Bicycling

How effective are bike lanes at enticing people to ride? Portland State University professor Jennifer Dill has been looking into that question for more than a year, and her research is starting to get some attention. Using GPS trackers to map more than 1,700 bike trips, Dill found that about half of all bike travel occurs on dedicated infrastructure like bike lanes or bike boulevards, even though such routes comprise only eight percent of Portland's street network.

Late Friday, I received the following email after it had been forwarded a couple of times detailing another attack of a cyclist, David Santor, on the Ballona Creek Bike Trail.  The good news is the LAPD seems to recognize that there's a real problem on the trail and wants to do something about it.  However, the bad news certainly outweighs the good.

Check out this video, via BikePortland.org, on bicycle safety, part of a Portland Water Bureau campaign to reduce truck-cyclist collisions there. Last month, the Water Bureau held a bike safety seminar, which involved cyclists climbing into the cab of a city truck to see (or not see) driver blind spots for themselves.

E. 2nd Street, Long Beach, CA

(Editor's note: As you probably noticed, I'm out of town.  To make sure that you're provided with original content, I've enlisted the help of other transportation activists from around the city to write opinion pieces for Streetsblog.  Here, 4sbb creator Ingrid Peterson makes a pitch for LA to have it's own Sunday Streets program.)

It’s a good day in a city’s urbanist evolution when Jan Gehl comes to town, and now San Francisco can add itself to the growing list of cities around the world that have embraced his people-first approach to planning. Hoping to keep pace with the progress in New York City over the past two years, … Continued

After Streetsblog reported on a cyclist being attacked on the Ballona Creek Bicycle Trail, trail users contacted me asking, "what can we do?"  In response, a Livable Streets Discussion Forum was formed and we decided the best way to make the trail safer was to increase the number of people who use it.  Thus, the first of what will hopefully be a series of "Tour de Ballona" rides was scheduled for October 25 at 11:00 A.M.  The start point is at the Culver Drive/Sawtelle Boulevard Entrance and the end point will be at the bridge that crosses into Playa del Rey.