Check out this "news of the weird" item from WJRT-TV in Flint, Michigan, on last week's DC bike-share debut:
Not all that surprising, we suppose, on a news site where the day's top-ranked story is "End of the line for GM's 3800 V-6." And the station's view of cycling gets less strange after the jump.
Continue...A.B. 2321, the legislation that authorizes Metro to place a half cent sales tax on the ballot this December, is facing some critical hurdles this week. The legislation, newly amended before it could get out of the Senate Appropriations Committee, has to be approved by the Senate and Assembly and signed by the governor before the end of the month. That could be a steep mountain to climb: the end of the month is less than a week away and many politicians are out of town for the Democratic National Convention.
This morning I spoke with staff at Assemblyman Feuer's office and they seemed confident the bill will get the support it needs this week. You may remember that after the Senate Appropriations Committee, Feuer told the Bottleneck Blog that the compromises reached that day would ensure the bill's eventual passage.
Those waiting for news on A.B. 1358, the Complete Streets Bill, need not be concerned about this week's legislative action. The deadline for Feuer's legislation has no bearing on legislation that doesn't pertain to this fall's ballot.
Earlier this month, one cyclist, "pb 374," was having a bad day on the bike. He had been right hooked, the term used to describe a automobile turning right without looking and cutting off people using the bike lane, three times and wasn't even near his final destination. Disgusted with the state of commuting on surface streets, he did what thousands of angelenos do every day and hopped on the freeways.
While certainly not as dramatic as the early works by the Crimanimalz, this film shot by pb 374's bike camera is more effective in making the point that bikes can move faster on freeways than cars at rush hour and that the cyclist might in fact be safer there than on the surface streets. By providing one continuous shot, the viewer sees the rider spend quite a bit more time passing cars than vice versa.
For the record, if any freeway riders are reading this, is it "Crimanimalz" or "Crimanimals?"
A couple of weeks ago, when I was writing about the bike-unfriendliness of some downtown government buildings, a reader suggested that I don't just write about unfriendly places, but friendly ones as well. To that end, from now on, we'll rotate a "bike unfriendly" place with a "best practices in biking" example be it from Greater Los Angeles or beyond. We've also added a new category called "(Un)Friendly Fridays" to make it easier for people to find older stories in the series.
This week, the folks at Streetfilms did my work for me. Elizabeth Press writes:
This week the Streetfilms team took it for a spin.
Here are some helpful facts about SmartBike DC:
- To use this bike-share program you must become a member for an annual fee of $40 and have your membership card.
- Locks & Helmets are not provided so bring your own.
- Each trip has a 3 hour limit, but you can park at a station and take out another bike for no fee or penalty.
The Southern California Transit Advocates' Kymberleigh Richards penned an op/ed for today's Daily News that punches a hole in the argument that Metro's sales tax proposal is unfair to some parts of the county because funds aren't distributed based on residential population. To wit:
I do not disagree with Antonovich that the North County is a growth area. But I also see that the people who live there largely work "down under" ... downtown Los Angeles, the San Fernando Valley, Century City and the Westside.
This is already proven by the high demand for both Metrolink and commuter bus service to those areas from the North County. A rail line through the Sepulveda Pass, as proposed in the sales-tax measure, would connect the Metrolink service from the North County with the Westside, and provide real relief to the supervisor's constituents who are at present stuck on the 405, either in their cars or in those commuter buses.
Similar scenarios exist from the San Gabriel Valley and the Eastside. People who live in those regions and work downtown, in the Miracle Mile, or on the Westside are the real reason the subway extension is needed. Those people are already forced to choose between being stuck in traffic in their own cars or being stuck in traffic on a Metro Rapid bus on Wilshire.
Zev Yaroslavsky has tried to make this argument in the past, but his reliance on numbers he made up on the spot made his argument less than confusing. In her piece today, Richards clearly makes the case that spending money equally in legislative districts makes a lot less sense than spending funds where people commute. To read the rest of Richards' op/ed click here.
U.S. PIRG has picked a winner in its "21st Century Transportation" video contest, and it's this irony-soaked entry. Meet "Dan," a guy who just can't get enough stop-and-go time on the highway. He loves sitting in traffic, and the last thing he wants to see is adequately funded transit giving people an attractive alternative to car commuting.
Who feels this way in real life? Highway builders, for one. Without traffic jams (and the erroneous assumption that more road capacity can fix them), would anyone tolerate the lavish subsidies that keep their industry growing?
U.S. PIRG is using this video in their campaign to direct more money to transit in next year's transportation spending package. If you like it, you can send it around.
An Engineer from Parsons Explains Mitigation Plans for Where the I-110 Meets Adams Blvd.
When Metro first announced its plans to convert HOV Lanes to variable toll, or HOT Lanes, you would have thought a bomb went off. Newspapers panned the idea, and politicians from the San Gabriel Valley were so worried about "charging people for lanes they already paid for" that they got the originally planned pilot program changed so that it didn't include the I-210.
However, Metro has been promised over $210 million from the federal government in exchange for agreeing to pilot congestion pricing on two highways, so the plans to implement tolling on certain lanes on parts of the I-10 and I-110 moved forward.
After attending a meeting in South Los Angeles last night, it's hard to imagine anyone would have a problem with Metro's current vision for Congestion Pricing. The watered down proposal, which needs to go into place by December of 2010 to qualify for federal funds, wouldn't remove any cars from the current HOV Lanes. Transit vehicles, three passenger vehicles, hybrids, van pools, and in some places two passenger vehicles will all still ride for free in the converted HOV Lanes. As another sign that Metro is moving away from traditional congestion pricing, they've even dropped the term "HOT Lanes" referring instead to "Fast Lanes" for the converted HOV Lanes.
Unless there is a re-striping of part of the I-10 between I-605 and I-710, there won't be any opportunity to "buy-in" during rush hour on the I-10 and limited ability to "buy-in" on the I-110. Materials handed our during the meeting indicate that the I-110 is almost full in peak hours and cars would only be able to buy-in during limited times when space is available. Fear of angering anyone has led to a program that has no plan to preserve HOV lane capacity during peak hours. Wasn't the reason for this plan to protect the HOV lanes from congestion?
In other words, if you were expecting this proposal to change commuting patterns, you're going to be upset. If you drive your kid to private school or happened to buy the right kind of hybrid to qualify for the state's sticker program five years ago, you're going to be thrilled.
Yesterday, I got an email forwarded to me about a cyclist being attacked, beaten and mugged on the Ballona Creek Bike Trail. You may remember that there has been some controversy about gang activity around one of the entrances and whether or not it is safe for entrances to exist in communities. The LAPD, favoring gate closure, has protested that they don't have the manpower to properly police the trail and entrances. This email shows that the problem is worse than we feared, it seems some police in the area don't seem to know that the trail exists.
Below is a first hand account of the attack.
I was riding west on the BC path at a little after 1pm yesterday, when there was actually fairly heavy traffic on the path. Under the 405 two gang members (this is what the police believe) threw another bike in my path, causing me to crash, and then sprayed me with pepper spray and took my backpack. I rode to the LAPD station on Culver Blvd., despite barely being able to see, and reported the incident since it was clear that there would be more victims. The attackers then used my backpack (which had a heavy On-Guard lock in it as well as several books) to assault at least two other cyclists (and possibly more, according to the detective I spoke with), pulling a knife on one (this is also what the police told me). My backpack was recovered by one of the victims who turned it in and called me. It turns out this is the second time he has been attacked in this manner on the BC path, this first time being left unconscious for nine hours. I did a search of the CICLE and LA Bicycle Coalition websites and found other stories of such assaults in nearly the same spot as recently as May and going back to 2006. The LAPD was helpful, but I got the sense that the BC path was not a high priority, even though the crimes there are likely related to gang activity in Mar Vista Gardens. The officer who took my report did not even know what I meant when I said I was riding on the Ballona Creek bikepath under the 405 (he kept repeating the question, "but what STREET were you on?").
Anyway, given the frequency of these attacks and the fact that they occur in underpasses where cyclists are going very fast and the lack of police patrols there, it would seem irresponsible to encourage any use of the BC path. Unfortunately in LA the only other option for bike commuters like myself is to brave the city streets with the obvious dangers there. I used to take the Culver Blvd. bike path, but the endless construction at the 405-Culver-Sawtelle junction makes it dangerous even to get to that path on city streets now.
We've written before about some of the problems those brave few who bike to Dodger Stadium face. This year we found that a bike rack had been installed and hoped things would be better. After some decent early reviews from myself and the Militant Angeleno we discovered the biggest flaw with the new bike parking was nobody in the security and parking staff knew where it was and there was no mention of it on the Dodger website.
Months later, we discovered that not only is the bike parking the Dodger's best kept secret, they also use the bike parking area Continue reading »
