Bicycling

It's all over but the signing.  And that's scheduled for tomorrow.

The confluence of the Los Angeles River and the Arroyo Seco, is one of the most historic places in Los Angeles.  In 1769, Spanish explorers Colonel Gaspar de Portola, Father Juan Crespi and Michael Costanso "discovered" Los Angeles.  It also, in the words of the Arroyo Seco Foundation, "provides the key linkage of the Los Angeles River to vital habitat and wildlife corridor, joining the San Gabriel Mountains to the Santa Monica Mountains."

Last week, Senator Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach) introduced S.B. 910, which seeks to define what a "safe distance" is for a motorist to pass a cyclist.   While the language of the bill may seem innocuous at first read, Lowenthal's staff says the current draft of the bill is a placeholder for what will most likely become a "3-Feet Passing Law."

This morning, a crowd of over a hundred people assembled to celebrate the opening of the city of Los Angeles' first bike corral. The event took place at the corner of York Boulevard and Avenue 50, in Highland Park - in front of Cafe de Leche and directly across from Bicycle Doctor.

Bet you weren’t expecting to hear any good news from the floor of the House today, were you? Turns out not everyone in Congress is as axe-happy as some high-profile Republicans. For example, Amtrak survived one attempt to cut all its funding and another to cut $447 million. (Amtrak funding does stand to lose $224 million in cuts already included in HR 1, the budget bill for the rest of FY2011.)

Last week, in the run-up to the City Council Transportation/Planning and Land Use Committee Hearing on the Bike Plan, Josef Bray-Ali wrote, "I don't think I can make it, but if someone can mention LAMC 80.27 (the anti-cargo bike law) and ask for its repeal as part of the bike plan that would be awesome."  The response from many people, including at least one Streetsblog commenter, was confusion.

Back in January 2009, Los Angeles Magazine writer Matthew Segal took an assignment as an embedded reporter (so to speak) with bike activists and group riders. The resulting article, titled "Bike Culture: Spokes People," was a thoughtful five-page assessment of the state of the bike community in Los Angeles from the perspective of a curious onlooker. Segal discussed the genesis of the bicycling advocacy movement in the 1990s, its slow, organic evolution and its branching into more radical and more mainstream elements.

Last week, we reported on an effort to add a proposed extension to the South Bay Bike Path through Venice Beach and away from Washington Boulevard.  There was some confusion as to how that extension would work, and yesterday Jim Kennedy provided images that better explain the path.

For Jim Kennedy, the matter is a simple one. The South Bay Beach Bicycle Path is a unique public resource, and cyclists shouldn't be forced to take a detour down Washington Boulevard in to Marina del Rey when they hit the Venice Pier to keep riding on it.