LADOT

Normally, I wouldn't add a Flickr page to our blogroll on the right; but given that the LADOT press office is operating on a shoestring budget a flickr page from the LADOT General Manager could be a useful tool to get information out to the public.

So, a lot of you didn't like the Emmy Award Winning P.S.A. put out by LADOT in 2008 which showed a young girl getting hit by a speeding car because it put too much of the blame on the girl and not enough on the driver.  I thought it was a powerful piece, maybe because as an expectant father any image of a child being mauled by a vehicle is going to get my attention, and many commenters thought it was a missed opportunity to make a point about dangerous driving.

Given how we've mocked LADOT's previous Emmy Award Winning P.S.A., you might think this headline was sarcastic, but it's not.

Last Thursday "DJ Wheels" spent his day attending the arraignment of Robert Sanchez, the driver accused of killing Rod Armas and his fourteen year old son at the end of the L.A. Wheelman's June Grand Tour Double Century and then pedaling downtown to get an update on the trial of Alejandro Hidalgo, the driver accused of killing Jesus Castillo in a hit-and-run last April.

Recently, the City of Santa Monica completed a series of speed surveys on it's streets, as required by state law.  The result might be a surprise to people that have followed the inability of the City of Los Angeles to maintain lower speed limits when these surveys are done.  In Santa Monica, fourteen street locations are seeing their speed limits lowered while speeds will be increased in only two areas: on Colorado Avenue between Ocean Avenue and Lincoln Boulevard and on Second Street between Wilshire and Colorado.

Yesterday I got an e-mail from Carolyn Jackson at the Los Angeles Department of Transportation which basically said that the LADOT has no plans to remove bike lanes or change the street parking patterns to increase peak hour travel on Reseda Boulevard.  Realizing that she was facing a skeptical audience of one, Jackson even included an email from the LADOT to the Northridge West Neighborhood Council to prove her point.

A quick update on yesterday's Northridge West Neighborhood Council meeting from Los Angeles Bike Advisory Committee Chair Glenn Bailey. 

Ted Rogers, who's Biking In LA blog should be required reading for L.A. cyclists, has discovered a plot in the Valley to take out a Bike Lane on Resedal Blvd., along with street parking, to double the car-capacity of the road at rush hour.  Apparently, traffic engineers in the West Valley Department of Transportation decided that not enough cyclists use the lane to justify its existance. 

In yet another example of our bike culture's Do It Yourself ethic, the Los Angeles County Bike Coalition is planning to do its own bike counts to paint a clearer picture of how many people travel by bicycle in Los Angeles.  Bike counts are a necessary feature of any well thought Bike Plan so that the planners and engineers can place the right sorts of engineering designs at the right places.