As we’ve struggled just to provide in-depth coverage of transportation issues in Los Angeles, Streetsblog’s coverage of Santa Monica has been uneven.  Every now and then a story about something really cool, or really stupid, would demand that we write a full story; but we were never able to create a consistent narrative for the city.

Today that changes.

Later today, Streetsblog will publish our first story written by Gary Kavanagh.  In a field with several well-qualified candidates, Kavanagh stood out as the best choice in-part because he was already wired into the local advocacy community, in-part because Gary Rides Bikes is one of our favorite bike blogs, in part because he had just completed a successful one year run writing about transportation and Santa Monica for Patch and in-part because we all really like Gary.

If you’re not familiar with Santa Monica, but Kavanagh’s name seems awfully familiar, there’s a lot of good reasons.  In addition to his personal advocacy and volunteer work with Santa Monica Spoke, Kavanagh received a measure of fame in the world of transportation reform because the whole #BikevFlight race during last year’s Carmageddon began as an amusing idea between Kavanagh and MSNBC contributor and book author Tom Vanderbilt on Twitter.

Not content with just being one of the people that thought up the now legendary race, Kavanagh documented and took part in the race.  Riding the Blue Line, he tweeted out updates and people around the country ended up tweeting about #BikevFlightvMetro.  For the record, Kavanagh arrived after Wolfpack Hustle, but well before the Jet Blue riders.

Kavanagh’s column will be appearing at-least once a week.   The column is being directly supported by Bike Center in Santa Monica through an advertising campaign and by our upcoming fundraiser at the Library Alehouse.  So if you want to support our work in Santa Monica and elsewhere, drop by the Alehouse on March 27, grab a bite to eat, and enter one of our raffles.   Or, take advantage of the variety of services offered by Bike Center.  It’s a lot more than just bike parking.  Or, you could just make a donation through the website by clicking here.  Make sure your donation goes to L.A. Streetsblog, and make a note that you want to support Santa Monica.

If you don’t live in Santa Monica and want your community to get the locally-based coverage that Santa Monica, Boyle Heights and South L.A. do, drop me a line and we’ll figure out how to raise the funds together.

And if you do live in Santa Monica, and don’t want to read through all this “Los Angeles stuff,” we have a mini-website set up for our Santa Monica coverage at http://smstreetsblog.com

But for now, welcome to the team Gary Kavanagh!  And welcome to Streetsblog, Santa Monica.