LADOT

At last week's Big Bike Meeting at City Hall, Senior Bike Coordinator Michelle Mowery took a swing at a question about the city's outreach on the Draft Bike Plan, and missed.  The questions, which compared the outreach in Los Angeles to that of Portland, home of Alta Planning who consulted on the city's plan, asked why the outreach for our plan is somewhat lacking.  Mowery's answer, transcribed at Westside BikeSIDE has been lampooned and pilloried throughout town.  But now the debate has headed north to Portland.

By the time the bike portion of the "Bike-Only" City Council Transportation Committee hearing began at 3:45, one hour and forty-five minutes late, it was clear that the bicycling-love-fest that we've seen at past "Bike-Only" meetings wasn't going to happen.  Not only did the meeting start late because of an over-run of the City Council meeting, but Councilman Richard Alarcon had already stormed out of the room because Councilman Bill Rosendahl had caused the full Council to lose quorum and Councilman LaBonge had already snapped at the audience for talking during public comment.

When Streetsblog spoke with Councilman Bill Rosendahl about his priorities as Transportation Committee Chair, he promised a number of sweeping changes and regular "bike themed" committee hearings.  Next week he is going to make good on some of his projects when he chairs his first "bike-only" City Council Transportation Hearing.  You can read the full agenda here, or just read on as we'll preview each issue that will be discussed.

This photo of an LADOT parking enforcement cyclist riding down the sidewalk was taken yesterday afternoon.  Of course, riding in the sidewalk is perfectly legal in Los Angeles. However given some of the actions by the LAPD and the warnings by bicycle safety experts that sidewalk riding is the most dangerous place for a cyclist; it would be nice to see LADOT's "official" cyclists take to the street, and set the example for other cyclists, when it's time to ride.

At 1:00 P.M. down at Metro Headquarters Board Room, the Metro Board Planning and Programming Committee will vote on a staff proposal to accept a "hybrid alternative" to the Route 2 Terminus project.  Last week, Streetsblog discussed the broken process that led to the "hybrid" where the community proposed a design that would have calmed traffic and added open space to the road but LADOT rejected that proposal because it didn't do anything to add capacity to the road.  Basically, all three agencies had to agree on a design, and despite Metro's approval of the local design, it had to "compromise" with the LADOT on what is now being called the "hybrid option."

In the summer of 2008, when Streetsblog first announced its "1% for bikes, 1% for peds. campaign" in what would later be known as Measure R, we never thought that a year and a half later we would still be fighting that fight nor that we would be close to a partial victory.  

During our ride on Friday, Steven Frien wondered a couple of times why there wasn't talk of having a bicycle lane on 1st Street running parallel to the Gold Line on First Street .  Later in the day, during The Source's review of our review of the Gold Line, Steve Hymon upped the score by asking why there wasn't better bike planning along the entire route.  After all, we know how much bike parking there is at every station, wouldn't it be nice to have a bike network to keep those racks full?

 It's not often that we cover news out of the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG), but a recent study funded by the City of Los Angeles and SCAG on the "last mile" problem has led to a report sponsored by the city that is all about getting people out of their cars. The report was presented by LADOT Chief Rita Robinson and Planning General Manager Gail Goldberg at a meeting this morning, then again by SCAG to regional stakeholders this afternoon.

For over a decade, the Echo Park community has been in negotiations with the big three of local transportation agencies, Metro, LADOT and Caltrans, over redesigning the terminus of Route 2 to improve traffic flow. Over forty years ago a coalition of Echo Park and Silver Lake residents banded together to keep Route 2 from being completed south through several neighborhoods. The result is the road ends sharply at Glendale Boulevard and creates traffic jams on both Route 2 and Glendale Blvd. All three agencies have to agree on an alternative for it to move to the build stage.