LADOT

Last December, I was taking my Flying Pigeon bucket bike back to its nest for some baby-preparedness upgrades by taking it down Beverly Boulevard on its way to the Downtown. I'd probably ridden on Beverly going east once or twice, preferring the "4th Street Bike Boulevard" so I wasn't expecting the poor state of the road to literally cause a bungee chord on the bike to snap and end up getting wrapped in my bike chain. The wounded pigeon ended up returning to my house for repairs before we could get it fixed.

After a lengthy debate over what would be the best way to insure that an appropriate amount of Measure R Local Return funds are spent on bicycle and pedestrian projects; the City Council ultimately voted, by an 11-3 vote, to support a 10% set-aside for "people powered transportation" from the city's Measure R funds for the 2011 fiscal year.  After that, they'll evaluate whether the city was able to spend those funds on good projects.  I can't say enough about all the people that worked hard to secure these funds, so let's hope that future Council's don't tread over the work that's been done the nearly two years since LA Walks and the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition petitioned the Metro Board for a set-aside in Measure R.

Way back on April 14, LADOT General Manager Rita Robinson spoke in front of the City Council Transportation Committee on how the department is going to deal with the city's budget crunch. Robinson delivered her usual passionate defense of the "LADOT Family" in the midst of the cuts and also brought a basket fool of amazing analogies. She compared planning in the budget crisis to working with a bad comb over, ("you think you're covered but you're totally exposed") and compared her experiences with furloughs and layoffs to a parent having to decide which of her children to feed. Oddly, her comments about the City Council having "Reality Deficit Disorder" seemed to be left at home.

Over the weekend, the L.A. Eco-Village blog wrote about new bike lanes appearing over a 1.6 mile stretch of Hoover Street in South L.A. between 98th and 120th street.  A day later, the LADOT's Bike Blog picked up its own story about the lanes, noting that Hoover doesn't just have bike lanes, but underwent a road diet, narrowing the car travel lanes from four to two.

Yesterday, I saw a promotional spot on ABC for the evening news that promised help people that are upset about automobile parking restrictions on their local streets.  Needless to say, I was excited.  This was an easy story.  Get some angry residents complaining about parking, a nice car-culture report from a television reporter.  Bam!  Instant Streetsblog story.

I have to admit.  When I was told last week that LADOT had opened the "LADOT Bike Blog" I assumed it was a joke.  After the creation of the Michelle Meowery twitter feed at the end of last year, and knowing how easy it is to open a wordpress blog; I assumed this was going to be another chance for everyone to get a laugh at LADOT Bikeways.

Tonight is the last of the five hearings on the major service changes that have been proposed for LADOT's transit services, DASH, Commuter Express, City Ride and Charter Bus Service.  The first four hearings have seen crowds of various sizes, with packed house's at the hearings in the San Fernando Valley's hearing and the one at Caltrans headquarters in the Downtown.  However, the message from the hearings was the same: raise fares if you must, but don't cut service.

The Sharrows Pilot Project has been an ongoing campaign for LACBC, nearly five years running now, as we jumped hurdle after hurdle working to clear the pilot through the LADOT. Last year City Council President Eric Garcetti championed the issue and the idea began to take off. Now in 2010 we will finally see Los Angeles city streets catch up to other surrounding cities and start implementing sharrows to help create safer and more bike- friendly streets.

Tom Petty's days of "gliding down over Mulholland" are at an end, at least for the foreseeable future.