in most cases. The same principle applies if someone bikes two out of five days per week.

The report also examined residential and commuting patterns. About 90 percent of the workers added to the District’s labor force between 2000 and 2011 both lived and worked in DC, the report states. That’s a major change from the suburb-happy past and a huge vindication of the city’s revitalization and livability efforts.

Last week, Streetsblog NYC’s Brad Aaron reported on an advertisement in Metro Newpaper by Subaru calling transit riders “stinking low lifes.” The irony of course is that Metro is given out for free in many transit stations across North America.

Via Copenhagenize, comes a television commercial from Portugal that’s also  something of an insult. In the commercial for Mercedes Smart Cars, we see a lot of the tropes that the car industry is desperately trying to sell to people who don’t want to chain themselves to the costs of owning a car. There’s a woman pressed up against a Red Line door as she just missed her connection. There’s a mariachi band desperately trying to entertain a woman who wants to be left alone. There’s a hipster gazing longingly out the window of his bus at a Smart Car while a suited man is loudly eating a hamburger next to him.

Wait a second, did I say “Red Line door?” I did. The makers of this commercial clearly decided to Go Metro! to make their transit hating screed. Reader Erik Griswold, who tipped Streetsblog to the video, fumed rhetorically, “Who approved this self-loathing (manure?)”

But don’t worry Angelenos, we don’t have to bear the burden of having our beloved Metro system to attack the people who use it. That bus in the second half of the advertisement is from North San Diego County’s NCTD.

(Want to celebrate Bike Week but can’t make an event? You can help out Bikeside with their L.A. Bike Survey, helping Bike Nation with their Long Beach kiosk locations, sending us your bike week media or go multi-modal and help L.A. Walks Kickstart their newest campaign . – DN)

It’s not considered a good fundraising strategy to announce other organization’s campaigns while in the middle of one yourself (see that ad at the top of the screen?), but there’s several reasons the current KickStarter campaign by L.A. Walks is more interesting than most.

Having sharpened their ask by applying for one of the 10 L.A. 2050 grants earlier this year, L.A. Walks is building off that unsuccessful effort by building a campaign around the 2050 application. If they reach their $10,000 goal, the funds will go into creating a true, city-wide campaign for a more walkable Los Angeles through the Hey I’m Walking Here Campaign.

So what does $10,000 buy you?

Wrong-way cycling isn't the way to assert cyclists' rightful place on the streets. Photo: Big Shot Bikes

Sarah wrote that cycling is no longer a mode for daredevils and mavericks weaving through traffic. Some cities now have street infrastructure that accommodates cyclists and guards their safety. Bicycling is increasingly incorporated into the transportation system in these cities, and as such, cyclists need to follow the rules.

Few people would contest the idea that for the transportation system to function well and safely, drivers need to abide by the rules of the road. It’s obvious that when drivers break the rules, the consequences are dire, since they’re operating a heavy vehicle capable of high speeds.

But safety isn’t the only issue. The orderly functioning of our streets is also a priority of planners, and should be a priority for all of us. When the signal says walk, we ought to know that we can walk without being hit by a motorist — or a cyclist — who’s decided that the rules don’t apply to him.

“I am truly sick, at this late date, of people wanting to have it both ways: calling for protected bike lanes and a bike-share system, demanding that cops step up enforcement when it comes to cars, and then blithely salmoning up a major thoroughfare and expecting everyone look the other way,” Sarah writes. “It makes all of us look terrible and it’s a real hazard.”

She also claims that cyclists aren’t special and don’t deserve their own rules. I part ways with her there. Riding a bike doesn’t make you special because it’s badass or good for the environment. It’s special because roads designed exclusively for automobiles don’t work well for cycling. And we should advocate for rules and infrastructure that safely accommodate sustainable and efficient modes of transportation at least as much as destructive and polluting ones.

Just as cities increasingly have infrastructure tailored to bicycling, we also need rules that make more sense for the way people ride bikes, rather than just applying all automotive rules to bicycles. The Idaho stop, allowing cyclists to treat stop signs as yield signs, is a good example of a way that road rules can safely be tailored for cyclists.

But when people complain about “scofflaw” cyclists, a lot of the time they aren’t referring to people who approach stop signs slowly and defer to others who have the right of way. They’re referring to people who blow through intersections without yielding. That’s not an Idaho Stop. That’s recklessness.

If we want the transportation system to respect us when we’re biking, we have to respect the system. On the road, the system is enforced with tickets. I agree with Sarah that it’s fair for cyclists to be subject to that enforcement.

I disagree with her when she says, “Is it fair if bikers get tickets when motorists don’t? Nope. You know what else isn’t fair? Everything. Deal with it.” The entire point here is that we’re striving to build a system that is fair, and above all, safe. Enforcing cyclist behavior more than motorist behavior is ludicrous. I don’t think people should “deal with it” when reckless drivers get off scott-free. I think they should clamor for justice when people put others at risk and turn our transportation system into a danger zone.

But neither can cyclists claim to be completely outside the reach of enforcement.

In his piece on WashCycle (which also appeared on Greater Greater Washington), David C writes that cyclists need to ride safely and courteously “whether or not cycling is mainstream.” But he also says the “great cycling cities in Europe” don’t have ticketing blitzes to enforce good behavior. And he makes the somewhat convoluted argument that “increased enforcement is [not] needed to keep growth going.”

Well, that’s true. No one’s saying that biking tickets will spur more growth in bicycling rates. But as more people bike, cycling has a greater impact on everyone else on the road, and we need that impact to be perceived in a positive way. Higher rates of bicycling can reduce congestion and pollution, lower health care costs for everybody, encourage human interaction, benefit local businesses, and free up public space for better uses than car storage. But if people associate cycling with wrong-way riding and blowing through reds, they won’t perceive the positives.

It’s not about holding cyclists to a higher “squeaky-clean” standard of behavior than everyone else, as David C alleges. It’s simply about acknowledging that we’ve fought for our seat at the table, and now that we’re there, we have to stop throwing food.

Milwaukee is a city that lost 0.4 percent of its population between 2000 and 2010. Over that time, the larger five-county region it anchors grew 3.5 percent, or at about a third the rate of the national average.

Wisconsin's proposal for a double-decker freeway. Image: Milwaukee Rising

And yet, bizarrely enough, WisDOT wants to stack highways on top of highways, reports Gretchen Schuldt of Milwaukee Rising:

The Wisconsin Department of Transportation is expected to pursue an I-94 east-west freeway expansion project that would cost up to $1.2 billion and include six additional lanes of concrete in many places; double-decking through west side cemeteries; additional elevated, overlapping lanes east and west of the double-decked section; and absolutely no transit.

The double-deck proposal will raise freeway lanes 40 to 45 feet in the air through cemeteries just west of Miller Park. Estimated project costs are $950 million to $1.2 billion, the elected officials said; proposals for less expensive projects that would replace the freeway in its current configuration or include spot improvements are not favored by WisDOT.

All this is taking place, keep in mind, as WisDOT faces a civil rights lawsuit stemming from claims that the agency is starving all other modes of transportation to pursue outlandishly expensive highway projects, Schuldt reports:

WisDOT’s expansion options will come on the heels of a federal judge’s ruling that the Zoo Interchange reconstruction plans probably discriminates against minorities because they do not include transit improvements. Ald. Robert Bauman said WisDOT should immediately suspend the I-94 environmental review process and cancel next week’s public meetings so that the impact of Judge Lynn Adelman’s decision can be fully assessed.

Gov. Scott Walker is seeking delays in some of the Zoo Interchange work because of a lack of available funding.

Elsewhere on the Network today: The Green Lane Project explains the importance of Walk Score’s city and neighborhood bikeability rankings. I Bike TO shares a new study that finds helmet laws can actually reduce public safety. And the Metropolitan Planning Council gives an overview of DC’s performance parking policies on its Connector blog.

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Click on the image to see where there are Bike to Work stations near you.

If you’re reading this, it’s probably already Bike to Work Day. Feel free to leave thoughts, media, experiences (especially ironic ones) and anything else Bike to Work related in the comments section.

Happy Bike to Work Day!