Bicycling

Original Video via Ron Kaye LA. Current video via Ubrayj 02 via You Tube.  You can find more from the hearing on his You Tube page.

This morning Good Samaritan Hospital held one of the most popular events of Bike to Work Week, the Blessing of the Bicycles.  This marks the sixth year that Good Sam's has held this event to celebrate cycling, mourn the cyclists lost since last year's blessing and bring together some communities that don't often interact, communities of faith and the cycling community, at least once a year.  The event was co-sponsored by the LADOT, Los Angeles County Bike Coalition, Metro, REI and the Bike Kitchen.

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.

Yesterday, I had the distinct pleasure of riding with a handful of bike activists from around the city to the A.B. 766 press conference in Coldwater Canyon Park.  I expected a pleasant ride to and from the park, after all most of it would be on Chandler Blvd., which has bike lanes on both sides of the street and runs parallel to the Orange Line Bike Trail.

Photo by pawpaw67 via Flickr. When she wrote a column for the New York Sun last year about letting her nine-year-old ride the subway on his own, Lenore Skenazy was pilloried by many as an irresponsible mom. She stuck to her guns, though, and started a blog dedicated to “sane parenting”, advocating the idea that … Continued

For as long as I've been in Los Angeles, there has been a side bar on the Midnight Ridazz official website which reads:

Yesterday morning, the sun rose on the corner of La Brea and Fountain to a new occupant on the street corner.  A Ghost Bike had been erected by a group of bike activists to memorialize two pedestrians, one of whom may have been walking her bike across the street, who "lost their lives to a motorist" on March 31 while walking their bikes across the street.

Welcome to town Chase.  I'm super impressed you have been reading Streetsblog San Francisco and made an ad that reflects some of the knowledge you've acquired here. This is obviously a shout out to the car-free community. Might the admen understand the incredible cost savings of ditching the car for a bike, which can save you more than $9,000 every year in direct vehicle costs, not to mention the health savings from an active lifestyle and the peace of mind of contributing fewer greenhouse gases to a dangerously warming planet?

As part of its share of the federal stimulus package, Caltrans was allocated $28 million for "Transportation Enhancements," a federal funding category that is home to bicycle, pedestrian, beautification and other road projects that aren't widening or fix-it projects.  However, according to the National Safe Routes to Schools Partnership, Caltrans is having trouble spending those funds.  From a letter from the partnership to Caltrans: