Los Angeles City Transportation Department (LADOT) engineer Leffel O'Serviss announced that his department has selected 40 new miles of approved bike lane streets that will be part of the department's "Year Three" bikeway projects. O'Serviss announced that, following on LADOT's Year One and Year Two projects, these forty miles will be studied vigorously and will not be implemented.
"Having forty miles of approved bike lanes not implemented each year gives motorists, er, people who motor, and businesses, er, men who business, some certainty that these specific streets will not change at all this year. While not resulting in new bikeways, the list will take up a lot of bicycle resources - including funding and, importantly, staff time - but will not be disruptive to the status quo in any way. This project is really about jobs, jobs, jobs - the department's consultants love it." said O'Serviss in a closed-to-the-press briefing.
Bicycle facility opponents should be reassured that LADOT will continue to utilize outdated car-centric metrics, including Level of Service, Distance Under-Motorist Burden (DuB), and Ever Increasing Research Even If Safe (EIR/EIS). "These studies will use up bike facility budgets, while arming hostile City Councilmembers with exactly the arguments they need to be effective in delaying implementation," O'Serviss beamed. Bike facilities not proven outright infeasible will be subject to unapproved and even-more-difficult-to-implement facility escalation, including being awaiting further technical mumbo-jumbo, unnecessary road-widening, shared bus-bike-lanes, or just about whatever it takes to truly delay "the bike stuff."
"Lest you bikers, er, people on bikers, think that the LADOT is stuck in outdated practices, there are some changes in the Year Three bike lane projects." O'Serviss went on to explain that for 2014's Year Two bikeway project list, LADOT held a series of closed meetings, with the bicycling public neither notified, invited, nor welcomed - before failing to implement any of the Year Two list. "In 2015, we're skipping the unpopular closed-door meetings. In fact, we're not even going to meet at all. Nor will we release the names of the streets. Be assured, though, that there is a list."
According to LADOT's other speaker, Lane DeLay, Acting Assistant Explanager of LADOT's Project Befuddlement Division, in the interest of maintaining the department's confidentiality, the list has been hand-written, sealed in an envelope, and hidden below the trash bin where LADOT throws away all of its ATSAC data.
DeLay confirmed that LADOT will continue to undermine any pretense of actual planning, by continuing find and install a few bike lanes in unapproved "out of the way" locations.
Lane DeLay concluded, "By the end of 2015, the bike plan will have squashed by a new Mobility Plan, so the calendar can reset again once more from the beginning. For 2016, we're already evaluating the feasibility of going back and re-studying those Year One projects, so we can again ignore them, but more rigorously, not just as bike projects, but in a full complete streets framework."
"We've said for years that the the process is sometimes more important than the project," explains April Feuel, a spokesperson, well, person who speaks, for Tom LaBonge. "We're excited that the LADOT is embracing this philosophy by canceling the projects altogether, without really saying that they're doing that. We've seen the secret list, and it's all truck routes anyway, perfect places to not do anything this year."
Bike advocates, uhm, people advocating who bike, were also equally excited by the news. Josef Bray-Ali and Carlos Morales have already planned a "study-in" in front of Gil Cedillo's apartment where cyclists will spread out EIR's and discuss the pros and cons of road diets. Eric Trojans announced that the Los Angeles County Bicycle People Who Ride Bikes Coalition will be giving away bike lights on streets rumored to be on LADOT's secret list.
The only Councilmember, er...people who council (or something like that), who wasn't on board was Councillor Paul Koretz who vowed to cancel all studies of bike lanes on Westwood Boulevard. As an unanticipated consequence of being removed from the do-nothing list, the Westwood bike lanes will be painted immediately. City crews, carrying large buckets of green and white paint, were spotted there actively towing cars at 5:40 a.m. this morning.
