Bicycling

Tomorrow, millions of Angelenos will take to the polls for L.A.'s 2009 Municipal Elections.  Truthfully, the most exciting races are the ones for Comptroller and City Attorney, with the Mayoral and most City Council races all but decided.

Recently, BikingInLA put out a challenge to the five contenders running for City Council in the Fifth District.  The candidates are running to replace Jack Weiss, who is giving up his seat to seek the position of City Attorney.  Three of the six candidates, Adeena Bleich, Robert Schwartz and Robyn Ritter-Simon, responded with cogent, forward-thinking visions of an L.A. that is better for bicyclists.  Based on their statements it's pretty clear that if any of these three succeed Weiss, fifth district residents will see a huge improvement in their representation from a Councilman who's signature transportation policy was backing the controversial Pico-Olympic plan to speed up traffic then refusing to show up to any public forum to defend or explain it.

The Senate approved its version of the stimulus bill this afternoon by a 61-37 vote. Attention now turns to conference committee negotiations, where differences between the House and Senate bills will get ironed out. Politico has the scoop on who will be negotiating on the Senate side, and they're not exactly an urban bunch:

Senator Jim DeMint, the South Carolina Republican who said that directing stim funds toward bicycle and hiking infrastructure will not help the economy or create jobs, has gone too far. He and Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma have just proposed an amendment that would kill all stimulus funds for bike and hiking trails. 

When I was in New York last December to meet with the NYC Streetsblog crew, they were working on a post about how the NYCDOT deals with snow and bike lanes.  I chuckled to myself, at least that's one thing we don't have to deal with in Los Angeles.

After the city's Bike Advisory Committee elected a new board chair and vice chair, Ed Bailey and Jay Slater, respectively, a bike advocate took the opportunity during public comment to announce a new web site designed to empower cyclists after incidents with automobiles.

In both an editorial yesterday and an article today the Daily News took a strong position that local governments are not doing enough to support cyclists, especially those that use the Orange Line Bike Path.