Bike Writers Collective

Last week, the LA Bike Working Group began to release parts of "L.A.'s Best Bike Plan" in the form of the Backbone Bikeway Network maps and started a new conversation about the state of bike planning in Los Angeles.  The maps, first published on three members of the steering committee's blogs, moved to LAist and then on to the mainstream media.

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.

(update: The LA Bike Working Group event to review the Bike Plan has had to change time and venue.  The new location and time is Saturday, 2pm, at the Hollywood Adventist Church, 1711 N. Van Ness Ave., Hollywood, CA 90028.  We’ll be in the Fellowship Hall on the NW side of the parking lot.)

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.

For one week a year, transportation agencies around the country and around L.A. County put their best face forward to the cycling community by programming a series of bike-friendly events intended to encourage and support better cycling.  The majority of the events, with the notable exception of Bike Writer's Collective Bike Not to Work Day, were programmed by either the team of Metro and the LADOT or CICLE and the City of Pasadena.

(editor's note: I more than understand that the whole point of Streetsblog.net is to help local transportation reform activists see what's going on in other parts of the country.  Even so, it's still weird for me to see a story on the Cyclists' Bill of Rights on NYC Streetsblog.)

Photo by Dustin Snipes for LA Magazine

Stephen Box Discusses Cyclists Rights at the "Festival of Rights"