LADOT

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.

Now that the Governor and legislature have finally reached an agreement on the state budget, city transportation staff can breate a sigh of relief. The deal announced by Mayor Villaraigosa and Council President Garcetti that ended Schwarzenegger's plan to "borrow" against local gas taxes that were, of course, dedicated towards transportation.

In addition to witnessing LAPD fail a reality test, cyclists also got into a debate with the LADOT and City Planning over the Draft Bike Plan at yesterday's City Council Transportation Committee Hearing.  As regular readers already know, in late May a series of maps was released to the public, causing a round of jeers from many in the cycling community.  Last week the maps and outreach plan were presented to the City Council Transportation Committee, and over four dozen cyclists pedaled Downtown for the 8:00 A.M. meeting to lodge their protests.

(Update: We're getting word that these racks have also popped up on Flower Street and Ventura Boulevard.  One person was so excited he wants to know where to send a "thank you" note to LADOT.  If you're the first to send in a picture of meters in an area there's a Streetfilms T-Shirt in it for you.  We'll post a composite series on Friday)

Tomorrow marks the swan song for Wendy Greuel, the outgoing Chair of the City Council Transportation Committee who will move across the street to the Comptroller's Office on July 1st.  The agenda for her last meeting is not an easy one, I'm guessing she was hoping most of these issues would have moved on last week, a plan thwarted by the low attendance from the LAPD and even the other members of the Committee excepting Bill Rosendahl.