A Call for Open Revolt Against the Current Bike Plan

With the wind in my face I flew down Main Street into downtown, arriving at LAPD Headquarters (located behind City Hall) at 7:10 p.m. - 10 minutes late for the newly reformed Los Angeles Bicycle Advisory Committee meeting.

With Glenn Bailey as the chair, things have run much smoother an the meeting actually got started on time. Sadly, that is the only highlight of yet another dismal trip down Do Nothing Lane with the LABAC and Co.

I came mainly to cajole the LABAC to endorse some of the alternative roadway standards I'm such a fan of (safety maps, retail sales tax income, noise, livability surveys, etc. vs. LOS, ADT, and VMT). I also wanted to hear what sort of lame excuses the LADOT's Michelle Mowery would offer up regarding the just-released draft bike plan maps (which are horrible, insulting, inadequate, and a waste of time and money - but let me tell you how I really feel!). Finally, I came away from an intense hallway discussion with members of the biking public outside the Parker Center auditorium with the pieces of a strategy to wrest a functioning bike plan out of this twisted and disgraceful process.

After doing quite a bit of research on bicycle planning in Los Angeles, it occurred to me that something about the way we planned and built our roads was fundamentally wrong - the only way we officially measure our roads is through car-centric methods. As a result of that work, I set about finding as many off-the-shelf alternative roadway measurements that would push back against the power of such roadway measures as "Level Of Service", "Average Daily Trips", and "Vehicle Miles Traveled". I've developed a shifting list of about 10 or 11 cheap, relatively easy, roadway measures that will skew road design towards the interests of local people, merchants, pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit users. A few months ago I presented a package of these to the LABAC along with a political framework and strategy for making LA more bike friendly. I went tonight to see if any motions endorsing any of the ideas I'd developed were to be brought - especially with respect to the Bike Plan, as the draft maps had very, very, few on-street Class 1 or Class 2 bikeways proposed. I was a bit shocked, actually, to have a bunch of squinting eyes and blank stares greet my suggestion that the BAC request that these sorts of alternative road measures be added to the Bike Plan's "Monitor and Evaluate" section. I guess I shouldn't feel too bad, since before I got up I found out that, according to Michelle Mowery, the people responsible for drafting the Bike Plan were not even in the room.

Mowery claimed that the Planning Department was "the lead" in the Bike Plan show, despite the contracting out of the work to Alta Planning that took place through the LADOT (and her office, specifically). Sadly, neither the Planning Department nor Alta Planning could spare an evening for the LABAC - so Michelle's scape goats for her division's disastrously put-together and executed Bike Plan couldn't even defend themselves against her accusations. The draft maps released online earlier this week were baffling as well as disappointing. First, the maps were in a low-resolution .pdf format - making it hard to read on screen or printed out. The maps were also cluttered with tons of bike facility classifications showed the map-makers clear disdain for cyclists' interests. A great example of this can be found in a special category of bike facility: "Planned but no feasible" (!). Michelle Mowery misled the LABAC when she stated that no car travel lane removals or traffic calming were in the plan due to concerns that a CEQA-based lawsuit would hold the plan up. She mentioned the City of San Francisco's long-delayed bike plan, which was held up by a lawsuit and a requirement that the city go through an EIR before implementing the plan. Sadly for Mowery and her middle management buddies in the LADOT, the "environmental impact" that lawsuit was based on, Level Of Service decreases, has recently been removed from the list of environmental impacts that trigger an EIR. The BAC bought her line however, making no motions and unquestioningly swallowing Mowery's shucking and jiving with no motions to recommend traffic calming and lane removals be included in the plan.

With anger boiling in my stomach, I stormed out of the auditorium. I've slow walked everything I've ever done of value in my policy research to this committee over the course of a year. I've presented pre-written motions to them. I've blogged like a mofo when the time required it. They have done NOTHING! NOTHING! NOTHING! Nothing with my work, nothing with the work of some many others who've come before them to work on these issues. They've stood by while our fellow riders have been slaughtered in the streets due to anti-cyclists and anti-pedestrian roadway designs and planning. I'd had enough of these seemingly brain-dead old wheeze-bags. With the Bike Plan dead on arrival, with no hope of actually making our city more bike friendly in any meaningful way I was staring the last couple of years of my life in the face and seeing a massive misallocation of all my spare time on this issue.

Screw that. I'm not letting these jerks turn the years I've put into this, and the years that my friends have put into this, turn to nothing.

In the hallway of the Parker Center outside the auditorium, a plan was hatched, which loosely goes something like this:
(1) Destroy this Bike Plan and wrest control from the lowlifes who dumped it on us;
(2) Start a fresh version with money from dedicated bikeway money and with support from the Mayor and the Planning Dept.;
(3) Rejoice once a REAL bike plan is adopted.

So, with a plan hatched, I tucked my list of alternative road measurements away for another day, said my goodbyes, and walloped the hell out of the pedals on my bakfiets on my way to the Flying Pigeon LA bike shop to build customers' bikes, clean, set up the books, and curse my stupidity at believing a room full of adult do-nothings would somehow spark to life after several years of yelling, pushing, and cajoling.