Bike Master Plan

(Editor's note: Because the LADOT uses the lawsuit barring bicycle projects in San Francisco as reason to "go slow" on bike projects, I thought checking in on the status of that lawsuit with the folks at SF Streetsblog could be enlightening.  Also, Michael Rhodes contributed significantly to this story.)

Today on the Streetsblog Network, a story about some kids in Los Angeles who did their research and came up with several good ideas about improving conditions for bicycle commuters. Then they ran up against the reality that the public forums on the city's bike plan weren't so public. But they didn't let that stop them.

Over the past two days, the Times has written five articles about bicycling in Los Angeles.  Because these articles appear in L.A.'s paper of record, and this is the largest look the Times has given to cycling in Los Angeles in recent memory, Streetsblog is going to take a look at each of the articles.  We'll begin with yesterday's analysis of Dr. Thompson's trial and end with today's "list of bike resources."

The first thing I noticed when I arrived at last night's Bike Plan meeting for the Westside was that the format had completely changed from the 2008 meetings.  In 2008 the format consisted of a public presentation and "Q+A" session which last time devolved into a contentious debate over the state of cycling and the ability of the city to deliver on its promise of better cycling in the city.  Last night there were three sets of posterboards manned by staff from Alta Planning or the city and tables with maps for people to draw comments.  All city and Alta staff took comments on large paper note pad.

The other day, I noticed that some of the stories reviewing the Draft Bike Plan on Streetsblog were receiving incoming links from what I thought was the city's Bike Plan Website.  Given the strong critiques of the plan and the city, I was surprised that the City Planning would link to the pieces written by Stephen Box and Joe Linton.

Starting on Thursday, the City of Los Angeles will hold the first of five "official" public meetings on the Draft Bike Plan that was released for public viewing after some draft maps were released earlier this summer.  It's been a long road for the Bike Plan from the scoping meetings held in February of 2008 and a process that has brought a groundswell of hope and the seeds of change in other cities has been one full of anger, accusations and a near complete lack of trust.

Thanks to hard-working bicycle activists like Joe Linton and Stephen Box who’ve read through the L.A. draft Bike Plan, Angelenos who care about bikes can get the skinny on the 212-page draft without wading through the typo and error-riddled document themselves. That said, I’d love it if this draft were not so big and intimidating so that more people would be encouraged the actual document — which is why David Byrne’s latest blog post got me thinking.

In September 2009, the city of Los Angeles released its draft Bicycle Master Plan update. This followed the May 2009 release of slightly different facility map portions of the plan. The public is invited to four meetings later this month to learn about and give input on the draft plan.

Last night, during an email conversation between myself, Stephen Box, Dr. Alex Thompson, Ted Rogers and Joe Linton; we were discussing the updated Draft Bike Plan now available on the official Bike Plan website.  Linton commented that the original draft maps, the ones that caused such large debate back in June, were no longer available on the website, all that was available was the updated Draft Plan.