LADOT

Yesterday afternoon, the City of Los Angeles began the slow roll out of the Bike Master Plan by emailing members of Neighborhood Councils a letter announcing that the maps that will be the framework of the engineering portion of the BMP are available for public viewing on their website and at other public places around town.

If anyone doubts that the city is starting to hear and understand the issues of cyclists after a series of organized May rides, those doubts should be expelled today.

It finally appears as though the Expo Bike Path, the path that is going to run parallel to Phases I and II of the Expo Line is going to be built.  After the Expo Construction Authority punted on taking the lead on the project earlier this year, leaving the federally funded path to Los Angeles, Culver City and Santa Monica to complete the environmental reviews; it appeared the path might not happen.  After all, if construction couldn't begin by the time Phase II of the Expo Line began construction, the path would become unaffordable.  

Last night the City Council passed a motion recommending that the Mayor and LADOT not include any "special fund" positions, i.e. those funded by a source not funded through city revenue which includes , in their budget cuts as part of the "Shared Responsibility" budget requested by the Mayor.  The LADOT's Bikeways program, which is funded through state funds, is included in "special fund" projects so for now, Bikeways is safe.

Some people think that Bike to Work Day and Bike to Work Week are cop-outs.  I've heard and read a couple of notable cyclists that complain that governments roll out the red carpet for cyclists one week per year to try and make up for the other 51.

The City Clerk's office just emailed out copies of next week's City Council Transportation Committee Agenda.  When the Committee meets next Wednesday at 2:00 P.M. it will be celebrating Bike to Work week with an agenda full of bike items.

For one week a year, transportation agencies around the country and around L.A. County put their best face forward to the cycling community by programming a series of bike-friendly events intended to encourage and support better cycling.  The majority of the events, with the notable exception of Bike Writer's Collective Bike Not to Work Day, were programmed by either the team of Metro and the LADOT or CICLE and the City of Pasadena.

We've been waiting for weeks for Paul Krekorian's "Safe Streets" legislation, A.B. 766, to make it to committee, but in the meantime the support for the legislation has grown.  While the city was raising speed limits on roads throughout the Valley, it complained that it was unable to resist the changes because of a state law that limits be set at the eighty-fifth percentile of drivers.  This legislation provides a greater role for the community in setting the limits and greater flexibility for LADOT to resist raising the limits.

The more I think about the LADOT's new plan for the Olympic-West Pico-East project the more I think they may have gotten things backward.  Starting last night, the LADOT began a series of public meetings to provide the public input on "scoping" for the environmental studies, i.e. gave the public a chance to weigh in on what alternatives they would like to see to alleviate automobile congestion on Pico and Olympic Boulevards.