Streetsblog Los Angeles

Sometimes when there's breaking news, such as dissolving light rail contracts, verdicts from trials, public hearings on major transit or bicycle plans, it's easy to lose sight that sometimes Livable Streets activism can be as simple as encouraging your children, or parents, to use their bikes, take transit or think of ways to move around without cars.

Cyclists Inciting Change through Live Exchange (C.I.C.L.E.) has been preaching this sort of personal advocacy for years.  Now they're asking the question, "how can we encourage more families to ride together."  Earlier this week they announced the beginning of their "Families And Bikes" (F.A.B.) program that seeks to answer that question and put theory to reality.  The first step is to gather information and ideas from their supporters.  You can help by taking their survey or posting a comment on the article announcing the program.

C.I.C.L.E. lists a lot of great reasons that we should be encouraging families to take bike trips together, be they recreational, to the store, to run errand or to school.  From the announcement:

With epidemic obesity and Type 2 diabetes rates continuing to rise, promoting city bicycling, as a family activity, can be a great way to (literally) get entire families moving toward increased levels of fitness and a greater quality of life. Unfortunately, many parents living in the Los Angeles area are choosing not to bicycle with their children on city streets, and many view bicycling as an impractical or even an unpleasant transportation option for their families.

They go on to point out that this isn't just an L.A. problem, and provide examples from around the world that show parents skittish about putting children on bikes in urban settings.

The good news is that there are some solutions already out there.  A recent Streetsblog.net article challenged parents to work with schools to make cycling a "cool" and practical way to get to school.  Locally, City Lites hosts a ride every spring that has, literally, thousands of South L.A. children bicycling from park to park.  Also, C.I.C.L.E. board member David Pulsipher, when he's not working on the Bike Plan with Alta Planning or on the next C.I.C.L.E. event, writes Kids, Bikes, Dads, a great resource for families interested in getting the children on bikes at an early age.

Instead of leaving your suggestions for what else C.I.C.L.E. can be doing, leave those suggestions at their blog; let's fill the comments section with what riding with your family meant to you as a child or as a parent.  I'll go first.

Yesterday, a twenty-five year battle between the Los Angeles City Council and the development group Monterey Hills Investors may have reached the end of the road. The Council agreed to pay a settlement of $9 million for the land known as Elephant Hill. Instead of housing a 24-home subdivision as MHI planned, this twenty acres of green hillside in El Sereno will be preserved as open space.

At issue was the quality of the environmental documents for the project, that were consistently opposed by residents, environmental groups and city leaders. When the project was first proposed in 1984, it was a 13-acre project. As time passed, the project continued to grow to its current 24-acre size. The complaints against the project alleged that the developer's plan to strip existing ridges down to bedrock followed by extensive fill would endanger both the El Sereno community and workers constructing the site. The ridges rest on seemingly unstable geography and an underground stream. The Natural Resources Defense Council reports that in 2006, workers installing fencing on Elephant Hill created a large sinkhole. In 2005, a worker was buried in a hillside slide in El Sereno.

For those opposed to the Elephant Hill Development the settlement is a clear victory for the city's efforts to preserve this land as open space. The settlement comes after the Council voted in August of 2008 to require the developers to undergo an extensive environmental review, despite advice from the City Attorney that they did not have the power to do that. In January of this year a judge agreed with the developers that the Council over-stepped its powers.   The developers counter-sued the city alleging that the lawsuit caused a delay which caused MHI to lose $8 million dollars while the city appealed the decision.

All of that may have come to an end yesterday.  While an attorney for MHI notes that the agreement wasn't finalized,  yesterday's decision by the Council was hailed as a victory by all opposing the development and fighting for their community and open space.

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The New York Times ran a piece on Vélib's growing pains this weekend. The story is more thoroughly reported than the hatchet job we saw from the BBC back in February -- no claims that bike-share in Paris will flame out quickly this time around. Vélib is part of Parisian life now, and some level of theft and vandalism is part of the bargain.

Still, there's no mistaking the overwhelming sense of schadenfreude emanating from this new Times story (headline: "French Ideal of Bicycle-Sharing Meets Reality"). Francophobes all over America are relishing the tale of Parisian comeuppance.

But bike-sharing is a global phenomenon. So why we do only seem to read alarming stories about the problems in Paris? Part of the reason appears to be that bike-share operators in other cities have few alarms to sound. In Montreal, 5,000 public bikes are available through the Bixi system, launched earlier this year. Responding to the Times story, a Bixi spokesperson told the Montreal Gazette that theft and vandalism don't affect the system very much:

“Our bikes are very robust and Montrealers have a great respect for the Bixi program,” said Michel Philibert, a spokesperson for Stationnement de Montréal, which oversees the bike rental program.

“Montreal is not Paris. The theft of bikes here is not a major challenge.”

The Bixi operators also brought down theft rates thanks to a technical fix: They reinforced segments of the docking stations, and fewer bikes were stolen.

Vélib showed the world what a bike-share network can accomplish, but the appeal of public bicycle systems has never been limited to Paris or France. In the past few years, cities in China, Brazil, and the United States have launched bike-shares of various size. London is looking at a 6,000 bike system, and Dublin recently launched a network with about 500 bikes. Boston may be on the verge of rolling out the first truly robust American bike-share network. Even in Australia, where it's illegal for anyone to ride without a helmet, bike-share is on the way.

Like any good invention, bike-share tech is going to evolve over time. The first telephone looked like a fat brick with a hole in one end, and there was no way to tell if someone else was calling you. So it makes sense that Vélib has some kinks -- it marked a huge step forward for bike-share systems, on a scale no one had ever tried before. Inspired by the Vélib model, cities all over the world are also trying to improve on it.

The $8,000 tax credit for new home buyers -- which was wracked by fraudulent claims after its creation as part of the nation's economic recovery effort -- is on the verge of a significant expansion by Congress.

Just how much will the tax credit mushroom thanks to the deal reached in the Senate? As the New York Times explains, it's time to take the "new" off of the credit's name:

The homebuyers’ credit ... would be extended to cover homes under contract by April 30. Also, it no longer would be limited to first-time buyers; people who have owned a home for at least five years could get a $6,500 credit on a new residence. Income limits for eligibility would be raised, making many more people qualify.

Extending and expanding the credit would cost an estimated $11 billion, on top of the $10 billion spent so far.

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Today on the Streetsblog Network, Bike Portland looks at a new review of the scientific literature on the relation between bicycle infrastructure and injuries to cyclists, conducted by researchers at the University of British Columbia. While the study points to the need for more data, it finds that dedicated bicycle infrastructure is associated with a lower risk of injury for people on bikes.

Elly Blue writes:

Multi-use paths like the
Hawthorne Bridge have the
highest injury potential. Photo: Jonathan Maus

There’s a constant chorus -- sometimes soft, sometimes overpoweringly loud -- in every conversation about bike infrastructure in America. Its refrain: You’re safer without any bike lanes, separated lanes, cycle tracks, bike boulevards, off-road paths. Just take the lane, follow the rules, wear your helmet, and you’ll be fine.

A group of scholars at the University of British Columbia have found otherwise. They conducted a literature review, looking at all available studies linking bicycle safety with infrastructure. Their conclusions will be counterintuitive for some.

“Results to date suggest that sidewalks and multi-use trails pose the highest risk, major roads are more hazardous than minor roads, and the presence of bicycle facilities (e.g. on-road bike routes, on-road marked bike lanes, and off-road bike paths) was associated with the lowest risk.”

“One of the major advantages of infrastructure-based improvements, compared to personal protective devices such as helmets, is that safe infrastructure provides population-wide protection for all cyclists,” study co-author Meghan Winters said in a press release.

The study's abstract draws these conclusions:

Evidence is beginning to accumulate that purpose-built bicycle-specific facilities reduce crashes and injuries among cyclists, providing the basis for initial transportation engineering guidelines for cyclist safety. Street lighting, paved surfaces, and low-angled grades are additional factors that appear to improve cyclist safety. Future research examining a greater variety of infrastructure would allow development of more detailed guidelines.

I'm sure that many of our network members will want to dig deeper into this one. 

More from around the network: a rant against bike chic from Biker Chicks of West Chester. Extraordinary Observations makes the connection between free burritos and traffic congestion. And the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia reports on biking the transit strike in that city.

• More Views on the AnsaldoBreda Debacle (Times, Curbed)
  
• Metro Board to Decide Terms for Rail Car Contract Bids at December Meeting (The Source)
• Will Downtowners Take the Gold Line East? (blogdowntown)
• C.I.C.L.E. Writes the Mayor: Improve the Bike Plan!
• Gas Prices Drop in L.A. County (Daily News)
  
• Senate Dems. Poke Holes in GOP's Climate Boycott (DC Streetsblog)
• NY, SF, Weigh in On Christopher Thompson Trial (NYC Streetsblog, SF Streetsblog)
  
• Tom Vanderbilt: Jaywalking Bans Won't Make Pedestrians Safer (Slate)
• Terminator Star Facing Two Counts of DUI after Driving Wrong Way, Crashing into Cyclist (Daily News)
  

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Yesterday, cyclists concerned with the safety on their streets got a boost.  For many of us who have been harassed or threatened by uncaring and dangerous motorists, it was a relief to see that the system is capable of convicting one of the more outwardly-psychotic drivers out there.

But while the streets are safer without Dr. Thompson behind the wheel, they're far from safe.  Stephen Box noted in an article last month that Thompson's trial is far from the only one worth watching, and Box's article only touched on deaths involving cyclists.  There are dozens of other cases involving assaults on law-abiding pedestrians for every bike-related case.  Even with these cases moving, it's still more common for police to throw up their hands and say they can't do anything unless they witnessed the crash.  Or in some cases, they write a report without even looking at the physical evidence blaming the cyclist.

So even if these other court cases turn out well, there's still some education of law enforcement that is needed.

The other people that still need to be educated are the general public.  Scroll through any discussion of Christopher Thompson's assault on cyclists and you'll see a "blame the victim mentality."  They deserved it for shouting at the driver.  They deserved it for riding abreast.  They deserved it for being on a street built for cars.  These are all messages you'll read, even here, from Thompson's defenders.  That it's not illegal to shout, ride two abreast, take the lane or "bike on a street built for cars," doesn't seem to matter to these car-culture warriors.  All that matters is the couple of minutes of inconvenience these drivers have to suffer because of the cycling scourge.

Of course, this also needs to change.

So while we can relax a little that the deranged doctor is sitting behind bars, at least for now; there's still a lot of work to be done to educate law enforcement and drivers alike as to our rights and responsibilities on the road.  Yesterday was a good day, and not just because of the verdict. Tomorrow it's back to work.

Anyone that reads Streetsblog knows that one issue that makes this blog different than your run of the mill news source is that we have opinions on how a transportation system should and shouldn't be built.  Some people charge that this bias taints our writing.  Other times, it's clear that bias helps us ask questions that traditional journalists don't ask.  That is especially true when it comes to the dubious value of highway widenings.

For some reason journalists, even ones we enjoy reading because they challenge government officials more often than not, tend to believe government officials when it comes to the alleged "benefits" of widening a highway to relieve congestion.  One might think that in a region that has tried to widen itself out of congestion and failed miserably; that at some point the press would start asking, "Hey, does any of this make sense?"

If the coverage of the nearly $48 million widening of Route-91 from Route-241 to Route-71 in Orange and Riverside Counties is any indication, we haven't reached that point yet.

Today's Times features an article by the usually tough Ari Bloomekatz that reads more like a Caltrans press release than a story in the local paper of record.  The article begins by celebrating that some people's commutes are about to get easier and ends with some ideas for the next great place to widen.  Nowhere in the article is there any mention of "induced demand," "sprawl," or even an analysis of how much traffic and congestion will be created during the construction phase.

Here in the "biased" Livable Streets Blogosphere, we would take the time to point out that for some reason widening Southern California's freeways hasn't led to reduced commuting time and a sustainable transportation system.  We might also note that the theory of "induced demand," which is embraced by urban and state DOT's across the country, posits that new travel lanes will be filled by new traffic within a couple of years of being built.  In other words, the "improved commutes" for those traveling the I-91 won't be long-lived.  In fact, considering the congestion that will be created by a year of construction, OCTA planners can't even prove that there will be a "net gain" in congestion reduction.

Just in case you thought I was just picking on Bloomekatz, the Orange County Register had a similarly themed story last week.

"The tide is turning," Transportation Alternatives Paul White exclaims towards the end of this most recent Streetfilm, "In fact, it's already turned."

White is celebrating the good work underway in New York City during a tour of the city's bike facilities with the head of the Congressional Bike Caucus, Portland's Earl Blumenauer.  To their credit, the tour wasn't just a review of NYCDOT's greatest hits; but also included a ride on the 6th Ave. bike lane, which might be the most dangerous one in North America.

However, the tone of the video is triumphal. Blumenauer himself notes that change is in the air across the country.  In addition to New York and Portland, he ticks off a list of cities who's activists are paving the way towards sustainability.  Chicago.  Washington, D.C. Los Angeles.  Better biking isn't just for college towns anymore.

The Streetfilm ends with a call for action.  At some point Congress and President Obama are going to agree to a transportation funding and policy bill.  Even though Congress is hearing more and more from Livable Streets advocates, it's going to be incumbent on all of us to give them the cover to buck the auto industry when the time comes.  Hopefully someday soon a visit from Blumenauer won't be cause for celebration because every city will have its own contingent of bike-friendly Congressmen.

(editor's note: Streetfilms has undergone a re-design and looks pretty nice.  If you haven't been over there in some time, make sure to check it out at.)

Because the news broke on a weekend, the press reports on the dissolution of the talks between Metro and AnsaldoBreda on extending the exclusive contract to build rail cars for the agency were less-than-complete.  Before the news of the verdict in the Christopher Thompson case broke, I was working on a F.A.Q. that would answer all of the questions that are being asked about AnsaldoBreda, the future rail car contract, and what's next for Metro and AnsaldoBreda.  The full F.A.Q. is available after the jump.  If you have any questions not answered, leave them in the comments section and I'll do my best to answer them by the end of the day.

What happened?  I thought the Board and AnsaldoBreda agreed to a contract extension at the September Board Meeting?

While the Board had agreed to extend its exclusive contract with AnsaldoBreda for the construction of light rail cars, that extension came with some pretty hefty conditions.  The most contentious of those was the requirement that AnsaldoBreda deposit hundreds of millions of dollars into a bank account that Metro could draw against everyday that the Italian Rail Car Company was late delivering vehicles.  At the last moment, AnsaldoBreda requested that there be hard limits on how Metro could draw against the account.  Metro didn't agree.

What happens to Metro's rail car contracts now?

Metro will need to open the bidding process for any rail car company to make a run at getting the contract for constructing the "Measure R Cars."  We expect the contract competition to be announced at the next Metro Board Meeting.  Back in March staff "warned" that it would take six months for the bidding process to come to its conclusion, so we can expect a contract to be signed early in the summer of 2010.  If Metro had cut bait with AnsaldoBreda in March, we would have known for months who was going to be building our rail cars for the future by now.

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The Senate environment committee is slated to begin formally voting on its climate change bill today in an atmosphere of high drama, thanks to Republican members who have vowed to boycott the proceedings in a bid to delay the legislative process.

The GOP gambit is intended to push the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to conduct a complete analysis of the Senate climate bill, a task that could take upwards of five weeks.

The senior Republicans on the six Senate committees with jurisdiction over climate change renewed their entreaties in a letter sent yesterday to environment panel chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA). They wrote:

While such analyses are never perfect, they are an essential aspect of the legislative decision-making process when policy changes of such consequence are in play. As is the case with legislation itself, these analyses are worth the time and resources required not only to get them done, but to get them done right.

As Grist's David Roberts observed on Friday, the Senate climate bill is largely similar to the House version that was passed in June after in-depth analysis by the CBO and the EPA. Performing another full workup of the Senate climate bill, then, would serve little purpose other than to push its consideration past next month's global environmental talks in Copenhagen -- notching a political win for GOP leaders.

So how can Boxer take up the bill with only Democrats in attendance? The answer is a complicated one that relies on a specific interpretation of committee rules and precedents; but even if work can begin today, it's unclear whether amendments to the bill can be considered without a GOP presence.

The Republican senators referred to this outcome in their letter to Boxer:

We understand that there may be an effort to report [the Senate climate bill] from the [environment] committee not only without a satisfactory analysis, but also without sufficient opportunity to address the bipartisan concerns raised over the course of legislative hearings on the measure.

In fact, neither Boxer nor Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), the Senate climate bill's co-author, likes the idea of pushing the legislation through its first committee votes without a debate on amendments. Kerry released a statement yesterday afternoon noting that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) supported emissions limits during his presidential run last year and asking "everyone to come back to the table," sentiments also voiced by Boxer.

Limiting amendments to the climate bill would also have consequences for transportation policy. Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) has submitted a proposal to increase the bill's annual set-aside of revenue for clean transport by more than $400 million.

If his amendment comes to a vote, it could well be approved, given that six of the environment panel's 12 Democrats have signed on to Carper's bill dedicating more climate money to transit. But if no amendments are considered, the chances of increasing the bill's clean transport funding -- which is already nearly three times the size of the House version -- would get notably slimmer.

Navigating the streets and sidewalks of the United States can be a challenge even for an able-bodied pedestrian or cyclist. For people who depend on wheelchairs to get around, the challenges are too often insurmountable -- nearly two decades since the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Fortunately, the problem is beginning to get some more attention, in part because of the actions of advocates like those at the National Complete Streets Coalition, who are working to implement complete streets policies around the country and at the federal level.

But in too many American towns and cities, the disregard for people with disabilities is rampant. Today on the Streetsblog Network, we've got a post from Steve Patterson at Urban Review STL. Steve, whom we profiled a couple of months back, had a severe hemorrhagic stroke almost two years ago, and has been using a wheelchair to get around his downtown St. Louis neighborhood. But even before his stroke, he was concerned with the number of sidewalks that are impassable for wheelchair users, forcing them into the street.

Yesterday, he marked a sad anniversary on his blog:

Four years ago today Elizabeth Bansen was struck and killed by an SUV as she returned home from the market two blocks east of her apartment. Although the accident occurred around 6pm, the driver didn’t see Bansen in her wheelchair on the street.  On December 6th 2007 I posted on the jury finding the city negligent in Bansen’s death since the sidewalks were not passable.…

Yesterday I drove over to see the couple of blocks along Delmar to see if the sidewalks between the housing and the market were corrected.  Sadly, the situation is exactly like I found it in December 2007.

In Jackson, Mississippi, the situation is just as bad. There, one persistent man -- Dr. Scott Crawford -- has worked to draw attention to the pathetic condition of the local sidewalks.

We first heard about Crawford nearly a year ago through Transportation for America, when he sent them some pictures documenting the lack of access to bus stops for people with disabilities. Crawford's advocacy got attention from local news outlets. And just a few days ago he was featured in a major USA Today story about how the nation's crumbling and inadequate sidewalks are putting wheelchair users at risk across the country.

Crawford, who is a plaintiff in a federal lawsuit focused on forcing Jackson to comply with the ADA, is a good example of how local advocates can move the debate on an issue of vital importance. He's a real inspiration.

• Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty (Times, KTLA, USA Today, Metblogs, LAist, UPI, AP)
• The Victims Speak (Velo News)
• Times Follows up on Yesterday's Bike Stories
• L.A,'s DIY Bike Plan (City Watch)
  
• Longtime L.A. Cyclist Takes a Look at the Current State of the City (Momentum)
• 50 Cent Scarred by Bike Theft as Child (Metro Rider)
  
• Santa Monica Raising Concerns with Proposed Expo Yard (Daily Press)
  
• SF Saddled With Bike Injunction for at Least 10 More Days (Streetsblog SF)
• Fox Sports Tracks Straphanger Cliff Lee's Commute to the Ballpark (Streetsblog NYC) 

More headlines over at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

H/T Roadblock of the Midnight Ridazz,and Stephen Box.

The jury brought back "guilty" verdicts for Dr. Christopher Thompson on six felonies, and one misdemeanor stemming from his July 4, 2008 assault on two cyclists riding down Mandeville Canyon.  Thompson's request that he be released on bail has been denied.  He was found guilty of 2 counts of Assault with a Deadly Weapon (245a) 2 counts of Battery with Serious Bodily Injury (243d) reckless driving (23103a) and reckless driving causing specified injury (23105a) and Mayhem (203).  Thompson faces up to ten years in prison for the charges and will be sentenced on December 3.

In the meantime you can catch up on Streetsblog's complete coverage here, L.A. Now is reporting on the case here, and Velo News, who has taken the lead reporting on this case, has their analysis here.