Santa Monica
Streetsblog LA
New Signage Discourages Sidewalk Riding In Santa Monica, But It’s An Issue That Defies Simple Resolution
This past week I first noticed signage and stenciling in Santa Monica telling cyclists not to ride on the sidewalk. This new stencil signage is at present only on 2nd St near Arizona, and is inconsistently implemented with one intersection with a walk your bike icon (2nd & Arizona), and another with a bike crossed out (2nd & Wilshire, as well as at one mid-block point). If we are to going to have such markings, I prefer the "walk your bike symbol". "Walk your bike" frames the issue in the positive, and makes it more clear the riding a bike on the sidewalk is the issue, not simply a message of "no bikes". For simplicity sake, "walk bike" would be shorter and communicate the same message.
December 3, 2012
Santa Monica Family Bike Fest Coming Up In Early December
Coming up on Saturday, December 8th, Santa Monica is hosting a Family Bike Fest, through a collaboration of the city, local schools, and the Safe Routes To School program. Just as the preparation events held in conjunction with the Bike It! Walk It! Days, the festival will have an educational component with youth bike skills courses and information. With food and other activities planned, it should be a pretty good time for people of all ages.
November 26, 2012
Next Steps For The Bike Movement In Santa Monica (p. 2/2)
In the first post of this two part series, I laid out some of where we are in Santa Monica with regards to bicycling, and my belief that we are a regional leader even if Long Beach has silver and we remain ranked bronze. However a lot remains to be done if we are to make bicycling truly accessible in Santa Monica, and as promised, in this second part I'll outline some specific strategies and milestones that may be useful in guiding the next few years.
November 20, 2012
Santa Monica Bike Center Celebrates Its First Birthday in Style
This weekend, Santa Monica Bike Center, the largest bike parking facility in the country, celebrated its one year birthday.
November 19, 2012
Next Steps For The Bike Movement In Santa Monica (p. 1/2)
I am always delighted to read the various blog posts and opinions of other LA area advocates who see Santa Monica with less frequency than myself, who notice what’s going on here with fresh eyes, and like what they see. Recent posts on Orange 20's blog, and Flying Pigeon's blog, written by Richard Risemberg come to mind especially. Santa Monica, in my opinion, is the city furthest along in developing an everyday bicycling culture in Los Angeles County despite the designation of Long Beach as silver and Santa Monica as bronze by the League of American Bicycling.
November 14, 2012
Tackling The More Difficult Question Of How Development Should Take Shape in Santa Monica
Following up on my outlining the consequences of doing nothing, I wanted to articulate further what kind of development Santa Monica should be pursuing. While it is true I don’t want to halt or tie up development in never ending red tape, that doesn’t mean I believe anything goes should be our approach, or that there aren’t serious concerns.
November 5, 2012
Santa Monica Bike Center In The LA Times, & Could Be A Model For Region
Over the weekend the Santa Monica Bike Center was covered in the Los Angeles Times, which some of you may have read in the "Today's Headlines" roundup from yesterday. The article by Matt Stevens offers a great snapshot of what the facility is and what it does. Importantly the Times covering Bike Center gets broadcasts what they're doing to a gigantic audience. Local advocacy group and LACBC chapter Santa Monica Spoke also got a big shout out for kicking off the momentum for bike policy in the city over the past couple of years.
October 30, 2012
The Consequences of Doing Nothing
With the local campaign heating up in Santa Monica, so too is the rhetoric of competing visions for the future of the city.
October 22, 2012
TEDx Santa Monica, City 2.0
After a morning of chasing Endeavour through Inglewood on Saturday, I came back home to catch the TEDx Santa Monica talk on the subject of “City 2.0.” The event was hosted at the new Cross Campus collaborative working spaceon Broadway. It was a fitting site for talking about new urban ideas, as collaborative studio spaces for independent freelancers and small businesses, like Cross Campus, are an emerging urban trend that is becoming popular in Santa Monica.
October 15, 2012
Parking Rates & Pedicabs
New public parking rates went into effect this past week in Santa Monica, and despite hemming, hawing, and many letters to the editor leading up to this moment, the world did not end. Parking rates went up at most parking garages and street meters in the downtown core. However, some parking rates at frequently underutilized garages, like the underground lot at the Santa Monica main branch library downtown and the Civic Center Structure, were dropped. Of course the headlines leading up to parking-rate-mageddon trumpeted the rate increases and buried the decreases to brief glossed over mentions later in the articles.
October 8, 2012