LADOT

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.

Even without the taglines at the top of the video, I'm guessing that you could figure out which city's P.S.A.'s were a strident warning to drivers to pay attention or they're going to kill someone and which city's compared cyclists to insects.

Outgoing Transportation Committee Chair Wendy Greuel held what was supposed to be her swan song to the bicycling community at an almost-all-bikes Transportation Committee meeting earlier today.  It's true, there were some low points, such as only Councilman Bill Rosendahl joining Greuel on the dais.  "Bike Friendly" Councilman Tom LaBonge, Bernard Parks and Richard Alarcon all declined to attend the 8:00 A.M. meeting.  But perhaps even more disappointingly, the LAPD didn't bother to show up either.

After a solid push from Councilwoman Jan Perry's office, the City of Los Angeles is finally debating a proposal to bring pedicabs back to the streets of Los Angeles.  Pedicabs have proven wildly popular in a diverse amount of American cities, everywhere from San Diego, to New York, to Portland, to San Francisco.  While the city has had pedicab rules on the books since 1986, a pair of operators tried to bring the business to L.A. in 2007 and were shutdown.

Yet, a lot of our city officials still don't understand crosswalks. When an intersection has an unacceptable number of crashes, the many LAPD divisions respond by ticketing pedestrians crossing against a flashing hand, even if they get through the intersection before the hand solidifies; while drivers continue to merrily run red lights right in front of them.

Yesterday, the City Council Transportation Committee met and had it's first substantive discussion of what to do with the un-restricted transportation dollars the city will receive as part of the Measure R Local Return funds.

In addition to discussing Measure R, tomorrow's L.A. City Council Transportation Committee also features a couple of motions that spell out the top priorities for the city's transportation planning in the 2010 Fiscal Year.