Bicycling

Since L.A. Streetsblog started publishing twenty-six months ago, we've seen a boom in bike advocacy.  Joining the LACBC; C.I.C.L.E. began doing more advocacy work, the Bike Writer's Collective began pushing the Cyclists Bill of Rights to Neighborhood Councils and the City Council, the Bike Working Group decided to write their own Bike Plan, and more recently two groups have formed to, amongst other things, endorse candidates and ballot measures that promote bicycle friendliness in a way that a 501(c)3 cannot.

Last month, when Streetfilms' Clarence Eckerson was in town for the Street Summit, we were talking about the great work going on in Long Beach.  He commented that it would make a great Streetfilm showing that there can be great work going on in Southern California in the realm of Livable Streets and Bike-Friendliness.  I commented that there's a lot of great stuff going on in places such as Pasadena, Glendale, and Santa Monica.  Eckerson was nice enough not to argue with me on the spot, it's clear that Southern California is lagging behind the rest of the country when it comes to creating bicycling friendly cities.

A month ago, I had a few ideas about how Long Beach could go about improving its budding network of numbered bikeways. As it turned out, a few of the suggestions I made are slowly beginning to appear on the street lights and signposts of Long Beach. Is this a happy coincidence, or has the City of Long Beach drawn some inspiration from the pages of Streetsblog?

While we were down in Washington, DC for the National Bike Summit, Streetfilms got the chance to check out some of the innovative bike infrastructure.

I have to admit.  When I was told last week that LADOT had opened the "LADOT Bike Blog" I assumed it was a joke.  After the creation of the Michelle Meowery twitter feed at the end of last year, and knowing how easy it is to open a wordpress blog; I assumed this was going to be another chance for everyone to get a laugh at LADOT Bikeways.

Due to Los Angeles City Council leadership and community advocacy, bike corrals may soon be coming to Los Angeles. The April 14th meeting of the city's  Transportation Committee is scheduled to hear a council motion on implementation of a pilot corral in Northeast Los Angeles. Here's the backstory on how that came to pass.

Recently, Dodgers' owner Frank McCourt told the Times that:

Dear Sam,

When I first heard of the signs that popped up all over Los Angeles two nights ago urging drivers to pass cyclists with care, my first thoughts were that L.A.'s D.I.Y. culture has reached a tipping point.  Not only have advocates learned that the LADOT and other city departments are unwilling to sacrifice car capacity to cyclist or pedestrian safety, but now they've learned that because of the city's fiscal woes, the city is unable to do anything about other people taking matters into their own hands.