Bike Master Plan

Back in late May, the City of Los Angeles released the maps that will be the backbone for the city's newest Bike Plan on a Friday afternoon.  Before the weekend was over, members of the bike community throughout the city responded with anger and frustration that the new maps appeared to be a rollback of the existing plan and was anything but visionary.  Knowing that Alta Planning, the consultants for the project, are considered some of the most visionary bike planners in America; accusations that the City heavily edited and redacted Alta's work were common.

All Photos by Joe Linton. View more at the end of the article, after the jump. On the L.A. Department of Transportation’s (LADOT’s) June 2009 Bike Lanes Project Status report, made famous for Reseda Boulevard bike lane issues, line 10 gives a status on new bike lanes planned for Myra Avenue from Fountain Avenue to Santa Monica Boulevard. The project length is … Continued

Recently the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition launched a series of local campaigns designed to highlight some "best practices" in bicycle design and planning.  One of those campaigns focuses on re-engineering 4th Street as a Bike Boulevard in the Mid-Wilshire area, from where it begins on Hoover Street to where it ends on Alta Vista Blvd. at the Park LaBrea residential complex.

In addition to witnessing LAPD fail a reality test, cyclists also got into a debate with the LADOT and City Planning over the Draft Bike Plan at yesterday's City Council Transportation Committee Hearing.  As regular readers already know, in late May a series of maps was released to the public, causing a round of jeers from many in the cycling community.  Last week the maps and outreach plan were presented to the City Council Transportation Committee, and over four dozen cyclists pedaled Downtown for the 8:00 A.M. meeting to lodge their protests.

Outgoing Transportation Committee Chair Wendy Greuel held what was supposed to be her swan song to the bicycling community at an almost-all-bikes Transportation Committee meeting earlier today.  It's true, there were some low points, such as only Councilman Bill Rosendahl joining Greuel on the dais.  "Bike Friendly" Councilman Tom LaBonge, Bernard Parks and Richard Alarcon all declined to attend the 8:00 A.M. meeting.  But perhaps even more disappointingly, the LAPD didn't bother to show up either.

The City Council Transportation Committee has re-scheduled the "bike themed" meeting that was postponed from mid-May for next Wednesday, June 17, at 8:00 A.M. in room 1050.

(As you may have noticed, Streetsblog is running a series gathering different people's opinions on the Bike Master Plan.  You can read statements by a group of different bike activists from Monday,  Dan Koepel on Tuesday, Kent Strumpell in the comments section yesterday and now LACBC Founder and Green L.A. Transportation Working Group Chair Joe Linton today.)

What's going on with the Bike Master Plan?

Last Friday, the city released the first piece of its Bike Master Plan when it posted the draft area maps that will make up the framework of the engineering portion of the Plan. "Word on the street" is that the City's Planning Department , the body that is in charge of the BMP despite the widely held belief that it's the LADOT Bikeways Division, didn't want to release the plan piecemeal. If the reaction from advocates and bloggers is any indication of the general feelings towards the plan, then the instinct to withhold wasn't a bad one.