Traffic Enforcement

(It's clear there were still some questions about the bicycling anti-harassment ordinance and the new law continues to provide fodder for a media that isn't interested in getting the facts straight.

I'd like to take a second to thank Howard Krepack, a principle of the firm of Gordon, Edlestein, Krepack, Grant, Felton & Goldstein (known as GEK-Law, after their website) for taking the time to answer our questions about bike safety, the law, and your legal rights.  After the jump are what will probably be the highlight for a lot of you, a series of questions and answers about the Bicycling Anti-Harassment Ordinance.

On Monday, the Los Angeles Times printed an eye-rolling article about the use of stop sign cameras to enforce safe street laws in the state parks surrounding the Santa Monica Mountains.  In response, the Mountains Recreation & Conservation Authority's executive director, Joseph T. Edmiston wrote the following letter to the staff and board of the Authority.  It's an instructive read, especially if the traffic scofflaw community decides this is their next battleground.

Yesterday, the LAPD announced the arrest of Dominque and Steven Rush for the hit and run killing of Alex Romero on April 20th.  Romero and his friend Peter Arias were bicycling along DeSoto Avenue in the Valley when Dominique Rush allegedly hit Romero's bicycle from behind and just kept on driving while Romero lay dieing in the street.

During the next three days, I'm on extensive baby duty and there's no guest articles in the hopper that I know of.  Since I don't like leaving readers who have grown accustomed to two longer stories everyday with less than their usual fare, each of the next three days I'm going to spotlight original reporting issues within our usual coverage sphere.

When Streetsblog first began publishing in Los Angeles, there would be Transportation Committee hearings where I was literally the only-person in the room that wasn't either city staff or a lobbyist.  The scene at City Hall couldn't be more different these days as advocates for cyclists rights and infrastructure are a common site in the halls (and steps) of City Hall.  Yesterday's victory for cyclists, the final passage of Councilman Bill Rosendahl's "Bicyclist Anti-Harassment Ordinance" would have been similarly unthinkable.

(Last month, Huntington Beach announced a new program to offer scofflaw cyclists a chance to go to bicycle safety school in lieu of paying what can be a hefty fine for illegal cycling.  The program received some pretty harsh feedback on social media, but when I looked into it, I thought it was a pretty good program so I asked Huntington Beach Council Member Joe Shaw to write a piece for our best practices series explaining the program.  Incidently, this is Shaw's third piece for Streetsblog having written for StreetHeat, our predecessor site, in 2007 and again for Streetsblog in May of 2008.  You can follow him on twitter at @joeshawforhb)

(Update: The L.A. Times reports there was more chicanery at City Council today and the motion has been sent back to the Finance and Budget Committee, Chaired by red light camera backer Bernard Parks.  Streetsblog still believes that it is wildly unlikely the program should be saved and the Council should focus on what to do with the the money "saved" by killing the program.)