Brayj Against The Machine

Who is Rick Santorum?

2012-01-05T21:00:00.001-08:00

I just heard that Rick Santorum is running for president, and that he was once a U.S. Senator.

Who is Rick Santorum

What really grinds my gears: Larry Mantle's shows on the economy

2011-12-29T17:53:00.000-08:00

It is hard, sometimes, to stop myself from bashing my radio in when listening to public radio these days.

One day, Larry Mantle on KPCC is talking with economic experts about how terrible it is that Americans are in debt up to their eyeballs. The host and his guests talk about saving money, holding back on big purchases, and frugality.

The next day, Larry has a different batch of experts on complaining that our economy needs more consumer spending. We need our broke consumers to go even deeper in to debt to keep this machine chugging along. The host and guests then consume the better part of an hour discussing how we can, and should, goose more money out of people in America.

I wonder, if you do this enough do you counter the effects of each show? Is it a Ying-Yang thing? Is it willful distraction of the listening public?

Quick thought before I head down to #OccupyLA

2011-11-30T00:09:00.000-08:00

We used to have a park in LA that was the place to be for people that wanted to spout opinions and ideology. But we turned it into a cement tombstone called Pershing Square. LAPD's HQ was going to be a central park until Jan Perry fought to make it Buck Rogers Gulag of the 21st Century. Democracy needs a commons, the people have made one. #occupyla

This is how I roll

2011-11-13T17:34:00.001-08:00

IMAG0218.jpg, a photo by ubrayj02 on Flickr.

IMAG0218.jpg

This is how I drop off bikes and other stuff I sell through Flying Pigeon LA's online shop.

Overcoming bicycle based myopia a key to future CicLAvia success

2011-04-13T10:14:00.000-07:00

I participated in the 2nd CicLAvia this past April 10, 2011 with my daughter and my wife. It was a really good time, a beautiful day, and it revived all that love for Los Angeles that I had during the first CicLAvia last October.

This was the first time our 3-year old daughter had a chance to ride her bike in the street. The magic of that moment was ruined by CicLAvia participants on their bicycles riding by us on the left and right (while we were on the right hand shoulder of the street) going, frankly, too darn fast.

I've spent a lot of time (like a lot of internet connected people have) the past few days reading others' stories, comments, and watching videos of the event.

A common thread in many of these accounts is the disappointment of parents with small kids, pedestrians trying to take in the event on foot, and anyone else that ran afoul of the "bicycle freeway" people - with some being told, "Get on the sidewalk!". Many bicycle-bound participants complained of "congestion" along the route, due to "choke points" where the police and transportation officers stopped bicyclists in order for motorists to cross the course.

CicLAvia is not, and should not, be about an exclusive bicycle right-of-way. It is a perversion of the spirit of CicLAvia that the entire course is turned over to the fastest mode on the road.

As big as the attendance was, I saw no children actively playing in the street, there were no soccer balls being kicked around, no hop scotch, nor jump rope being played in road. I saw no chalk drawings, I saw very few pedestrians in the road. I did see a lot of pedestrians frustrated trying to cross a street flooded with bicyclists, many of whom used the day to see just how fast they could go on a street emptied of cars.

Let's get this day right, Los Angeles!

All the talk online of moving "slower traffic" off to one side of the road, of "choke points" and "congestion" comes from a paradigm that views the right of way as little more than a sewer pipe for the movement of people. This is the paradigm that CicLAvia stands in opposition to, quite directly. Bicycles, and alternative transportation, are a part of this - but they are not the only thing that matters in this re-envisioning of our streets.

If anything, there need to be more "choke points" along the route. "Traffic" (what a laugh - where are you people rushing to anyway for Christ's sake!) needs to be converted back into "people". There need to be stages in the road, chicanes, roped off play areas, lounges, bands, vendors on the route and in the street that prevent high-speed bicycle through traffic from dominating the day.

We are all so used to the "turds in a shit pipe" mentality of road use, that even when the roads are re-opened to different modes of transport and different ideas of how the streets should be used, we revert back to our "turd" mentality - complete with pseudo-safety talk (really just euphemisms for getting slower modes out of the way), bullshit about congestion, and a blindness to all that we miss when we focus only on going, going, going on a day designed to exactly the opposite.

The next CicLAvia I am not going to succumb to the speeding cyclists along the route, some of whom yelled out, "Faster, faster!" to me as we slowly guided our daughter up to an intersection where (surprise!) we were all stopped at the same light for a few minutes. No, this is not your day to blast around on your bike poo-pooing others not as fast as you. I get quite enough of that every day when I ride my bike in the road from motorists. I am going to intentionally go slow at the next CicLAvia, and I hope you'll join me.

FIDM Fail at MyFigueroa meeting on February 8, 2011

2011-02-09T19:37:00.000-08:00

The hosts of the MyFigueroa meeting on February 8, 2011, the lords of flash and glitter that run the Fashion Institute of Design and Marketing (FIDM), left us wanting a bit more humane security and bike parking polict. FIDM is a bad place for a meeting like this. We (me, my wife, our 3 year old daughter) arrived on our bicycles and were promptly directed into a darkened park to find "bike parking" next to a shifting group of men in an unlit corner. That is to say, there is no secure bike parking at FIDM. We parked in front of the school next to a street tree on Grand. Once we were parked, our daughter let us know she had to pee.

The FIDM security guards wanted us to "sign-in" (at the CRA's "Contact me later" table to get a sticker with our first name on it) before letting us wait for the elevator to the 5th floor, where we could then let our 3-year old pee. These guys must not have any kids of their own, because when a little kid tells me she has to pee I don't make her wait 15 minutes, then wait for an elevator to the 5th floor , and expect her to hunt for a bathroom in a building her parents aren't familiar with. I show her mom or dad the nearest bathroom right away. Then again, I am not one of the three well dressed security guards at FIDM that evening.

My daughter peed in her pants on the ground floor. Luckily, we had spare clothes - but you can imagine how much seething rage had to bottled up because our daughter's bladder represented a security risk to these goons at the gate.

Your building is secure FIDM, but your public image is not - you are jerks. Why did the CRA use this space for their event anyway?

FIDM sent one of their tuition collecting Velociraptors to the event to invite us all to their ground floor museum of costume design. A round of applause for you FIDM Fashion Velociraptor. Is there a bathroom in that museum? Do you think a small girl could use it instead of being forced to piss herself in your foyer?

LA Bike Plan - best looking pile of horse shit I've seen in a long time

2010-10-28T01:47:00.000-07:00

Well, the day is nigh. The LA Bike Plan is going to begin another round of stupid kabuki public hearings, this time in the more able and bike-friendly confines of the City Planning Commission (a big commission I assure you).

I just downloaded a few portions of the plan, and I'd like to harp on a couple of the same things I've harped about before on other forums, here on this blog, and in print.

Bike Parking (in Chapter 4)
The current draft Bike Plan has more references to the sections of municipal code that allow for a swap of bike parking for car parking. There are not many specifics in some sections, calling only for an "increase" in bike parking on private parcels. Where the bike parking swap is spelled out in numbers, the amount to be swapped is a measly 5%. Bah humbug.

A developer should be allowed to swap 50%, 75%, or hell 100% of car parking for bike parking. The bike plan should offer up sample code to make this so. What, is this going to trigger an EIR?

Bike Plan Progress and Measurement (in Chapter 4)
The current draft Bike Plan "requires" the city to monitor data that in most cases it already monitors, but has no provisions for the publishing and types of analysis the public should expect. Please, give us a publishing deadline! Quarterly? Bi-annually? As it is now, it looks like the reporting period is 2015!

Bike Lanes and other stuff in North East LA
I live and own a business in North East LA. The last couple of draft of the bike plan completely ignored this section of town (dropping "potential" "maybe" "not really" bike facilities in the area). The plan still uses a bunch of phoney bloney jargon to hide the fact that there are no real plans to get a bike lane on, say, North Figueroa Street. To build a bike lane on North Figueroa Street would require the removal of a traffic lane, as would most bike facilities in LA - a step that would in many cases improve overall automobile traffic as well.

Most "arterials" in this area are underutilized, with traffic only at choke points next to freeway entrances. Removing a lane and bring down the maximum speeds of cars on the road would in some cases improve the flow of traffic. Our arterials also, typically, run parallel to freeways on this side of town. If someone wants to get through the area quickly in a car, they should be on the freeway - not flooring it through our business and residential areas at 35 and 45 mph (as the LADOT has them doing now).

There needs to be an out-in-the-open confirmation as to the feasibility of getting something installed in my community. I am sure that other people feel the same about their neighborhood.

Anyway, this stupid plan has dragged thousands and thousands of man hours away from productive activities. All the free labor that has been thrown at this endeavor could have physically built the city's bike infrastructure already. I hope that, now that the professionals are in charge, they can address these three issues (among the many that exist and have yet to be addressed properly).

p.s. One more thing: REPEAL LAMC 80.27

Trolling Local Blogs Is A Art

2010-10-13T00:33:00.001-07:00

I've got nothing important to say. I just want to share two well-placed troll comments I read on local news blogs.

The first comes from blogdowntown's coverage of the CicLAvia that took place on October 10, 2010. The event was a special day for the tens of thousands that participated - riding their bikes, walking, and enjoying car free streets on a bright Sunday morning. This comment about the day's proceedings caught me off guard with it's delightful ending:

"I tried taking a dump in the street but a police officer waved me back to the alley. I thought we have freedom"

I could not stop laughing at this one when I first read it. It is typical for anonymous comment writers to trash Downtown LA on local blogs. The area was, and in some ways still is, used as a dumping ground for the county's insane, newly homeless, and drug addled residents. It is all too common for someone to anonymously trash Downtown, no matter the context, because of the area's history. What got me was the "I thought we have freedom" bit. It gives the comment a legitimacy, an emotional switch to sympathize with this street shitter, shooed away from his prime location.

The next comment that got me chuckling uncontrollably was on an LA Weekly blog post about a stupid band from Orange County that parked their truck across four lanes of traffic on the 101 freeway on October 12, 2010. These idiots caused a ton of misery and delay in thousands of people's lives in order to gain some publicity for their band. All sorts of verbal insults were required for readers to right the wrongs of this band of nincompoops. One post took things too far, and mixed in a nice attempt at socioeconomic commentary (maybe?):

buster hymen says:
"They should castrate the band members for making me late for my Botox appointment."

God forbid "buster hymen" miss a Botox appointment.

Here we are.

2010-10-10T23:38:00.000-07:00

I can't believe this actually happened, I rode in it.

Magic.

I just walked up the hill by my house and looked out over the city. Everything was where we left it last night. Something inside of me must have changed today.

Thank you, organizers of CicLAvia

Damned Hose Won't Fit

2010-10-09T02:06:00.000-07:00

I just tried, for the fourth or fifth time, to get some silicon brake fluid into the lines of the beat-up pedicab I've been restoring.

The instructions are not working!

I am so frustrated with this machine.

Summer School: Adam Curtis and James Howard Kunstler

2010-08-24T01:17:00.000-07:00

Spent a nice evening at home tonight, basking in the wonders of the 20th century. Since chucking the T.V. out, all I've got to do is set the computer down and an evening of food, talk, singing, reading, and playing opens up. I wish we had company more often, or a common place to gather - but that's what we get for living in these FHA-backed car storage pods.

Once everyone else in the place falls asleep, I've been watching and reading a lot of Adam Curtis lately, creator of the 2004 "Power of Nightmares" series for the BBC, along with regular Monday doses of my favorite doomsayer, James Howard Kunstler.

It's a late night summer school for the economic contraction we're going through, and a great escape from the grind of daily life.

If you'd like to read along, check out Adam Curtis' BBC blog, "The Medium and the Message", or watch the aforementioned three-part series for free via Google Video starting with part 1 of 3 of The Power of Nightmares: Baby It's Cold Outside.

James Howard Kunstler has published numerous books, none of which I've read, and publishes a regular Monday morning dose of doom and gloom on his blog "Clusterfuck Nation". I started following him after a recklessly funny and sage descriptions he provided in the documentary "The End of Suburbia" and in a TED talk he gave several years ago.

Campaign for a Car-Free Lincoln Park: The Beginning of a Happy Ending?

2010-08-12T02:26:00.000-07:00

Since posting a very sarcastic YouTube video a few weeks ago about conditions in Lincoln Park, some small changes have taken place to address few of the issues I raised.

First, regarding illegal parking of cars in the park, several things have been either clarified or partially resolved:

CLARIFIED: The Plaza de la Raza was granted (by whom?) the right to park cars adjacent the Plaza (though not 50+ cars as observed the past two weeks in the evenings).
CLARIFIED: The DMV across the street has drawn drivers into the park to leave their vehicles (i.e. this isn't about the Plaza patrons, but about how their easy access to the park has led to abuse by others).
RESOLVED: Councilman Ed Reyes' office had two (2) "Authorized Vehicles Only" signs installed at the driveway into the park on Mission.
RESOLVED (?): On August 11, 2010, three independent witnesses and one smart ass friend on a scooter confirmed that the Plaza had yellow piece of tape and a staff person checking cars entering the park and directing un-authorized cars to the parking lot on Sichel (by the tennis courts).

So, as regards parking in the park, it looks like there is at least something being done in the short term! Hooray!

I believe that the city needs to step up its efforts to enable Plaza patrons to visit the park by removing the peak hour parking restrictions on Mission Dr. adjacent the park. Vehicle trips on this stretch of road will not be significantly impacted by allowing a small amount of parkingon this portion of Mission - and if cars parking on Mission do slow down evening commute traffic ... GOOD! They should slow down! This isn't the 10 freeway, it's an old road through a retail, recreation, and residential area.

Additionally, there needs to be a curb cut installed on the corners of Mission Dr. and Lincoln Park, and the intersection needs to allow crossing from both sides of Lincoln Park across Mission.

The bus shelter needs to have a proper covered bench, with lighting, and a waste bin that is cleaned.

The sidewalks on Mission and Sichel need to be repaired to allow handicap access unfettered by 3 to 4 inch drops into compacted dirt trenches.

All of these measures will help ensure that both the Plaza's patrons will have access to the park that is convenient, but that will not ruin the park for the locals walking, riding bikes, and otherwise enjoying the non-programed green space the park offers.

Moving right along, the xeriscaped plants I filmed were weeded the day after the video made it onto CurbedLA, and have been well tended since then. Thank you Park and Recs staff!

The broken sidewalks and "wheelchair moguls/senior citizen wild adventure park obstacles courses" that I alluded to in the film still exist, and have gotten worse. This is a problem that both the Parks and Rec. Department and the Bureau of Streets and Sidewalks need to address. If a private developer "improved" his property by installing a sprinkler system that wrecked the public roads or sidewalk, rest assured that developer would be assessed fines and pay for the damage done. The Parks and Rec Department has despoiled the already crappy sidewalks around Lincoln Park (to install "smart" irrigation for drought tolerant plants). They need to fix the problem they created!

Finally, I'd like to thank al the neighbors and friends that have helped get the ball rolling on these small changes that have already begun taking place at the park! I know now that I am not alone in being concerned with the state of the park and the surrounding neighborhood. I also know that we're not looking at a bunch of big expensive fixes to the situation, just a bunch of small steps that will inch us closer to a more beautiful, peaceful, place to live and play - which is all anyone can ask for in this short amount of time we'll all be alive together.

Campaign for a Car-Free Lincoln Park, Pt. 4

2010-08-03T01:05:00.000-07:00

LADOT peak hour parking restrictions force Plaza de la Raza's hand at Lincoln Park

In an earlier video (Campaign for a Car-Free Lincoln Park, Pt. 3), I showed some of the problems at Lincoln Park in Lincoln Heights. I filmed this follow-up video on July 29, 2010, one week after the initial video.

Judging by the reaction in this blog's comment section, and the comment section in this post on Curbed LA, cars parking on the lawn at Lincoln Park seemed to get the most attention from people. It is a salient image of a beautiful urban oasis being ruined by a lack of leadership and a culture of entitlement to those that own an automobile.

Since this is what people cared about the most (I'll have to do more work on the narrow sidewalks, inadequate crossing points, ruined sidewalks, and outrageously fast car speeds) I decide to post a short video I shot on July 29, 2010 showing a potential solution to the parking problem caused by patrons of Plaza de la Raza at Lincoln Park.

Lots of parking exists in the immediate area around the Plaza de la Raza.

First, there is a 100+ car space parking lot at a DMV across the street. Talking with our local councilmember, Councilman Ed Reyes, it seems that (even though we have a powerful member of the legislature in charge of this area, Asm. Kevin de Leon) the State of California is not interested in helping the Plaza de la Raza grow and thrive.

Next, Mission Dr. has a large stretch of road that is used to park over 50 cars during the day. This curbside parking is removed from use due to LADOT peak hour parking restrictions that go into effect at the precise time that the Plaza de la Raza goes online. The LADOT's signs prevent Plaza patrons from parking on Mission Dr. from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. - precisely when this parking is most needed!

Several people have sworn to me that it is impossible to get the DMV to crack, and open up parking in their lot after hours, so I believe that the best solution is to remove the peak hour parking restrictions on this one stretch of Mission Rd. adjacent Lincoln Park.

The LADOT's John Fisher, head of the Office of Transportation Operation, is responsible for the installation (or removal) of these signs. The small stretch of Mission Dr. near the park needs to have these restrictions removed.

The entrance to the park on Mission Dr. needs to be closed to the public (a fix I've been promised by Councilman Ed Reyes, on the condition I film the finished product and post it online).

This isn't rocket science. This isn't going to take millions of dollars. This is about stopping the death of a little boy or girl riding their bicycle in the park before it happens. This is about respecting the right of people to have access to unprogrammed green space to meander, picnic, play, nap, and socialize without the threat of a car running them over. This is about respecting Lincoln Park and respecting what it represents in this community.

Remove the peak hour parking restrictions! Car-free Lincoln Park!

Lincoln Park(ing) Lot Bike Polo

2010-07-27T23:03:00.000-07:00

Steve Campos and his bike polo! Bike polo is a funky game, played on bicycle, wherein players attempt to guide a ball into a goal. The game has been played (with a long break in the action during the late 20th century) in North East Los Angeles going back to the 1930's at least. Steve cites several Los Angeles Public Library archive photos as evidence.

Steve Campos is the designer and welder of the gates at the Flying Pigeon LA bike shop (as well as the chairs, wheel hooks, and clothing rack). He just got back from a bike polo tournament in Mexico.

He has incorporated his many talents into this small film, shot at the "parking lot" behind the Plaza de la Raza.

He's not lying when he talks about the new hockey rink that sits unused at the Lincoln Recreation Center on Griffin Ave. The Department of Parks and Recreation told the bike polo guys to get lost after Steve approached them on behalf of the "NELA Polo" crew. I guess now they've found a new place to play - the "parking lot" formerly known as Lincoln Park.

Thanks again Park and Rec Dept.!

Campaign for a Car-Free Lincoln Park, July 2010 Update

2010-07-26T14:13:00.000-07:00

An awesome new feature at the Lincoln Park Wild Adventure Park - a dirt pit! Thanks Parks and Rec!

Since posting up a Youtube video about the screwed up parking issue around the Plaza de la Raza in Lincoln Park last week, I've gotten some more information about the situation that I thought others out there in internet land would like to know.

First, the office of the councilman for the area, Ed Reyes, let me know that cars parking inside Lincoln Park (on the lawn, on the walkways, everywhere and anywhere they like, really) is "legal" because ... the City is leasing the right to park a car in the park to the Plaza de la Raza! I don't know what makes me more pissed off now, the cars revving their engines behind me when I walk or ride through the park or the complete abdication of leadership that would end up with a lease to park automobiles in the middle of this beautiful, much needed, park.

This is what Lincoln Park looked like in November of 2008, when parking wasn't "leased" to Plaza de la Raza". Tire tracks and dead lawn. Who was at the bargaining table for that lease? "Yeah, we want more of this!"

Second, there are plans on the table (somewhere) and money already allocated (for lighting) to construct a 1+ acre parking lot beside the Plaza de la Raza. So, the tyranny of the Plaza's car-driving patrons in Lincoln Park is complete: you will now subtract an acre or more of land from a historic park to park your cars. There are already several acres of publicly owned parking stalls ACROSS THE BLOODY STREET. There are already dozens of parking spaces "removed" during peak rush hour on Mission that can be re-instated with a phone call from LADOT's operations division to remove peak hour signs. There are private parking lots two blocks away that sit vacant all day long. Instead of using these resources, instead of doing some actual work with the neighborhood, and protecting our interests, instead of all that we're simply being sold out to help a pet-project of our elected leaders.

Finally, the solutions I propose are not expensive. The solutions I propose are not hard. Here they are:

Work with the DMV to allow Plaza de la Raza patrons to park in the adjacent DMV lot in the early evenings and night time (there is already a private guard on duty at the Plaza de la Raza who can likely handle this work).
Get the LADOT to remove the peak hour parking restrictions on Mission adjacent Lincoln Park.
Install a first-rate bus shelter at the intersection of Lincoln Park and Mission.
Install curb cuts at all crosswalk locations around Lincoln Park (i.e. at the corner of Lincoln Park and Mission).
Repair the severely damaged portions of sidewalk around the park on Mission and Sichel use black top to match the existing sidewalk if you must).
Develop a long-term capital improvement plan for the park AND the area around the park. Work with USC Medical Center's long range planning team (which is planning a massive residential development across Valley Blvd from the park) to make the area include calmer traffic, double the number of signalized pedestrian crossing points, bike paths or bike lanes through or around the park, wider sidewalks, and improved bus shelters.
CLEAN THE PLAYGROUND EQUIPMENT WEEKLY (or I will personally show up at the maintenance shed with an airhorn and wake the sleeping Parks and Rec workers up every hour on the hour). The public has to be fingerprinted and supervised by a Park and Rec staffer (I've been told) to so much as wet-wipe a hand rail in a park.

Whew. Again, I expect nothing but a shrug of the shoulders from the powers that be. The problem is only that I am "passionate" or that I am "upset". No, the problem is that you incompetent cowards have taken it upon yourselves to destroy a local park that we desperately need.

Campaign for a Car-Free Lincoln Park, Pt. 3

2010-07-22T10:57:00.000-07:00

It's a wild west parking free for all in Los Angeles' Lincoln Park, located in the North East Los Angeles neighborhood of Lincoln Heights.

Bounded by two massive car-only roads, Mission and Valley, Lincoln Park features a surprising lack of safe crosswalks. The park is bounded by terrible sidewalks, either crowded with utility poles or destroyed by Parks and Rec work crews in their efforts to install sprinklers around drought tolerant planting areas.

The park is home to an excellent local resource: the Plaza de la Raza. Unfortunately, due to its lack of accessibility, most patrons and employees of the Plaza are forced to drive to the park. The streets by the Plaza de la Raza allow free parking, but peak hour parking restrictions are enforced during the busiest times at the Plaza. A nearby DMV has an empty parking lot in the evenings, but bureaucratic SNAFUs have prevented Plaza patrons to use this facility. The solution? Just illegally park your car in the park!

It is not uncommon to see drivers using the easy-access ramp near the intersection of Lincoln Park and Mission Rd to drive through the park to the lake, the playground, or simply to take a nice drive through the park looking at everybody on the playground with a lost look in their eyes. There are no similar facilities for those in wheelchairs or with strollers. The park has four (count 'em) four pedestrian access points, only one of which provides easy access to the park (i.e. it doesn't run headlong into a wall or a closed gate).

The playground equipment at the park is, of course, filthy. Illegal vendors ply the park (where no concession stand is available), and the remains of their trade are smeared all over the playground which has (surprise mom and dad!) no trashcans, no water fountains, and no nearby bathrooms.

The freshly destroyed paths in the park have been "repaired" with compacted gravel pits that turn into slush when it rains or the sprinklers go on the fritz. Good luck with a stroller, a bicycle, or wheelchair when that happens.

All in all, this place of peace, recreation, and tranquility has been destroyed by an anti-human, pro-car-driver, lazy Park and Rec attitude.

I don't expect this video to do much of anything other than get a big shrug out of the powers that be, and to make me a persona non grata at the park I live next door to travel through, and play in, on a daily basis with my family.

Obviously, I'm the one with the problem.

Not the LADOT, that has kept this park cut off from the neighbors and turned all surrounding streets into freeways.

Not the Park and Rec Department, whose incompetent management and construction practices have ruined this fine resource.

Not the Plaza de la Raza, which has not found a solution to its parking troubles.

Not the General Services Department, which has not policed that park properly.

Not the DMV, which hasn't shared it's public parking lot with the Plaza de la Raza.

No, it's my fault. So, go ahead, send me your stupid letters and call me up and threaten me. It happened last year when I wrote the first posts in this series and I expect it to happen again now that this video is posted.

LA's New Draft Plan Still in the Fight

2010-07-18T02:16:00.000-07:00

Round 46 in a three round fight, the Department of City Planning has stepped into the ring to try and wrestle a $1 million Bike Plan onto the dusty shelves of Los Angeles' archives.

There is a lot to praise with the current draft plan, but there are some sore points I'd like to address.

First, my idea to expand the ability of property owners to swap bike parking in lieu of required car parking has been included in the plan (Policy 1.2.3, Policy 1.2.7 A and B) - but only for City owned projects, multi-family residential, and only for a measly 5% of the required car parking! Come on guys, you can do much better than that. Open up the bike parking swap to all lot sizes (no more 10,000 sq. ft. of active use requirements). Open up the bike parking swap to more zones (and not just "Commercial" and "Manufacturing" zones). Finally, open up the potential for bike parking to save money and lower the costs of expanding a business or a building by allowing 50%, 75%, or 100% of required car parking to be replaced with quality, covered, bike parking.

Second, I see bike facilities mapped in my neighborhood, and I see policies (Policy 1.1.6 A) to "Increase opportunities for bicycle lanes on Major Class II road ways." What I don't see are scheduled timelines for North Figueroa Street (now designated to have a bike lane installed) in the implementation section of the plan. How about a capital improvement plan instead of a policy goal to implement a capital improvement plan? What I don't see is a mention of lane removal on a Major Class II Highway, except for a shared bike/bus lane. I love buses, but not when they're bearing down on me and my daughter. On the stretch of North Figueroa Street, in front of Flying Pigeon LA and the Bike Oven and continuing all the way up to York Boulevard, the road is easily 10,000 daily car trips shy of the MINIMUM capacity the road is designated for.

A car lane removal to install bike lanes on North Figueroa Street will degrade off-peak Level of Service but could, in fact, improve Level of Service overall by keeping a steady flow of vehicle traffic, moving at reduced speeds at all hours. This slower flow of car traffic will not trigger a winnable CEQA lawsuit, and it will drastically improve the lot of local businesses and the ability of residents to cross the street.

Finally, I don't see any measures to measure! The data collection mentioned in the plan (Policy 3.2.5) is already being collected (manual traffic counts already capture bike trips and SWITRS data is already compiled in a database). The plan needs to call for a scheduled publishing of this data in a report and maps for councilmembers and the public to access. The plan calls only for "analysis" of this data - but when will this analysis be presented to the public? When will a reporter, a candidate for office, a concerned parent, or a school kid be able to quickly search for the 10 most deadly intersections in the city to bike? On a weekly basis? On a quarterly basis? On a yearly basis? Or, as the plan proposes, some time between 2010 and 2015 (with an unstated publishing date and unmentioned format). Give us some deadlines and specific, not just the old bureaucratic brush-off with a "staff shall" with no deadlines and no agreed-upon format.

This bike plan draft is a lot better than what was originally presented to us, but there are places for improvement. The bike parking swap needs to be embraced, strengthened, and allowed to have a chance in other zones. Maps and policy goals are fine, but Major Class II Highways need to be scheduled to be improved in this plan (not in a plan to plan). Our roads are already being surveyed, but that data is not being compiled - it is time to call for regular and timely publishing deadlines, open formats, and maps of bicycle use and traffic crashes.

With these small changes, I feel that this plan will have a better chance at actually making a difference as opposed to being another knocked-out paper brick, full of ideas parried and defeated by bureaucrats, sitting on a dusty shelf in City Hall.

Marital Jealousy and Sex

2010-06-11T23:40:00.000-07:00

One reason I studied Anthropology in university was the feeling it gave me of being a hacker of human nature. I just got that groovy undergraduate feeling again by reading the first chapter of David M. Buss' "The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex" (ISBN: 0684867869).

So, you're in a long term relationship with a woman and, strangely (to you at least), there is less sex than when you were not officially together forever. What to do? Double down on "commitment" related activity or try and trigger a jealous response in her by raising your worth as a mate (exercise, nutrition, more money, etc.) and slyly opening up a fear in her mind that you're flirting with other women? It's a helluva choice, right? I know that books are supposed to be dying, but I'm going out and buying a copy of Buss' book as soon as I get a chance.

I love learning about humans! The darker the story, the more fascinated I always get.

LADOT Does Count Cyclists

2010-06-07T20:59:00.000-07:00

It turns out that the LADOT loves learning about humans! Well, as long as they are in cars.

But wait! Then again, maybe the do care about non-motorized transportation. The other night I was unable to connect to the internet. This forced me to pass time digging through the voluminous "Downloads" folder on my hard drive in search of something interesting (and to delete stuff that wasn't).

I had just gotten done deleting an old bunch of .pdf files when I came across one named "NFIA2694.pdf".

NFIA2694.pdf is an LADOT Traffic Count Summary from March 14, 1994 done at the corner of North Figueroa Street and Avenue 26 in the Cypress Park neighborhood in North East Los Angeles between the hours of 7 to 10 am and 3 to 6 pm. This area has been written about in the New York Time in an April 9, 2009 piece by Jennifer Steinhauer entitled "Giving Lessons in Traffic Safety at Middle Schools". The Times piece ended with a City Attorney quote about handing out safety vests to parents to make the street safer for the hundreds of kids walking to and from school, many of whom get banged into by errant cars.

This is a one-page document, filled with numbers of extrapolated (and observed) automobile traffic volumes through this busy intersection. This intersection is one of the most car-packed intersections on North Figueroa Street, which makes sense given the proximity to the 5 and 110 freeway exits and entrances nearby.

One section at the top of the page, which I must have passed over before, caught my attention. It contains a table of the observed numbers of "Dual-Wheeled", Bikes, and Buses moving through this intersection for the day. What?! The LADOT counts bike trips?!

Further down the page are cryptic little tables that indicate "XING S/L" and "XING N/L" - which are not part of the car count numbers and so lead me to believe that these are, in fact, pedestrian crossing counts for this intersection!

What is going on here?

I honestly have no idea. This survey is from 1994. The LADOT could have just been doing this in the North East area. This could just be an old way of doing things that they've since rejected. Perhaps the type of count taking place is rarely done.

The machine-outputted formatting of the page leads me to believe that this data was at one time was (or perhaps currently still is?) stored in an electronic format.

Let me just get internet crazy with caps to make my little revelation clear:

PEDESTRIAN and BIKE COUNT DATA going back decades are potentially digitally stored in the archives of the LADOT.

Why doesn't the Transportation Committee have this data before them in a digital or printed map? Why doesn't a Google Map exist with this data? Why aren't there community plans with desired traffic counts by mode split?

I've been a long time critic of the LADOT for not properly collecting data about pedestrian and bicyclist (and bus) trips. This data, I have argued, is essential in the political fight to re-orient our streets towards these modes of transportation (and away from private automobile trips).

BikesideLA has grabbed the State of California's crash data for LA county and turned it into a Google Map (LA Bike Map). The LACBC has organized a massive bike count, and has published their results online. Yet the LADOT, with its thousands of employees and reams of data on both crashes and pedestrian and bike traffic counts has not published an annual or quarterly report about these modes!

Why not arm your DOT spokespeople with reports about how small bicycling and pedestrian numbers are compared to cars (not just lame anecdotes and references to "car culture")? Why not shut down politicians with reports on data rather than innuendo about the power of drivers interests at re-election time?

Why not? Because once you let it be known that you are tracking pedestrian and bicycle numbers someone is bound to ask, "Well, if the numbers are low, how do we increase the number of bikes?" or "If there are so many crashes here, how are we going to make this intersection safer for pedestrians to cross?".

That would cede control of the debate about transportation away from the black box of engineering expertise that brought us the push-button crosswalk signal (forever ending the debate about whether our streets are safe to cross and shifting it to whether or not we can afford to install a signal), the ATSAC signal-timing fiasco in Downtown LA (which has proved beyond a reasonable doubt that one man picking his nose causes traffic delays during rush hour, not the timing of the lights), and many more triumphs of the privately owned (publicly subsidized) automobile over the local economic interests and quality of life of Los Angeles's residents.

The LADOT is literally killing us to help people in San Marino drive into town, make some dough, and speed out of it to spend it elsewhere. The data on pedestrian, bus, and bike volumes and crashes is vital to stopping this practice. We need to have this information move front and center in the debates about quality of life, economic vitality, sustainability, and community health issues.

Can I get a a councilman's second on that motion?

Quite Possibly My Last Substantive Contribution to Cycling in L.A.

2010-03-29T20:45:00.000-07:00

The last two years have been very tough for me personally. I went from a single guy working a very relaxed clerical job to a stressed out father and small business owner. The time I used to spend digging through plans, municipal code, budgets, audits and the like is now spent worrying about my bottom line at the shop and whether all this stress and work is worth it (or if anything in life is "worth it").

That is all a long way of saying that I've pretty much given all that I can give towards bike advocacy, political strategy, research, and community organizing. I can chip in to help the efforts of others, perhaps write a few nasty comments on Streetsblog LA; I have no new ideas nor new research to contribute.

Well, I do have one more idea I'd like to put out there: a bike parking swap.

Preamble to the Bike Parking Swap Idea

In Los Angeles, whenever someone builds a new building, or changes the use of a building to a more intense use, that someone will have to provide private automobile parking spaces for users of the building. The cost of adding an extra floor to a building is increased a great deal by the cost of providing the required parking for that extra floor.

I worked in real estate development for a little over two years, working in everything from property acquisition, permit filing, tract maps, construction insurance program management, to sales of individual units.

The economics of real estate development are not too hard to understand after a few months spent on the job. You buy property, build on it or improve it, and then sell it (or rent it) at a price that will make you a profit.

There are a lot of complicated side issues to seeing this through to the end, but that is the basic idea.

One of the biggest hurdles our small company faced in all of our projects was paying for the construction of "enough" (according to the zoning laws in whatever city we were working in) private automobile parking.

Let's get down to anecdotes, shall we? There is a project I remember spending a lot of time on located on Colorado Boulevard in the Eagle Rock area of Los Angeles. The property had (and still has) a single family home on it and the lot was a little over 7,000 square feet. That is not a lot of room to work with. The zoning code was actually pretty enlightened (but half implemented, legally) stuff - it allowed for multi-family residential and commercial uses on the same property. Putting this type of mixed-use code into effect took a decade (or more) of hard work by a recently retired generation of baby boomer planners.

Reading the code, we could get away with a pretty nice project: ground floor commercial offices of some sort with four two-story apartments above. Our plans fit in really well with the direction of the neighborhood (gentrifying; area specific plans called for light commercial that was walkable). Our plans also fit in rather nicely with the mixed-use zoning code ... until it came to parking.

Car parking requirements forced us to shrink everything - the ground floor commercial was squeezed into a tiny 300 or 400 sq. ft. space. The building had to have an extra story added just so we could stuff a bunch of cars underneath. The cost of the project on paper shot up, meaning that our four 1-bedroom apartments turned into four studio condominium units.

Once you subdivide a property into condos, you have to go through a whole bunch of planning hoops - bumping up the cost of the project some more.

This $200,000* construction project turned into a super risky $1.2 to $1.5 million*, four-story, dingbat parking stall, condo'd, micro fiasco.

[*I'd like to apologize to anyone working in development, these numbers are pulled from memory and are not exact figures.]

To make a profit, we'd have to sell 800 square foot studio units for $300,000 to $400,000 apiece! Even at the height of the boom, that was an insane proposition. So, after the months of meetings, research, and design sessions this tiny project was scrapped.

The bloody car parking requirements killed our project! This project was precisely the sort of infill development that politicians and neighbors say they want: low density, modest building heights, with room for small, local, businesses to thrive (whereas larger projects tend to work best for franchises, chains, and the typical auto-sprawl industries of fast food, auto care, hair salons, and the like). Plus, we could have made some real money. $200,000 spent (on our part) and a relatively quick $300,000 to $400,000 returned once we sold the property (as a rental income property). A net profit of $100,000 to $200,000 in a few months of construction and design work would have been brilliant!

So, to end this long pre-amble to describing my idea: in real estate development, car parking costs a lot. Car parking requirements kill small, profitable, properly scaled projects in favor of larger, out of scale, riskier projects that favor the big boys of finance and high-profit margin chain or auto-based retail and services only.

I quit that job in real estate and moved on to a more mellow position somewhere else, always remembering the huge, negative, effect that car parking requirements have on development in the Los Angeles's urban core.

My Big Idea

Reading municipal code in a big city can turn up some interesting stuff. Some time in 2009 (later in the year, I think) I stumbled upon Los Angeles Municipal Code Sections 12.21-A.4(c) and 12.21-A.16.

This section of the code allows for something quite unique (I think?). LAMC 12.21-A.4(c) and 12.21-A.16 authorizes a building owner to swap out some of the required car parking spaces with high quality, covered, bike parking spaces.

Wow! You can fit 12, or 13, bikes in one car parking space (more if they are folders, less if they are bakfietsen or niholas). Swapping car parking spaces for bike parking spaces could drastically reduce the footprint of a project - meaning that small scale mixed use projects like the one we gave up on in Eagle Rock could stand a chance at making a profit.

I'll admit, I got a little carried away and almost published a post demanding to know why so few buildings in L.A. had turned over their car parking lots to other uses while providing quality bike parking in exchange.

Well, there are a couple of catches in LAMC 12.21-A.4(c) and 12.21-A.16.

First, you can only take part in the swap program if your property is in a C (commercial) or M (manufacturing) zone.

Second, your property has to have 10,000 square feet of active C or M uses (small properties in historic parts of town need not apply).

Third, you can only swap 2% of your required car parking for bike parking. You'd need to have a lot for 50 cars in order to be allowed one bike parking space to replace one car parking space.

Bleah. That sucks.

But there is hope!

Yes, there is hope - because LAMC 12.21-A.4(c) and 12.21-A.16 is not written in stone. It is a local law. We would need only 8 votes on the 15 member city council to make changes to it. What sort of changes?

First, instead of limiting the bike parking swap to only C or M properties we could make the swap available to all zones in the city (A, C, O, R, M, etc.,).

Second, we could remove the section required 10,000 active square feet of C or M uses from the code. Why not have no minimum requirement of active uses? That way, any project would be able to swap out car parking for quality bike parking - from a 100 square foot notary public in the historic core in an under car parked building to a university campus with thousands of employees.

Third, we could bump the percent of car parking you can swap out for bike parking to some larger percentage: 50%, 60%, 66.67%, or (what the hell) 100%.

Once I put this all together, I started chuckling. This would be a bonanza. Every tiny retail space in a older part of L.A., built to service walk-up customers along a street car line could spring to life with a fly-by-night cafe, restaurant, book store, skate shop, cottage manufacturing, or what have you. Tiny (by sprawled out 20th century standards) commercial properties could have and additional story added to bring in rental income, making money for the businessmen that built these small projects. Small lot conversions of single family home along massive arterial highways, and transit hubs, could profitably be re-vamped, expanded, or torn down and rebuilt - at a profit.

All of the users of these buildings would be unable to drive to them. They would walk, take public transit, or ride a bike (which they could securely park in a covered parking stall).

Money would be made, lots of money, and it would benefit cycling.

The idea almost feels like a practical joke. I feel quite deeply that these changes must be made to LAMC 12.21-A.4(c) and 12.21-A.16.

Standard models for predicting the effects of new buildings, or more intense use of a property, are based on car parking being provided on site. A new cafe on the corner? Oh, that's going to generate XX new numbers of trips per day. That means you'll have to lease parking nearby (a beautiful blacktop lot, I'm sure) pay for street improvements to make driving to your store easier (and inevitable) and if you can't afford that then sorry, thanks for playing. Take your micro-credit based business and stuff it.

Changing this law could reverse all of that. We could stop with the variances, the valet parking, the vacant lots acting as heat islands. We could stop with the out of scale real estate projects and risky development loans. We could all stand to make some serious cash - and bike riders would be smiling all the way to their next covered parking stall.

So, there it is. Amend LAMC 12.21-A.4(c) and 12.21-A.16:

Allow the bike parking swap in all zones (A, C, O, R, M, etc.)
Remove the minimum square foot requirement - all buildings, and all uses, should be able to take part in the bike parking swap.
Allow a larger percentage of required car parking to be swapped out for bike parking: 50%, 60%, or (why not) 100%.

I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not quite sure how to best amend the code, but I do know how to copy and paste! Here are the relevant sections of LAMC 12.21-A.4(c) and 12.21-A.16:

SEC. 12.21. GENERAL PROVISIONS.
A. Use.

[...]

4. Off-Street Automobile Parking Requirements. A garage or an off-street automobile parking area shall be provided in connection with and at the time of the erection of each of the buildings or structures hereinafter specified, or at the time such buildings or structures are altered, enlarged, converted or increased in capacity by the addition of dwelling units, guest rooms, beds for institutions, floor area or seating capacity. The parking space capacity required in said garage or parking area shall be determined by the amount of dwelling units, guest rooms, beds for institutions, floor area or seats so provided, and said garage or parking area shall be maintained thereafter in connection with such buildings or structures. (Amended by Ord. No. 145,088, Eff. 10/18/72.)

[...]

(c) For Commercial and Industrial Buildings. Except as otherwise provided in Subparagraphs (1) through and including (7) below, there shall be at least one automobile parking space for each 500 square feet of combined floor area contained within all the office, business, commercial, research and development buildings, and manufacturing or industrial buildings on any lot. (Amended by Ord. No. 177,103, Eff. 12/18/05.)

A specific plan may impose less restrictive parking requirements, if it expressly states that the specific plan’s parking provisions are intended to supersede the standards set forth in this paragraph.

In the case of buildings where bicycle parking spaces are required by Subdivision 16. of this subsection, the minimum number of required automobile parking spaces may be reduced by the same number as the number of bicycle spaces required for the building. (Added by Ord. No. 167,409, Eff. 12/19/91.)

[...]

16. Bicycle Parking and Shower Facilities. (Added by Ord. No. 167,409, Eff. 12/19/91.) Off-street parking spaces for bicycles and facilities for employee showers and lockers shall be provided as follows:

(a) In the C and M zones, for any building, portion thereof or addition thereto used for non-residential purposes which contains a floor area in excess of 10,000 square feet, bicycle parking spaces shall be provided at the rate of two percent of the number of automobile parking spaces required by this section for such non-residential uses; provided, however, that at least one bicycle parking space shall be provided for any such building having a floor area in excess of 10,000 square feet of non-residential use. If the calculation of the number of required spaces under this paragraph results in a number including a fraction, the next highest whole number shall be the number of spaces required.

(b) The bicycle parking space requirements in Paragraph (a) shall also apply to any building, regardless of zone, owned by the City of Los Angeles and used by the City for government purposes which contains a floor area in excess of 10,000 square feet.

(c) All bicycle parking spaces required by this Subdivision shall include a stationary parking device which adequately supports the bicycle. In addition, at least half of the bicycle parking spaces shall include a stationary parking device which securely locks the bicycle without the use of a user-supplied cable or chain. Devices which hold the bicycle upright by wheel contact must hold at least 180 degrees of wheel arc.

(d) Each bicycle parking space shall be a minimum of two feet in width and six feet in length and shall have a minimum of six feet of overhead clearance.

(e) Bicycle parking spaces shall be located no farther than the distance from a main entrance of the building to the nearest off-street automobile parking space.

(f) Bicycle parking spaces shall be separated from automobile parking spaces or aisles by a wall, fence, or curb or by at least five feet of open space marked to prohibit parking.

(g) Aisles providing access to bicycle parking spaces shall be at least five feet in width.

(h) Signage which is clearly legible upon approach to every automobile entrance to the parking facility shall be displayed indicating the availability and location of bicycle parking.

(i) Showers and lockers shall be provided as required by Section 91.6307 of this Code. (Amended by Ord. No. 177,103, Eff. 12/18/05.)

LA Law - DOT King of the Road, Bakfiets Cargo Bikes Illegal

2009-12-24T02:27:00.001-08:00

I decided to jog and walk home tonight from the shop. I felt that I need a little exercise, and I haven't really been getting it on my short bike ride to work. This post is being written on the floor of my daughter's play room. My calves are really sore and the battery on this laptop is halfway spent.

Over the past couple of nights, I've stayed up late reading various sections of LA's Administrative and Municipal Code. I'm in search of answers about the LADOT, and I've been trying to draft ordinances that will fulfill portions Chapter 2 of the current draft of the Bike Plan (this chapter contains the Vision, Policies and Goals for the plan).

Heading back to the source material for government always reveals some interesting insights into how it works, what is technically allowed and what isn't.

A few revelations from my recent research:

When it comes to transportation in the City of LA, the LADOT is, sadly, the king. You can read the segments of Los Angeles Administrative Code yourself in Los Angeles Administrative Code, Division 22 Departments, Bureaus And Agencies Under The Control Of The Mayor And Council. So, relying on the Planning Department to pull us through the fight on the Bike Plan, and the Planning Department being "the lead" now, is of a questionable legal integrity.
Riding a bakfiets in LA is illegal. So says, LA Municipal Code, Chapter 8, Section 80.27
"A person operating a bicycle shall not ride other than upon the permanent and regular seat attached thereto, nor carry any other person upon such bicycle other than upon a firmly attached seat to the rear of the operator, nor shall any person ride upon a bicycle other than as above authorized. (Amended by Ord. No. 122,716, Eff. 10/5/62.)"
My humble suggestion to anybody out there in City Council land is to change this section of code to allow my daughter and me to become law-abiding citizens again, and not rebel-outlaw-bakfiets riders. Also, I have a container of bakfiets cargo bikes coming to LA in few weeks from Copenhagen-based Nihola bicycles. So, could we, like, hurry this one up please?

There is a bunch more stuff I'm working on, but I guess it's a bit dry and complicated (not that the above is a an easy read), and it's also not finished. Among other things, I'm trying to draft a suggested ordinance to expand the ability for bike parking to be provided in lieu of required car parking. I'm also trying to find the right places to place a re-definition of transportation (to include bicycling), and also a place in the Municipal Code to define bicycling and walking as modes of transportation (the last two fit in rather nicely with Policy 2.8 in Chapter 2 of the Draft Bike Plan).

Alright, the battery on the laptop is very low, and I'm tired. Tomorrow is going to be very busy at the shop and I'd better get some sleep.

Shameless Self Promotion, Volume 1: MTA Golden Ticket Sale

2009-11-24T10:21:00.000-08:00

Until the end of 2009 (or we run out of bikes), the Flying Pigeon LA bike shop that I run with my brother and my friend Jon is having a special sale in honor of the Gold Line opening up:

Bring in a Metro Pass and we're knocking some serious change off of retail bike prices.

We've got a chunk of 2009 model year bikes, and if this will help clear 'em out for 2010 models as well as spur some new train riders to take a trip to our shop - that is a twofer' we couldn't pass up.

You can read more about the Gold Line Extension Sale.

A big thanks to Monster Kat of Handmade Store on a Bike for the art work for this sale!

Letter to a Young USC Reporter Regarding the Bike Plan

2009-10-19T19:02:00.000-07:00

This message was written in response to an email a young reporter-in-training sent to me from the USC Annenberg School of Journalism regarding the LA Bike Plan.

His question was as follows: "Do you see any positives in the proposed plan? If so, what are the advantages? Why does this plan and the procedures that have surrounded its revision caused anger to boil in your stomach? What action by what groups would like to see be taken after the public comment period ends? Are you planning to attend any of the bike plan workshops? Feel free to provide any other thoughts which you feel are important."

Here is my response:

Positives of the plan: Several employees at the City of L.A. and Alta Planning have been paid to work on the plan, increasing the flow of cash in our communities by .0000001%. The plan also contains the words "bike", "bicycle", and "bike lane".

The original city council motion authorizing the LADOT to prepare the bike plan (and contracting out Alta Planning's services), authorizing $450,000 for this purpose - the original council motion stated that the intent of this plan was to allow the city to apply for state Bicycle Transportation Account (or BTA) funds. The state sets aside $7.5 million annually for bike projects, state-wide. In the past, L.A. has gotten a small fraction of that. For fiscal years 2003-2004 to the present, the City of L.A. has been awarded $1.75 million from the state BTA - with the largest chunk set aside for a bridge widening on Fletcher Drive that will cost well more than the $1.25 million set aside for it. With this plan we've spent $500,000 to get a document that will let the same staff who have been unable to score big money from the State's BTA fund, averaging (over the past five fiscal years a dismal $250,000/year). It doesn't make any sense. The plan was pre-formed and presented to the bicycling public before taking in our input. The "outreach" meetings were Alta Planning people telling us what the plan would be before we had a chance to make our own recommendations.

The whole process left everyone adrift and thinking, "Wha?!"

In order to make cycling safer, and to increase the mode split of bicycles on the street, the city will necessarily have to remove access and mobility from private automobiles on LA's surface streets. There is simply no way around this. The cheapest way to implement cycling facilities is to take a car lane away - this is also the most effective as well as beneficial to local commercial districts and the overall air quality and livability of the city.

To take away car travel lanes requires an Environmental Impact Report. The bike plan, to truly be effective, needs to be put through this process (a $1 million to $2 million, two year process).

An example of how dysfunctional our city is regarding bicycles: we don't even get counted! The three measures the city plans for in the roadway (to give the street a rating) are all based on private automobile speed and throughput. These measures are "Level Of Service", "Average Daily Trips", Vehicle Miles Travelled" - and they don't really measure these in any case. The engineers at the DOT get away with "modelling" traffic, rarely spending the time to actually observe and measure it for more than 15 minutes at a time.

Another problem: there is a map of homicides, there is a map of assaults, but there is NO MAP OF TRAFFIC CRASHES AND FATALITIES. When people in this town talk about "safety" and bicycling, they literally have no facts to go on - only inane anecdotal evidence. A 2001 report, "Bicycling Collisions in Los Angeles", done by the LADOT's Michelle Mowery identified the city's most dangerous intersections for cyclists - a report which was filed in the dustbin of history. A report which was never replicated. How can we plan for bicycles (are anything, really) in our roadways, when we don't even know how safe they are? The data is collected by various agencies, but nobody compiles it - so all those deaths and injuries go unnoticed by our politicians and lay-people alike.

The LA Bike Plan makes no provisions to remedy this situation, and many others. Further, it has been taken apart by Joe Linton on LA Streetsblog for misleading maps and inaccurate bike lane lists. The document is as flawed as the process which led to it's creation.

I plan on attending an upcoming meeting scheduled in North East LA on November 4th at Ramona Hall. I've written a lot about this stuff, and the technical adjustments I think the plan ought to include. I've read through the City Budget and identified pots of money to request EIR funds from. I've learned that LA has 6 to 8 full-time bikeways staff people - more than in any city I've ever read or heard about, yet we get next to nothing out of these people.

I've read that LA's bike coordinator (a "citywide" position) is an underling to multiple underlings in the LADOT (aka The Car Dept), and not in a high level position in the mayor's office or the Planning Department (where other cities place their bicycle coordinator) - she lacks the de jure authority to make anyone in LA do anything.

Good luck with your article, and perhaps you should interview one of the firms that was hired to create USC's master plan (Fehr and Peers) and ask the Public Affairs/External Affairs team at USC how all their city hall connections and lobbying efforts have maintained such an unsafe environment for USC's many cyclists around the campus - with campus cops handing out ridiculous tickets for riding their bikes in the crosswalks while failing to provide safe cycling amenities and training for their student body.

Note to "Cheer Mom": Open You Mother&$%# Eyes

2009-10-19T02:51:00.000-07:00

These days, I am a busy person. I don't have a lot of time to fart around when I'm always running late to my next appointment with my obligations and duties as a daddy and a bike shop owner guy.

I ride a regular route to and from my home and my shop. Sometimes I run down a quiet side street, Manitou - but mostly (when I have no baby in my cargo bike) I haul ass on Lincoln Heights' main commercial drag: North Broadway.

This Thursday, I had a special bundle of bike stuff in my bakfiets: four wicker baskets and a bike in a box (straddling the bakfiets). I do stuff like this all the time, it's not a big deal for me any more and my ride to "the office" coincides with light mid-day traffic of the unemployed, the lazy, the stay-at-home, or the government/service worker. It is a totally uneventful ride that allows the stresses of home life to be overtaken with the stresses of work life, sometimes with one set of stress overlapping the other when someone from either world calls me (or people from both worlds call me simultaneously on both of the phones I have now) during my commute.

Wednesday was rainy. Thursday was hot. I was pissed off, tired, and running late. A bike was straddling my cargo bike so I had to take the full lane on Broadway.

I was hauling ass, keeping up with the cars and trying to keep my cool when some jerk accelerated around me, cut back in front of me and then hit her brakes at the stop light in front of us. "Cheer Mom" her rear window says in it's lower right hand corner. Right, spreading cheer the whole world over. This type of thing happens all the time. People just can't stand to be behind a bicycle, even when you're both going the damn speed limit.

Two intersections down Broadway and we're both stopped at the light at Griffin Avenue. The right hand lane is painted red (for right turns and slow vehicles), and the downhill portion of my ride is officially over. I pull my bike into the right hand lane, alongside "CheerMom". I don't care about what she did earlier - it is a natural human instinct to overtake those you perceive to be "slower" than you. Whatever. This isn't Copenhagen. This isn't even the Westside. Strictly working class, and my bike is a big question mark to everyone who sees it regardless of social class, so I'm the one not fitting in. Cut me off, it's cool, we're in Hard Driving Car Landia. Whatever.

I ride this street every day, and I think I know what is coming next. Cheer Mom will feel a tension when she sees me at the right hand side of her window. She will be afraid I'm crazy, or that I was offended, or simply that I will pull in front of her again.

I just want her to do what 99% of dumbasses like her do, and zoom away as fast as they can so I can resume taking up an empty right hand lane (moving at a slower pace) to my turn two blocks down the road.

The light turns green. She gets off to a slow start. I put my pedals in motion. We cross the intersection side by side.

My mind starts to tingle, "What the f*&^ is this idiot doing now?"

As we near the gas station on the opposite corner her car shimmies. No brake lights. no turn signals - the goddamn car is moving in my direction.

SHIT! My bike, if it gets broken, is not replaceable. I can't go to the local bike shop (i.e. my own) and slap some generic, out-of-the-catalogue parts on it. This bike is a freaky Dutch-made cargo bike - it is my everything. I ride my baby in it. I shop with it. I cannot afford, quite frankly, for it to be out of service for a single day - I will go broke without it. This idiot is going to trash my livelihood and my salvation.

I immediately start applying the brakes, but I'm under load with baskets and a bike straddling my bike and about 60 lbs. of assorted baby crap, blankets, crumbs and toys. There isn't enough room with the bike box on top - I'm almost as wide as a car.

"Hey! Hey! HEY! HEY!! HEY!!! HEY!! HEY!!!!", I yelled.

Whump shhhhfffbbbmmmmm.

Bitch hit the bike I was carrying. I was able to steer my bike out of the way and onto the curb cut the gas station has been provided with. The bike I was carrying (boxed up, thank god) got knocked to the ground. It stamps it's corner with with grit and slides to a stop. I am able to lunge off to one side while keeping my bakfiets mostly upright.

"What the f$%& are you motherf&%*$ trying to f*&$#@* do you pinche pendeja?! Open your f***** eyes puta!"

The passenger rolls the window down and extends his middle finger, "Fuck you!"

Note to Cheer Mom: open you mother&$%# eyes.

--

Hat tip to Ted Rogers, Alex Thompson, Will Campbell, Gary Kavanaugh and others who've shared their ride reports and their reactions. Some day, my hard-riding brothas and sistas, these same jackasses who have spent fractions of their lives putting ours at risk will be toting their kids around in cargo bikes like mine and voting for politicians who bring home the bike lanes. Some day soon.

SoapBoxLA on Substandard Bike Parking at LAPD's New HQ

2009-10-08T00:25:00.000-07:00

After Tuesday night's Los Angeles Bicycle Advisory Committee hearing, I got a tour of the substandard bicycle facilities at the new LAPD headquarters in Downtown LA.

You can read more about the LABAC meeting, quite a firecracker meeting, over on LA Streetsblog (thanks to Ted Rogers of Biking In LA!) in an article entitled, "Unanimous BAC Votes for More Time to Review Draft Bike Plan".

Using the LACBC's Data to Make the Case for Active Transportation

2009-09-24T08:22:00.000-07:00

The Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition is out counting cyclists, doing the work that our local government should be doing, and I'd like to offer up a suggestion as to how to use the data they collect.

The street in front of Flying Pigeon LA bike shop and the Bike Oven, North Figueroa Street, is classified as a "Major Highway". There are two classes of Major Highways in L.A., a "Primary" (or Class I) and a "Secondary" (or Class II).

A Class I Highway is "zoned" for 50,000 average daily car trips.

A Class II Highway is "zoned" for 30,000 to 50,000 average daily car trips.

North Figueroa Street handles a lot of automobile trips during a typical work day even though (or, rather, because) it runs parallel to the 110 Freeway (aka the Arroyo Parkway).

But does North Figueroa have 50,000, or even 30,000, average daily car trips? If N. Fig. is moving less cars than it is zoned for, then we have grounds to fight to remove excess road capacity from cars in order to move more people using other modes, like bicycling, taking the bus, and walking. Using the LACBC's data, we can show that we can move just as many, or more, people using a mix of cars, buses, bikes, and walking while also reducing noise, pollution, car speeds, and crashes - we will have a pretty solid case to take away a car lane from N. Fig. and to replace it with road space for those other modes.

If North Figueroa is pulling in its "zoned" amount of car trips (or more), we can use our data to ask, "Is this really the best way to move people in this area?". The cyclists using the roads make, relative to automobiles, no impact on our pavement. By riding a bike, they are making themselves less prone to long term diseases that plague our neighborhood. Further, they are more likely to spend their money locally at locally owned businesses - sending more sales tax dollars into LA's coffers. Finally, cyclists take up a fraction of the space of automobiles, making bicycles a more efficient use of the limited roadway space (more people can use the road and not be delayed by others doing the same if they ride bicycles). This type of argument (backed up with actual cycling data, and not "best guesses" from City staff) is what bowls over engineers and peovides talking points for the politicians and locals we must lobby to see bike friendly changes made.

Finally, the LACBC's data can be used to say "With no bicycle amenities we're moving X thousands of cars per day and X number of bicycles per day. Knowing what we do about the local benefits of more people cycling, let's try and alter the design of the roadway to increase its bicycle and transit capacity wile reducing it automobile capacity and measure the results."

As an addendum, here are a few other avenues to explore with data collection to make a legal and scientific case for more bicycle and transit capacity on LA's surface streets:

The LACBC would do itself a favor and contact Assemblyman Kevin de Leon's office (currently the chair of the Appropriations Committee in the CA State Assembly) and ask him to get the California Board of Equalization to provide the Bradley-Burns Sales Tax income (that the state collects, and the City gets a cut of), block by block, for the corridors that the LACBC is studying.

There is a fine literature on the negative effects of loud sound on human beings, I would suggest measuring the noise generated on the corridors being studied (next time around) and using that data to make the case for a road designed better for non-automobile based transportation.

The LACBC, in coordination with perhaps a university (Occidental Colleges' UEPI?), would also do itself a favor by surveying residents in their study areas to find out how in favor they are to various types of traffic calming. The City of LA's Planning Commission can force a private developer to pay for traffic calming measures, and can make an "Neighborhood Protection Plan" a condition of approving the developer's permits. An NPP and traffic calming is a pre-written format for a non-governmental agency to use in the City of LA to measure the effects of the City's policies as regard the right of way. Perhaps a call to the Planning Commission would unearth a template for the traffic calming criteria the city uses and a few versions of the types of surveys the City uses to judge the effectiveness of traffic calming.

There are more addenda I'd like to add, but I'll call it quits here. I'v got to get to the shop, drop a bike off at the Fedex shipping center using my bakfiets, and get the shop ready for a few days without me (I'm going to pinche Las Vegas for Interbike).

Unbaised Transportation Terminology

2009-09-15T19:04:00.001-07:00

StreetsblogLA is running a story about a citizen-made improvement to a street running past the LA Eco-Village, "Eco-Village Reclaims Bimini Pl. with Street Party and Road Painting".

The story is more personally covered over on Homergrown Evolution in a blog post entitled "City Repair LA".

To keep the spirit of this improvement alive, I'll offer up this web-page, written by Michael Wright and Dom Nozzi for the City of West Palm Beach, Florida, "Sustainable, Unbiased Transportation Terminology" (hat tip to "How We Drive"):

"Much of the current transportation language was developed in the 1950's and 1960's. This was the golden age of automobiles and accommodating them was a major priority in society. Times have changed, especially in urban areas where creating a balanced, equitable, and sustainable transportation system is the new priority. The transportation language has not evolved at the same pace as the changing priorities; much of it still carries a pro-automobile bias. Continued use of biased language is not in keeping with the goal of addressing transportation issues in an objective way in the City."

What sort of biased language is no longer used in West Palm Beach (but still alive and well in even the LA Bike Plan)?:

"Biased --

The following street improvements are recommended.

The intersection improvement will cost $5,000.00.

The motor vehicle capacity will be improved.

Objective--

The following street modifications are recommended.

The right turn channel will cost $5,000,00.

The motor vehicle capacity will be changed."

So, even the word "improved" needs to be worked on here in L.A.! Let's hope that along with the streets, we're able to re-take our language as well.

An Angle Into the Mayor's Office

2009-09-02T00:54:00.000-07:00

Getting livable streets built in L.A. will require some heavy lifting from our mayor, who has so far spent more time advertising how "green" his initiatives are than he has in doing some actual greening of the City of L.A.

The mayor's office has a lot of legal power to command the resources and staff of the city's various departments. Does the mayor sit at a control deck during the day, pushing buttons and sending missives through pneumatic tubes to his underlings in other departments? No. not quite. He's likely got a staff in charge of making sure his vague campaign promises are somehow met.

The Performance Management Unit, which is run by Greg Spotts, is in charge o executing the mayor's will.

So far, the mayor's sole focus in transportation has been to increase the speed of private automobile travel. His city measures speed, and his DOT has been working hard to make sure that the safety and convenience of cyclists, pedestrians, and transit users takes a back seat to a private motorists prerogative to blast through our neighborhoods.

Our point of entry with the mayor's office should be with his Performance Management Unit. The maor's current transportation plan belies a 20th century mindset about transportation, with a political burden to somehow support public transportation with massive earthworks like the subway to the sea (eta 30+ years). The reality is that in great cities around the world, budget neutral initiatives can vastly improve the quality of life, safety, air quality, and convenience of citizens by getting them out of cars and onto a bus, a bike or walking.

If anyone can save us, perhaps it is the facts-first crew in the PMU.

Greater Cypress Park Neighborhood Council Endorses Cyclists' Bill of Rights!

2009-08-18T23:24:00.000-07:00

There would have been more to add to this if I'd remembered to take pictures, but the Great Cypress Park Neighborhood Council voted unanimously to endorse the Cyclists' Bill of Rights tonight, Tuesday, August 18, 2009! Yay!

I made a mistake (as you'll note in my earlier post), and I went to the Glassell Park Neighborhood Council meeting - a meeting which did not have Rourke Reagan, and a meeting with no mention of cycling or the Cyclists' Bill of Rigths on the agenda.

I was in a rush to get out the door in time for the 7 p.m. start, and I didn't catch my mistake until the Glassell Park meeting got under way. I dashed out to Glassell Park at full speed on my bakfiets, and I'd even convinced my wife to bring along our daughter for the evening.

What a surprise to see that I wasn't on the agenda when I could have sworn that I'd been emailed about it. Fortunately, an autistic man named Raymond got up to go to the bathroom and I asked him if there was another neighborhood council meeting tonight. Raymond is a neighborhood council nut - he is obsessed with attending and memorizing eery detail about the councils and their actions.

"Yes, the Greater Cypress Park Neighborhood Council is meeting right now! They have already started their meeting! Excuse me I have to go to the bathroom now," said Raymond, in his full voiced monotone. Great, I thought, I'm at the GPNC, when I needed to be at the GCPNC - both of which hold meetings that are only one mile apart on the same night at the same time.

So, we strapped baby into my bakfiets, I gave my wife a quick lift on the back of my bike to her car and off we dashed to the new state park in Cypress Park for the GCPNC (not he GPNC) meeting.

We arrived in time to catch the first two hours of the meeting before I got called up to speak. Mommy took baby to play in the park. By the way, the GCPNC has, perhaps, one of the best family-friendly meeting locations I have ever used. The community room at the park is located ... well ... it's got doors on both sides of the room that are sound proof, but your kid can literally play right alongside the building while you're inside complaining about DONE, the mayor, or a lousy neighbor. The food was awesome, and free, and the new park though totally over run with families is a blast and almost too much fun with all the wild boys and girls running around jumping and playing, parkour training older guys, basketball, soccer, baseball, bike riding, etc. etc. going on.

I gave a spiel, answered (poorly) some very pointed questions from the council, and in a few minutes time the GCPNC had unanimously voted to endorse the Cyclists Bill of Rights! An older guy at the meeting told me he worked with Joe Linton in the lawsuit to allow the park to be constructed, and had learned what bike advocates are all about in that fight. Way to go Joe!

Thanks to everyone on the GCPNC, especially Rourke Reagan (who encouraged me to come on behalf of the Bike Writer's Collective and got this on the agenda), and thanks also to my neighbors for agreeing with cyclists when they ask to respected, protected and given fair and safe access to the right of way!

Glassell Park Neighborhood Council to Consider Cyclists' Bill of Rights Tonight

2009-08-18T17:47:00.000-07:00

I'm on my way over to the Glassell Park Neighborhood Council meeting to ask that the GPNC endorses the Cyclists' Bill of Rights.

As is typical for me these days, I'm going to be riding my bike with my daughter to the meeting without having done all the research and outreach to the cycling community in the area I was hoping to do prior to talking to the GPNC.

Big thanks to R. Reagan for getting this issue on the agenda, and to the Bike Writer's Collective for drafting this document and encouraging me to win more endorsements for the Cyclists' Bill of Rights.

New 7-Eleven Opens in Lincoln Heights

2009-08-03T15:11:00.001-07:00

I snapped this photo to commemorate my 2nd official day of seeing a new 7-eleven on the corner of Eastlake and Broadway in Lincoln Heights. I've already bought 6 bags of 7-eleven cookies, 4 hot dogs, 1 bag of 7-eleven chips, and a brownie since I've noticed they opened their doors. This came as a surprise to me yesterday afternoon, as I ride my bicycle by this corner nearly every day of my life (these days).

The Indo (or Pakistani?) dudes behind the counter have super thick accents, and they report that business has been very slow since they opened. They attribute how easily missed their store is to the lack of opening day sales.

Some guys from the neighborhood said, "They're going to get robbed."

What made this a great moment is seeing a small row of ... gasp! ... UNLOCKED CONDOMS! Victory for Lincoln Heights! For more information, see my post on locked-up condoms at a nearby CVS pharmacy.

Proof That Strip Malls Kill

2009-07-24T11:31:00.000-07:00

This SUV smashed into a mini-van at the intersection of N. Figueroa St. and Marmion Way - a big suprise with its proximity to a park, strip malls, commercial uses and a massive "arterial" road. Photo taken on July 10, 2009 by ubrayj02.

I just bumped into a blog post on The City Fix about an article by Assistant Professor Eric Dumbaugh of Texas A&M in the Journal of American Planning's summer issue. Dr. Dumbaugh's research revealed that strip malls and auto-centric arterial roads, along with being ugly, also lead to more crashes.

Anyone in the LADOT care to comment on this? The mayor's office? Planning Commission?

The article in the Journal of American Planning is titled "Safe Urban Form: Revisiting the Relationship Between Community Design and Traffic Safety". It is based on traffic crash data over a three year time period in the City of San Antonio.

Linky links:

Caution! Strip Mall and Big Box Retailer Ahead! [thecityfix.com]
.pdf or .html version of "Safe Urban Form: Revisiting the Relationship Between Community Design and Traffic Safety" [informaworld.com]

For further information about the research contact:
Eric Dumbaugh
Assistant Professor
Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning
Texas A&M University
Email: edumbaugh@tamu.edu
Phone: +001 (979) 862 4320

Mayor's Committment to the Environment is Missing Teeth

2009-07-02T09:24:00.000-07:00

It has been a sad couple of years for bike advocates in Los Angeles and our relationship with the Mayor. There are few people in the city with as much direct control over the LADOT and the Planning Department as the mayor has. Yet, despite his claims to be a friend to environmentalists, his office has done next to nothing to see that more car trips are replaced with bicycle trips in LA. He has failed to provide the political leadership to make the city's various departments accept the Cyclists Bill of Rights.

The mayor recently announced that he was re-committed to being a champion of the environment, which, coming from a man who's "Tiger Team" at the LADOT has wasted millions to speed up cars and induce more auto trips, seems quite dubious indeed.

Villaraigosa would do himself, and all Angelenos, a favor by studying what Mayor Bloomberg in New York, Mayor Newsom in San Francisco, Mayor Daley in Chicago, and London's former mayor Ken Livingston have done: they ditched their city's auto-only focus and spent a tiny sliver in transportation dollars to vastly improve the quality of life by becoming bicycle friendly.

The good news is that it would take a minimal amount of effort on Villaraigosa's behalf to get the ball rolling on these bike friendly initiatives:

Funding the 1997/2002 planned Citywide Bikeway Network (total est. cost $60 million);
Re-starting the Bike Master Plan process with full environmental review (to allow pro-bike street measures and to allow bike facilities to degrade car throughput);
Pushing through several council requested "Sharrow" pilot programs;
Introducing bicycle friendly training to the LAPD;
Providing a map of all traffic injuries and deaths in Los Angeles;

The cost, in dollars, for these initiatives is vanishingly small compared to the cost of repaving a one mile stretch of highway, or paying for extra LADOT traffic cops at congested intersections.

The impact, however, would be great and immediate: less air pollution; fewer deaths from diabetes, heart disease, lung disease, and respiratory illnesses; fewer kids killed by cars; more retail foot traffic in LA's historic business districts with less car congestion; and generally a more livable city (which would be scientifically provable).

So, Mr. Mayor, what's it gonna take for you to become something more than a green smoke blower?

My "Bike The Talk" Letter to Hizzoner the Mayor of LA

2009-06-23T01:06:00.000-07:00

Way back in April, a bunch of cyclists got together at the Bike Oven and decided to write letters to the Mayor of LA, Antonio Villaraigosa.

We weren't expecting to get much out of the mini-campaign, but it was a chance for us to educate each other and share ideas. After a long talk we decided to hand write our letters (we had no functioning computers that night).

It can be a pain to type out a hand-written letter. As far as I know, none of us sent our letters in! If all bike advocates worked this inefficiently, we might be rewarded with jobs planning LA's transportation future. Har har har.

Without further ado, here is my yet-to-be-mailed letter to Mayor Villaraigosa:

Honorable Mayor Villaraigosa,

In your mayoral campaign, you promised Angelenos a greener city – yet your administration has consistently ignored the interests of bicyclists in Los Angeles.

A proven way of getting more people to ride bikes is to slow, and restrict, automobile access on arterial roads in exchange for high-quality protected bike lanes.

We’d like to “green” LA – but we need your leadership to win increased access & mobility for bicyclists. This can be achieved many ways:
Fully fund the 1997/2002 Citywide Bikeway Network – total cost of $60 million (spread over 8 to 10 years);
Citywide, periodical, crash and injury mapping – we need to see the real-life impact of the LADOT’s roadway planning decisions;
Change the LADOT & DPW policies to allow bike trips to replace car trips – we can move just as many people as we do with cars on our roads using a mix of bikes, transit, and walking. We can do this at a considerable savings in road repair and emergency services (as well as savings in long-term health care costs).

I work with several advocacy groups in LA on cycling issues. More details for the above proposals are available, at your office’s request. I am available to meet with one of your deputies to discuss these proposals further at their convenience.

There is a little section at the bottom with my name and signature (yet to be signed). I've got to sign this letter and send it off. Attention fellow Bike the Talkers! Let's do this! Type up your hand written letters and lets flood the bottom right-hand corner of VIllaraigosa's mail box! Let no secretarial staff sit idle in their mail duties! Huzzah!

Transportation Committee Speech or "Why I'm a Bad Dad"

2009-06-17T02:21:00.000-07:00

Baby on board for the ride to the Transportation Committee meeting.

I'm going to take my young daughter with me to this morning's Los Angeles City Council Transportation Committee Meeting at 8 a.m. in Room 1050 of City Hall. I was going to drop her at grandma's house and then go to City Hall, but the meeting is at 8 a.m.! What the heck!

This time, I've practiced with a countdown clock to make sure I'm on point and under the alotted 2 minutes. This whole process is a dog and pony show, since the LA City Council has proven time and again to be quite powerless. Since this is a show, I figured I might as well keep it entertaining. Here is what I plan on saying:

"Honorable councilmembers, what is the total amount of money that the City of LA gets for bike projects?

We get $4 million to $6 million annually for bikes - and that is money that doesn't come from the General Fund.

What do we get out of it currently? Half-a-dozen "bikeways" staff who can't keep the Orange Line path clean and have to constantly hire outside consultants to do their work for them?

A good friend of mine recently asked me about the LA Bike Plan, "Let's work backwards," he said, "What sort of Bike Plan would you like to have?"

The City of LA does not employ bike-friendly road measurements. We need better road measurements: crash and injury maps; sales tax versus vehicle speeds; noise and air quality mapping; and several more.

This is not expensive stuff. Most of the standards are already written, and measurement and reporting can be done by existing staff. Without proper standards, there is no mechanism (other than mass complaining) to see that our interests are protected.

More to the point, we need this current draft of the Bike Plan to be SHUT DOWN. Then, we need a bike plan that will authorize the city to do the right thing - like remove car parking and car travel lanes in order to place bike facilities in the public right-of-way. Give us the environmental review and public hearings that will authorize bike-friendly plans to have some regulatory teeth. "Planned but unfeasible" is what the Bike Plan currently states about the most critical bicycle routes in the city.

If we're outsourcing so much of the LADOT's bikeways work, why not outsource all of it? Take the dedicated chunk that funds the DOT's inefficient paper pushers jobs and create a mayoral-level position to "coordinate" on behalf of bicycles. Take bikeways money and create a small bikeways division within the Planning Department to grab SCAG money [.pdf file, page 5 and 6] and to bring the City into compliance with the state's new Complete Streets laws. Let the DOT stick to cars, and let the rest of live in the 21st century with the bike plan we deserve.

Thanks again for your time, and let's put some teeth into this Bike Plan by starting from scratch and doing it right this time - with environmental review, public hearings, and better standards."

That brings me to 1 minute and 40 seconds. The last 20 seconds I'll, maybe, apologize to my daughter for dragging her down to City Hall so early. It would feel better if the whomever set this date and time for a meeting would do the same.

Letter to Jordann Turner Regarding the Bike Plan

2009-06-06T01:30:00.000-07:00

This draft bike plan (and the scope of the plan) as currently drafted is a step in the wrong direction for cyclists, and communities, in Los Angeles.

Without appropriate roadway designations and measurement regimes, LA's cyclists will continue to die or get injured riding their bikes in the city. Cycling is an active form of transportation that reduces the rate of many types of long-term diseases like heart disease and diabetes - both of which are nearing epidemic proportions in our society. Further, bike-friendly streets can be business friendly, and are generally safer for all user groups - as car speed are generally slowed and the road is engineered to help non-car traffic move with ease and safety.

This plan should go through a full environmental review, and the scope of the plan should be broadened enough to include specific plans relative to on-street bike facilities and traffic calming that increases bicycling rates while reducing Level Of Service. Class 1 bike lanes on arterial streets should not be labeled "unfeasible" - but should be planned and placed under appropriate environmental review to avoid Michelle Mowery's oft-cited CEQA lawsuit threat. The bike community is ready to fight the good fight and convince our neighbors that the world will continue turning with slower cars speeds and more livable, bikeable, streets.

This plan should include a regime of measurement of our roads that favors bicycles and active transportation over measures like "LOS", "ADT" and "VMT". Here is a list of some measurements that should be included in any road designated a bike path, bike route, etc.:

(1) Comprehensive geo-coded traffic death and injury mapping
(2) CA Office of Noise Control measurements of traffic noise
(3) Pedestrian right-of-way use surveys
(4) Neighborhood Protection Plan-style surveys
(5) Geo-coded retail sales tax trend data (where applicable)
(6) People-based throughput counts for a particular road

There are several more off-the-shelf measurements that would allow the political and legal case to be made for on-street bike facilities and traffic calming. Should any controversy or lawsuits arise as a result of the passage of a Bike Plan with these measurements included in it, the data from these measures would allow a fair argument based on facts (and not anecdotes about cyclists running stop signs) to dominate the debate.

As the MTA found in its 2002 survey of cyclists in Los Angeles County shows:

"Bicyclists need access to the same destinations as drivers of automobiles. Origin and Destination Survey results show that the most common destinations for bicyclists are concentrated along major arterials, especially in areas with intense commercial activity,"
- Enhanced Public Outreach Project for Metro's Bicycle Transportation Strategic Plan, Prepared by the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition for the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, September 2004.

Finally, if you would be so kind as to inform your boss(es) to get in touch with a few of the more involved bike advocates/advocacy groups in town that would go a long way in preventing a lot of ill will that has built up over the LADOT's handling of this plan.

They Hate Us, They Really Hate Us

2009-06-05T12:49:00.000-07:00

With the LADOT Bikeways Division, and the LADOT in general, making their contempt for cyclists' right to fair, safe, and equitable access to the public right-of-way well known, I thought now would be a good time to re-post this gem of a Public Safety Announcement.

The Bike Plan lacks amenities of substance for on-street transportation and the plans to install sharrows have been filed in the wastebasket.

This PSA won an emmy in 2006 and was put together by the LADOT's crack squad of anti-bike propagandists:

LOS ANGELES DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION: LAWS OF PHYSICS • LA CITYVIEW35
Tony Ighani, Executive Producer/Producer
Ken Husting, Executive Producer
Robert Manciero, Producer

Thanks guys!

A Call for Open Revolt Against the Current Bike Plan

2009-06-03T02:14:00.000-07:00

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.

Bike Voting League a Cure for Bad Planning

2009-06-02T06:29:00.000-07:00

Streetsblog LA recently linked to a just-released draft Bike Plan map and a memo on bike facility classification.

The map sucks, the bike facility classification system is an insulting joke, and the only hope I've got left to make L.A. bike friendly is to achieve the following this year (collectively, with other bike advocates):

(1) Lobby the Mayor's office for pro-bike policy changes in the LADOT and the city
(2) Develop lawsuit worthy cases for improved bike project funding and road measurement regimes
(3) Help Ted Rogers with an LA-based League of Bike Voters
(4) Follow the white rabbit of bike advocacy, Stephen Box.

I was hoping to write a more detailed screed against the whole bike plan process, but I'm tired and Stephen Box said just about everything I wanted to say (and more) in his recent SoapBoxLA post, "LA Bike Plan's "Proposed Bicycle Network" Aims Low and Still Falls Short".

Stephen gets it dead right with this final paragraph:

"Overall, I'm calling the LA Bike Plan Update Draft Bike Map a complete success from the LADOT's perspective for subterfuge, funding and the bold use of the word "UNFEASIBLE" but a complete failure from the perspective of the cyclists who have hope that they'll get some support as the ride the streets of LA."

This plan, which was originally pitched as a plan to obtain more money from the state for further plans, is a success only in that a few people were paid to work on it and so our unemployment lines were shorter by just that much. For cyclists hoping to have a map and roadway measurement standards to bank on for future improvements, this plan is a sad joke.

Cyclists Speak Out Against Bikeways Elimination

2009-05-19T11:45:00.000-07:00

The Time is Now - Break up the LADOT

2009-05-17T22:45:00.000-07:00

Exhibit 1, from an audit of the LADOT done in 2006-2007, under the direction of Farid Saffar in the Controller's Office.

Last March, I wrote a post, "Break Up the LADOT", in which I very vaguely outlined how a potential money-saving dismantling of Los Angeles' biggest roadblock to livable streets - the LA Department of Transportation.

From removing traffic calming around new developments (that they've shown MEASURABLY IMPROVES safety and livability), to spending millions on a Pico-Olympic one-way study prior to talking to local residents and community members. This is a $160 million people killing machine that produces less safe, less profitable, and less livable streets in Los Angeles. It is designed to blunt the efforts of communities trying to improve their neighborhoods by slowing down traffic, reducing car trips, and making bicycling, walking and transit use easier.

So, here is a diagram of how I think the department should be ripped apart and sent in pieces to other city departments.

Exhibit 2, from my March 2008 post "Break Up the LADOT"

Click on the picture above to embiggenate the diagram. This is painting with a pretty broad brush! I estimate that a few tens of millions of dollars can be saved by cutting out car-centric administrators while maintaining the required armies of paper shuffling ground troops to plan and apply for grants and capital improvement projects.

LAPD's B.S. Answers to Hummer vs. Bike Incident

2009-05-15T11:16:00.000-07:00

This is a 3-part YouTube series thoughtfully named "LADPlies". Apologies for the inclusion of partially irrelevant testimony (i.e. Zuma Dogg and the anti-cyclist LAPD dude's answers) but it's where the discourse on this issue is right now. Sadly, this is the best we can get out of our public officials and government.

Michelle Mowery was on hand, to blame bike riders for her agency's auto-only bias. Great job LADOT!

Big Surprise, Car Happy Assemblymember Likes Unsafe Roads

2009-05-12T14:25:00.000-07:00

I just read through an account of the recent Assembly Transportation Committee hearing on LA Streetsblog in which Asm. Paul Krekorian's (slightly flawed) bill to amend the state's speed limit regulations was taken 'round the back of the chambers and shot by a cabal of big money automobile interests' and their Chairman-elect, Asm. Mike Eng.

"How could such a slam dunk piece of legislation, a bill that would protect cyclists and pedestrians from the increased speeding of drivers, be such a non-starter with the State Legislature?
Unfortunately, the largest slice of the blame can be served to L.A. County Assemblyman and Transportation Committee Chair Mike "the 710 Tunnel Project Is Going to Happen Whether You Like It or Not" Eng and the Los Angeles City Government. Eng allowed and encouraged the California Highway Patrol to act as an "expert witness" despite their clear disdain for the legislation and accepted their criticisms of "Safer Streets" as fact. This luxury was not granted to the local police that testified concerning how current law is making their roads inhospitable to everyone, especially those of us that don't use a motor to get around, but including automobile drivers."
-Damien Newton, "How Mike Eng and the Auto Lobby Stalled on Safe Streets", May 12, 2009

Thanks for nuthin' Asm. Eng!

I do agree with the honorable assemblyman's position on automobile speeds, I differ with him only on where I think insanely dangerous car speed limits ought to be mandated by state law: I propose allowing dangerous speed only on the assemblyman's block! Good luck taking your poodle Fifi for a walk in San Marino with 45 mph traffic blowing by your door!

Maybe when enough of your neighbors and friends get hit or killed in "accidents" (by design) in the roadway, your attitude will change. Fortunately, term limits being what they are, you'll be gone in a few years anyway without much to show for your time as chair of one of a critically important state-wide committee.

The truth is that there is good, scientific, evidence that the way our urban and suburban roads are designed, and the speeds allowed by state law, are unsafe for pedestrians, cyclists, and even motorists. It is a lie that if cars are driving over the speed limit on a road, the only reasonable step is to raise the speed limit. There are may reasonable steps to take: traffic calming, increased monitoring by police, and (in this case) voting for another Assemblymember!

Are the LADOT's Sped Up Streets Safer?

2009-05-12T01:47:00.001-07:00

Stephen Box and a cadre of concerned folks are working to see a recently introduced Assembly Bill passed into law. Their hope is to see that, when a local city does a state-mandated "Engineering and Traffic Survey" that the survey include a public hearing to determine if the speed limits on a given street are appropriate.

That particular feedback mechanism (the public hearing) being used to determine speed limits is a flawed idea. The bill thus far has not fared well in Sacramento, with a lot of heavy-handed "No" votes courtesy of the AAA's lobbyists and other pro-car throughput interests.

What California needs is a pedestrian and bicyclists safety standard that it can apply uniformly on the states roadways. Currently, a one-sentence statement in an engineering report (for example, "We have considered bicycle safety and determine it to be unchanged by increase the posted speed limit from 30 mph to 45 mph") can excuse a local agency like the LADOT from doing their job, and allow them to focus on making car travel as fast as possible.

Some lucky googling brought up a link to the following:

"In residential subdivisions, street widths are typically scaled to permit rapid, unimpeded automobile travel, resulting in relatively wide streets. A 1998 study in Longmont, Colorado, reviewed approximately 20,000 police reports of car crashes, to determine what features of residential street design were associated with crash risk. When numerous features were were considered - street width, trees, building height, curb cuts,, and others - street width was by far the strongest predictor of crash risk. (The only other predictor of crashes was street curvature.) The safest street width was approximately 24 feet,and streets of standard suburban width, 30 feet, were substantially riskier."
-pg. 111 Howard Frumkin, Lawrence D. Frank, Richard Jackson, "Urban sprawl and public health: designing, planning, and building for healthy communities"

The cited section of "Urban sprawl and public health" above refers to automobile safety. Clearly, allowing automobiles to legally drive faster and tacking on a public hearing to the process will not make our streets safer. How wide are the streets being sped up in the Los Angeles anyway?

When it comes to pedestrian safety it turns out the following appears to be the case:

"Much is known about what design features place pedestrians at risk ... [h]igh speeds and high traffic volume, typical of busy roads, are also important risk factors.

Several kinds of environmental modifications offer great promise in protecting pedestrians and bicyclists. These can be divided into three categories: separating pedestrians from vehicles, making pedestrians visible and conspicuous to drivers, and reducing vehicle speeds ... [v]ehicle speeds can be reduced with traffic circles, narrowed traffic lanes, curving or zigzag roadways, raised intersections, and speed bumps. ... These techniques are collectively known as 'traffic calming'."
-pg. 117 - 119, Howard Frumkin, Lawrence D. Frank, Richard Jackson, "Urban sprawl and public health: designing, planning, and building for healthy communities"

So, you tell me, what can LA do to make streets safer? Instead of allowing the LADOT and City Council to continue raising speed limits to allow the police department to use of radar guns to enforce speed limits (for "safety") - and hoping to get a public hearing stapled onto that rubber stamping process. Why not switch things up?

Why not use scientific standards in our roadway E&TS's that would prohibit irresponsible street designs? Most of the streets we have now in LA allow cars to speed well over the planned limit - the LADOT's own assessments show that on nearly every street they surveyed showed that most drivers were speeding!

This insanity has got to end. A public hearing pasted onto a scientifically flawed process will not a just outcome make. Paul Krekorian's bill ought to be re-worked and, more to the point the LADOT needs to follow the letter of the law and the tip of the scientific iceberg staring them in the face: fast cars mean more deaths on residential streets.

The cursory treatment of "pedestrian and bicyclist" safety by the LADOT needs to be abolished. Full, scientific, accurate, consideration of pedestrian and bicyclist safety needs to be employed. With science on our side, I doubt the courts or the legislature can withstand the power of this argument, and with luck, we'll find out how right about this I am in the near future.

Flying Pigeon LA - A Cargo Bike Specialty Shop

2009-05-09T16:45:00.000-07:00

After writing about Dutch bucket bikes making their way to LA a year ago, it turns out that I was wrong. I thought that dutch bike manufacturer De Fietsfabriek was going to make a beachead in LA and flood the market with $3,500 dutch bicycle-minivans.

In fact, dutch-style bucket bikes ARE on their way to LA - but they are made in China at the Tianjin Flying Pigeon Bicycle Company!

Two of these "short john" bakfiets are heading to Los Angeles and are retailing for nearly half of what their Dutch brethren sell for. You can get a Flying Pigeon bakfiets for $1,800 - a huge discount from the typical bakfiets sticker price of $3,000+

Where will these bikes be available? Funny you should ask. The Flying Pigeon bakfiets will be available exclusively at Flying Pigeon LA bike shop in Highland Park (in North East LA).

Flying Pigeon LA is also offering a host of XtraCycle-based services this summer - $600 to install a FreeRadical w. Logntail kit on the mountain bike or road bike of your choice; $800 to $1,000 for a ready to ride refurbished mountain bike with a FreeRadical w. Longtail kit pre-installed.

Fenders, bells, lights, and other amenities for the civilized XtraCycle cargo cycling lifestyle are available at the shop as well.

Flying Pigeon LA is located at 3714 N. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, CA 90065. If you've got any questions leave a comment or call 213-909-8986. You can email Flying Pigeon LA bike shop at info@flyingpigeo-la.com

Campaign for a Car-Free Lincoln Park, Pt. 2

2009-05-06T03:35:00.000-07:00

View Campaign for a Car-Free Lincoln Park in a larger map

There are a few things happening in my neighborhood that continue to piss me off. After getting mugged a few months ago, I've mellowed out to most of it and generally enjoy my community and neighbors. This particular issue has got me boiling over with frustration.

Be prepared for a bit of expository ranting about cars parking in Lincoln Park, followed by a potential solution to this particular problem.

The Setup and The Danger
I live near Lincoln Park, a fabulous amenity with a beautiful lake and all sorts of recreational facilities. Lincoln Park is also home to "Plaza de la Raza" - a center for cultural education, music lessons, and general togetherness in this rough-hewn, freeway riddled, working class area.

The sad thing about the location of Plaza de la Raza is that it attracts a big chunk of parents and kids who drive and (here is where I get pissed off) park their cars inside the park, using grassy areas to store their vehicles, and use park walking paths as driveways.

Today, I had a massive H3 rev its engine behind me while I slowly rode my daughter through the park on our bicycle. Imagine the feeling, considering how horribly designed most of Lincoln Heights' streets are for leisurely bike riding with an infant - I go out of my way to avoid the dangers of cars and (SURPRISE!) here they are gunning for me and baby inside the only safe place (I thought) left!

City Coming Up Short
For months I've thought about this problem: there is not enough City-owned and controlled parking to satisfy the demand induced by the (wonderful, awesome, great) Plaza del la Raza and the City has failed to provide high-quality alternatives to driving to the Plaza.

Walking to the park is a treacherous exercise, as there are few crosswalks, and those that exist are poorly laid out and ruined by high-speed traffic. Try crossing Mission Street in your ballerina tutu, late for a 5:30 p.m. class, and you'll see what I am talking about! Traffic is allowed to move too fast, and the crosswalks are not only few-and-far-between, but lack handicap ramps and other amenities.

Riding a bike to the park is a sidewalk-only proposition for parents and kids - which makes it a dangerous and slow transit choice for most families willing to take this route (none do).

Using the bus could be a lot easier, if there were proper sheltered bus stops and well-paved sidewalks - but there aren't.

So, we're left with the car-only option for the majority of parents and kids going to the Plaza in the evening, and the City isn't doing much to help with this either.

There is a parking lot in Lincoln Park which is a long, poorly paved, unlit, walk from the Plaza de la Raza. That foot path is not much of an option in the evenings. Short of that parking lot, there is a finely paved, wide-open, entrance to the park right next to the Plaza.

This entrance is used routinely for hordes of people visiting the Plaza to park within the confines of Lincoln Park, in an ever expanding area around the Plaza de la Raza. This is an insane, and dangerous, state of affairs - as a place of quiet reflection and recreation has been converted into a parking lot. Impromptu volleyball games between two palm trees? That's out, as mommie needs to find a place to park her SUV. Trying to drop some bread off for the geese in the lake? Too bad, better watch out for that crusty old sedan with one working headlight (I hope they can see your toddler behind that greasy windshield!).

A Potential Parking Solution for Plaza de la Raza
I've been watching, and photographing, and thinking about this for months and finally the other day it dawned on me: there is, infact, too much parking available right next to the Plaza de la Raza. A massive, paved, well-lit, gated, parking lot on public property is no more than 50 yards from the Plaza.

Just as the users of this massive parking lot are filing out of it as the business day ends, the Plaza's users are illegally stuffing their vehicles into the park across the street. What better solution than to have the Plaza's users park their cars across the street at the ... DMV office!

Oh no! It's a State-run office, and the Plaza is controlled by the City! Quick, somebody get an MOU and call the lawyers. I can already hear the cries of "liability", "trash", "safety concerns"! Impossible! No way! No how!

The Plaza regularly hosts cars numbering in the 40's and 50's, illegally, within the walls of the park. The DMV office across the street from the park has over 100 parking spaces - 70 of them at-grade with the Plaza and another clump of 50 or so back behind the DMV office.

Just as the DMV is closing for the day, the Plaza de la Raza is coming alive with activities and classes.

The park around the Plaza is not properly lit, paved, or designed to handle the massive amounts of illegally parked cars it gets flooded with. On the other side of the street from the Plaza is a large, well-paved, well-lit, ideally situated car parking lot.

What will it take to get these darned cars out of Lincoln Park?

Perhaps it will take some begging and pleading to the Councilman Ed Reyes' office (not likely to do much with this one, I think)?

Or perhaps we can go through the office of a local heavy, Assemblyman Kevin De Leon (chair of the all-powerful Assembly Appropriations Committee). If he cared to do it, De Leon's chief of staff could have the California DMV's department head in his office tomorrow, making arrangements to open the lot for the Plaza's car users. After all, how does, "I control your entire budget" sound as an inducement to action?

Lord knows what steps to take with the City (if any) - but perhaps Rose Marie Cano, Executive Director of the Plaza, could perhaps work something out with DMV head George Valverde's office with Asm. DeLeon's district staff acting as moderators?

Weirder things have happened - maybe a couple of children have to get "tragically" and "accidentally" killed by a truck driving in the middle of Lincoln Park in the evening to get things moving in the right direction. Hopefully, we'll have the DMV's Lincoln Heights branch's parking lot accessible to Plaza patrons (and have the interior of Lincoln Park gated off from Plaza user's cars) before somebody's kids have to pay the price.

Asm. Krekorian's Response to the LADOT

2009-05-04T07:45:00.000-07:00

Stephen Box has been all over the speed limit increases taking place across the San Fernando Valley - from protesting them in City Hall downtown, to organizing Neighborhood Councils to fight against them.

So far, the LADOT has been able to sidestep Stephen's (and others) efforts by citing select portions of the California Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices (or MUTCD) to scare our elected officials from voting against the LADOT's recommended speed limit increases.

Enter Assemblyman Paul Krekorian (D-Safe Streets), who has introduced a modest piece of legislation in Sacramento, AB 766, to tweak the MUTCD and allow the following (from the Legislative Counsel's summary of the current bill):

"Existing law permits a local authority to decrease or increase a prima facie speed limit on any street, other than a state highway, based on an engineering and traffic survey, and for enforcement purposes requires that survey to be redone after a certain number of years.

This bill would allow a local authority retain a prima facie speed limit on any street, other than a state highway, if the local authority makes a finding, after a public hearing, that a higher speed limit is not the most appropriate for the orderly movement of traffic upon the street and does not promote a safe environment for the neighborhood or pedestrians."
-Legslative Counsel's Digest for AB 766, February 26, 2009

The next hearing date for this bill is May 11, 2009 in the Assembly's Transportation Committee. I'm not sure how to lobby this bill best, but as usual Stephen Box is on huge step ahead of the game. He's heading to Sacramento to walk the halls of power in the capitol, and help Paul Krekorian's bill get through committee and put into the law books.

If you'd like to get in on the act, and help see this bill turned into law, send an email to Stephen and Co. at SafeStreets@BikeWritersCollective.com

Cyclists "Storm the Bastille" in City Hall on May Day

2009-05-03T11:25:00.001-07:00

The above video is the first of seven YouTube videos I uploaded of the May Day "Storm the Bastille" ride organized, mainly, by Stephen Box of the Bike Writers' Collective and the General Badass Club.

Arroyo Seco Bike Trail Meeting Tonight

2009-04-27T09:30:00.000-07:00

Tonight, at 6 p.m., at the Jack and Denny Smith Community Room, Mount Washington Elementary School, 3981 San Rafael Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90065 there is going to be a meeting to discuss the Arroyo Seco Bike Trail and potential improvements.

The Arroyo Seco Bike Trail is a 2-mile long path in the bottom of a creek bed that floods every winter (and is closed when it rains). It is isolated, it is typically left uncleaned, and is a great spot for kids to drink aftershave and torture Muffins the cat.

I think the "bike path" should be built at-grade using existing rights of way owned by the City of Los Angeles. This would place the bike path on a mixture of paper streets along the 110 freeway or put it along Figueroa St. This last option would mean that a car travel lane would have to be removed or reduced to allow for a protected bike path.

The full announcement is viewable on the ASNCAlert Yahoo News Group post:

Posted by: "jerryspe" jerryspe9@...
Fri Apr 24, 2009 4:37 pm on nelalist@yahoogroups.com

Have you seen the new improvements to the existing Arroyo Seco Bike Path? The existing bike path has recently been cleaned up, a yellow center line and white shoulder lines have been painted, and signage added to lead users onto the path.

This existing bike path, which is placed mostly in the Arroyo Seco channel, runs for only two miles from southern boundary of South Pasadena to Montecito Heights Recreation Center parking lot. The bike path has long been neglected, but someone in L A City government has take the lead to get us these enhancements. The problem is this is only at start of what could be a much longer and user-friendly bikeway The bike path is only two miles long, there is little signage to tell you where you are once in the channel, and no signage to direct you to how to get to many of the attractions (museums, parks, etc.) along the Arroyo Seco or to link to other bike routes.

Of course, as many NELA folks know, the L A County has tried to extend this bike path southerly as a sole purpose, commuter bikeway. And as many of you know, the County has failed to get us a project that we can support.

The Arroyo Seco Neighborhood Council will have the topic of the Arroyo Seco Bikeway as the main item on the agenda of the joint meeting of its Environmental and Recreation, Arts, and Culture committees on this Monday, April 27, starting at 6 pm. The meeting will be at the Jack and Denny Smith Community Room, Mount Washington Elementary School, 3981 San Rafael Avenue, L.A. 90065. The ASNC Board meeting follows this meeting at the same location starting at 7 pm, and a resolution calling upon County and City officials to pursue funding for the Arroyo Seco Bikeway project will be on their agenda.

For more information you can attend the meetings on Monday, April 27, or visit the ASNC web site at www.asnc.us.

Jerry Schneider, ASNC Board member, Environment

CBS 2 Reports on Recent Ghost Bike Memorial in Echo Park

2009-04-26T08:43:00.000-07:00

I just caught this report from local television station CBS 2 about a memorial installed in honor of Jesus Castillo, who was murdered by a drunk driver a few days ago in Echo Park.

The report on CBS 2's web-site stated the following:

"Ghost Bike" Memorializes Slain Cyclist
April 25, 2009, 8:12 a.m. PT
More than 200 cyclists paid tribute to Jesus Castillo in Echo Park Friday after he was killed by a drunk driver earlier this week. Pal Magers reports.

You can see the original report by visiting CBS 2's web-site.

I've been going downtown for a few years now, along with others, to fight for safer streets. We've gotten in the door, and politicians have said they agree with us, but nothing has really changed to make our streets safer. I hope that the cycling community is able to step it up a notch and win some serious pro-bike victories this year that will have real, on-the-ground, effects that make cycling safer.

Driver Runs Over Cyclists, LAPD Says "I'd Have Done The Same Thing"

2009-04-25T01:37:00.000-07:00

This cell phone picture of the incident was posted on Midnight Ridazz.com (photo by Stilline)

I'm going to haul my daughter downtown this coming Tuesday, April 28, 2009 to comment during the 9 a.m. LA Police Commission hearing taking place at 150 N Los Angeles St.

Why will I be there? I found a thread, "Ridazz Down in DTLA" on Midnight Ridazz and could not believe what I read, got angry as I read through the forum thread, and am seething with anger over how my fellow brothers and sisters were treated by their fellow man the other night.

This is how the report started:

Thread started by Joe Borfo at 04.24.09 - 6:20 am

" 4 bike run over by a hummer tonight. new tallbike is totaled cops
let the driver go. M@ "

"'mini_penny: Accident in dtla on killah cali ride. 1 rider to the
hospital for his ankle. 4 more bikes totalled. "

"Driver caught, released after reports taken. My bike is totalled. "

Any more info?

This is where everything hits the WTF fan:

no, we werent at the light yet, this asshole in a hummer h3 just plowed through like a dick and hit a guy, we started to tell him he hit somebody and had to stop and they started saying they had guns and shit, so we went in front of the car. i started to call the police\paramedics for the hurt guy, and was getting my\his bike off the street when the hummer revved up and drove over the pile of bikes in front of him. one got lodged under his car and he took it with him to the next intersection, where the cops stopped him.

then, after like two or three hours of bullshit and more bullshit, the cops reasoned that our mob mentality frightened these innocent doogooders and that we incited him to hit us by being there? The fucking cop even said ''Id have done the same thing in that situation''

this isnt fucking right guys.

angrytoaster30
04.24.09 - 9:24 am

A little more details filled in:

Hey guys, just got home. Can't read through this whole thread - rethinking last night makes me so livid.

Andres Tena from Highland Park went to the ER at USC county last night.
The officers took reports from us and from witnesses.
Unfortunately, the guy leading the investigation, who patrols that area, is very biased against cyclists.
The other cops were are pretty helpful in answering our questions and dealing with the emotions
The guys in the car were released - they pulled out 3 and 2 ran away...and threatened us while we walked up to where the car was detained and the cops were.
None of the bikes that were totaled had a rider on them, but it was a very close call.
We were going west on Los Angeles at the time, about to turn right onto 7th. It was about 2 a.m. I believe. I'm not sure of the time because after the incident we talked with the cops, gave our reports, and by the time we got home it was almost 4.
There were several pedestrian and other witnesses - some who saw from their apartments and called the police and came out. One of them was a rider, I don't know his name.
OK, I gotta go, I hope that answers some of your questions. The rest of us are OK.

kryxtanicole
04.24.09 - 4:15 pm

As my friend Stephen Box recently said:

"What's it going to take for the largest City in the most populated State in the most powerful Country in the world to step up and make public safety on our streets a priority?"
-Stephen Box, "Echo Park Ghost Rider", April 24, 2009 SoapBoxLA

All of the social changes and fun rides in the galaxy cannot make bike riding safer if the state does not get behind the idea as well. It is time to, once again, Storm the Bastille and get some shit done. See you on Tuesday, April 28, 2009 at 9 a.m. at 150 N Los Angeles St.

UPDATE 2:19 a.m.:It turns out I won't be alone. A ride has been organized to go the the Commission hearing: "We meet at REDquarters, Santa Monica & Vermont Red Line Station;Meet @ 7:30, Ride @ 8:00am"

UPDATE 2:37 a.m.: There is another ride scheduled for this coming Friday, May 1, 2009 to the Los Angeles City Council meeting, which begins at 10 a.m. I'm going to see if we can get this issue put on the agenda by contacting some council staff. I wonder what Mr. Mayor has to say about this sort of thing taking place in his "Green L.A."

The Essay All Bike Advocates Must Read

2009-04-23T16:44:00.000-07:00

I just got done reading "Bike license citations and 7 lessons in activism" on Westside BikeSIDE! by Alex Thompson and, wow, did he lay out one of the best bike advocacy primers ever!

This is my favorite passage:

"The more I work in the bike community, the more I’m convinced that it’s not our energy or the infighting that hold us back. It’s a lack of skill, and a lack of that kind of political power that comes from having been around for a while. That’s no slam on hard working activists - it’s just that these things take a while. If we keep learning about how to be effective, I think we can make change quickly.

More important than skill is having friends who will push you, work with you, and who have the resources to make a difference. Danny, Gary Stephen, Glenn, and a number of bloggers all played a crucial role in moving this issue forward, and without any one of them we’d have achieved much less."
-Alex Thompson, "Bike license citations and 7 lessons in activism" April 21, 2009, Westside BikeSIDE!

In countless encounters I've had with other concerned cyclists, my internal dialogue is sometimes screaming, "This guy (or gal) has no idea how to do this!" Our sophistication, as a movement, is growing. Fortunately, as Alex points out, those working (for free!) to push the interests of cyclists are gradually getting collectively more competent and pro-active. I'm happy to do my part, and I am grateful for the friends I've made and worked with over the past couple of years in this subculture/scene/industry(?) - we're actually getting things done little by little.

Anyone Fix the ATSAC Data Deletion Problem?

2009-04-20T19:28:00.000-07:00

All the cameras and computers that monitor traffic in L.A. delete the data they've taken in after a few days.

I was just reading/watching an interesting post on LA Streetsblog, "It’s True Big Brother is Watching You…", about the City of LA's Automated Traffic Surveillance and Control Operations Division (or ATSAC), which is a part of the LADOT's Bureau of Transportation Design and ATSAC, which is itself a part of the Office of Transportation Operations.

The video embedded in the LA Streetsblog post shows how impressive the setup in the basement the ATSAC team uses truly is.

What people who cover this issue seem to have forgotten is this juicy little nugget from an LA Times article (RIP LA Times) from October 1, 2007:

"The data beep and shine on screens in a state-of-the-art traffic control center that looks like something out of a science fiction movie. The information -- Wilshire Boulevard jammed in Westwood, Broadway wide-open through downtown -- is used to adjust the timing of traffic lights, easing the flow of vehicles through the city's busy streets. The data are instantly placed on the Internet, available to commuters and traffic reporters.

But although the sensors and computers collect massive amounts of data about traffic patterns and congestion, they do little to help engineers plan for the city's growing transportation needs -- or determine how development is affecting traffic.

That's because the city does not save the information for more than a few days, using it only to direct traffic in real time by adjusting the speed at which lights turn from green to amber to red.

Because the information is discarded, it cannot be used to determine over time where traffic is increasing -- or by how much."
- Sharon Bernstein, "Lots of traffic, little data - Information gathered by L.A.'s vast signal system is kept for only a few days, limiting the city in its long-term planning.", October 1, 2007, LA Times

Putting aside that this whole practice focuses on car-only counts and discounts all other modes in reducing "congestion", what the hell has happened with this issue? Has the LADOT started handing this data over to a group of concerned neighbors? Have they started allowing it to be downloaded by academics? How can this multi-million dollar system throw away the data that would be the envy of a city planner the world over?

Political Framework and Legislative Agenda for Bikes in LA Speech

2009-04-11T09:29:00.000-07:00

Well, here it is (sorry about the poor audio and video quality). I delivered this speech and a couple of documents to the Los Angeles Bicyle Advisory Committee this past Tuesday, April 7, 2009.

Over the last couple of years, I've developed a political framework for cycling advocacy in LA. This framework boils down to one essential point: " Planning and building a bicycle friendly city will benefit more than cyclists, but will necessarily remove access and mobility for cars."

Unlocked Condoms

2009-04-10T23:08:00.000-07:00

I was on my way to work on Tuesday, April 7, 2009 when I saw a big crowd and tons of cameras on the steps of the CVS market located at the intersection of Broadway and Workman in Lincoln Heights.

"What do we want?"
"Unlocked condoms!"
"When do we want them?"
"Now!"

What a weird chant. I think the group holding the protest could have come up with something a bit better, really, but they had a good cause.

It turns out that if a CVS is located in a low-AIDS and -HIV area, the condoms in their stores are not behind locked glass displays. If, on the other hand, you go to a store in an area with high HIV and AIDS rates, the condoms magically become 100,000x more valuable and are locked up - requiring you to flag a clerk down to get some jimmy hats.

So, if you live in an area where AIDS and HIV rates are high then condom use is discouraged by CVS. Alternately, if you live in an area where HIV and AIDS rates are low CVS has condoms just dangling there with no locked display case, like ripe fruit, for the picking.

More pictures of the protest are available in the Flickr set I created "Protest at CVS in Lincoln Heights"

I was a little late to work that morning.

Political Framework and Legislative Agenda for Cycling in Los Angeles

2009-04-07T01:29:00.000-07:00

This Kaiser Permanente ad is a perfect example of the natural allies that cyclists have with the health and health insurance advocacy industries.

Tonight, at 7 p.m. at the LAPD's Parker Center in Downtown Los Angeles, I'm going to attend the Los Angeles Bicycle Advisory Committee and deliver a short talk entitled, "A Political Framework and Legislative Agenda for Cycling in Los Angeles".

The talk is based on the research and experience I've put together over the past 4 years. The legislative agenda is nothing spectacular, but folds into the overall perspective I've developed of cycling as an interest group w. multiple strong allies.

It will really only take a couple of minutes, but here is the gist of it:

Planning and building a bicycle friendly city will benefit more than cyclists.
Effective cycling advocacy consists of identifying the needs of those who do not bicycle, yet yield influence and resources, who will nonetheless benefit from pro-bicycling projects and programs.
Address those in power with policy and funding suggestions that match elected officials' and bureaucrats' authority in the matter and that also address the interests of cycling's allies (developed in step 2).

There will be some more specific handed out at the LABAC meeting, but that is the broad overview. I'll make what I've said available online in some way. Any questions? ubrayj02 at yahoo.com

Lincoln Heights Photos

2009-04-02T21:22:00.000-07:00

Last night I was organizing a bunch of images and I created a small set of pictures I've taken of Lincoln Heights over the past couple of years.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

The images are also viewable through the Flickr set I created. The Flickr set has more information on the images in the captions.

The images are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Generic 2.0 license - so take 'em and do whatever you want (as long as I get a credit somewhere).

Faking Places Article Took My Breath Away

2009-04-01T14:07:00.001-07:00

I just finished reading an essay entitled, "US Transportation System Revealed to be Giant Ponzi Scheme" on the New York-based Project for Public Spaces' web-site.

From the article:

"Gary Toth, Director of Transportation Initiatives at Project for Public Spaces, confirmed the anomaly while reviewing State DOT proposals for stimulus funding. He found that much of the money was not actually improving access for Americans. 'Much like drug addiction, investments in high speed highway capacity led to a temporary high but were quickly followed by a craving for more,' said Toth. 'Each addition of road capacity created sprawl and degraded the very destinations the system is meant to connect people with. In the end, the funding was simply supporting driving more and more and accomplishing less and less.'"

I never thought I'd see my own ideas about transportation and land use in the U.S. so clearly explained by someone else!

I can recall being stuck in a 100 mile quarterly commute from L.A. to Santa Barbara when I was in college - looking out of the window each year and seeing more shitty suburban homes (similar to the one I'd grown up in in Mar Vista) springing up next to freeway exits and thinking, "What sort of insanity is this?"

To see that emotion in words ... whew ... pretty cool. It's definitely worth a quick read.

US Transportation System Revealed to be Giant Ponzi Scheme [Project for Public Spaces]

Why the Modal Split in MTA Call For Projects?

2009-03-27T03:10:00.000-07:00

After reading a post on blogdowntown, "Call List Gives a View of Potential Downtown Transportation Projects" at 1 a.m. about the list of projects the City of LA approved for the MTA's 2009 Call For Projects, I downloaded every .pdf file I thought was relevant and just got done breezing through them.

One thing I can't get out of my head about the MTA's Call For Project Process is how so much "transit" money in this agency goes to fund anything but transit improvements. The MTA spent 48% of 2007's Call For Projects money on roadway widening projects in a special "mode" category of funding.

Where did the MTA get these modal categories from anyway?

On August 20, 1980, Proposition C, a sales tax increase to pay for the transportation projects and MTA operations, was passed.

This sales tax measure accounts for a big chunk of the money available for the bi-annual Call For Projects. I wish I had a pie chart to point to, but all I've got is a rusty memory of reading through several of the MTA's "Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports" (CAFR's) and the recent LADOT report submitted to the LA city council on the 2009 Call For Projects (see pg 13 and 14 of the report from January 28, 2009).

Anyway, here is what Prop. C says this about its purpose:

"SECTION 4. USE OF REVENUES RECEIVED FROM IMPOSTION OF THE TRANSACTIONS AND USE TAX.

(a) Purpose of Tax.

To improve transit service and operations, reduce traffic congestion, improve air quality, efficiently operate and improve the condition of the streets and freeways utilized by public transit, and reduce foreign fuel dependencies. The purpose of this tax include (1) meeting operating expenses; purchasing or leasing supplies, equipment or materials; meeting financial reserve requirements; containing funds for capital projects necessary to maintain service within existing service areas; (2) increasing funds for the existing public transit service programs; (3) instituting or increasing passanger [sic] or commuter services on rail or highway rights of way; (4) the continued development of a regional transportation improvement program."

So, okay, there is that one bit in Prop. C about "... improv[ing] the condition of the streets and freeways utilized by public transit". However, in all of the rest of Prop. C, there is nary a word mentioned about reducing driver delay or widening roadways.

There is this one bit later on in Prop. C that skews toward road and highway improvements - but explicitly states that these improvements are to give "preference and priority" to transit, not automobiles.

So, with that said, what the hell is up with the MTA's "Modes Eligible Project Descriptions"?!

The MTA divides its Call For Projects money into 9 different "Modes" it will fund. In the last Call For Projects (in 2007) here is how the MTA funded these various modes:

2007 Call For Projects Approved Funding
Mode	Approved Funding
Regional Surface Transportation Improvements	$213,609,000
Signal Synchronization & Bus Speed Improvements	$83,897,000
Transportation Demand Management	$6,796,000
Bikeway Improvements	$34,897,000
Pedestrian Improvements	$40,616,000
Transit Capital	$49,148,000
Transportation Enhancement Activities	$12,828,000

What am I getting at? The bright blue wedge in the pie graph above is Call For Project money that goes to the "Regional Surface Transportation Improvements" mode.

Here is how the MTA describes this mode (RSTI):

"Major capital improvements and goods movement projects on regionally significant arterial highways which improve traffic flow and reduce congestion such as: arterial widening, bottleneck intersection improvements, closure of gaps in the arterial system, grade separations, and other arterial improvements. Project must be on the public right-of-way. Rehabilitation, Reconstruction and Repavement (3R) are eligible as a component of a larger capacity enhancing project."

Now, if you've read through the "Purpose of Tax" language in Prop. C and you were to find out, of the money set aside from this tax for local projects to improve transit in the county, that 48% of that money was going to auto-centric uses like widening roads and building grade separations to "reduce congestion" - don't you think you'd be a little pissed off?

The criteria for the RSTI "mode" is obviously a code word for roadway capacity increases. That in turn is a code word for "more roads for cars, less room for everything else".

Reducing congestion of our roadways can never be achieved by building wider and wider streets for private automobiles. This modal breakdown that the MTA uses - where does it get this from? How can this possibly be what Proposition C money is being used for?

Why the modal split, MTA? Why the modal split?

Bike Summit LA - Next Steps?

2009-03-20T00:38:00.000-07:00

The crowd at Bike Summit LA's keynote. Photo: ubrayj02

Dr. Robert Gottleib, the man at the center of the recent Bike Summit LA, recently put up a post about the summit and the next steps to take to build a large, more strategic, bike movement in L.A.

His post, L.A. Bike Summit: Next Steps" contains two suggestions:

"At the end of the Summit, UEPI organizer Joe Linton suggested two specific – and possibly immediate – opportunities. The first involved an L.A. adaptation of Mexico City’s “ciclovia” where each Sunday, Mexico City’s main thoroughfare, the Reforma, is closed for cars and open for bicyclists and pedestrians.
[ ... ]
The second idea that Joe suggested was a campus-based campaign – at schools across the region – to make many of those largely self-contained places “car free and bike and pedestrian friendly”. Many campuses are in fact ideal locations for that strategy – where the current presence of cars creates a visual and environmental barrier to any claim of sustainability (a new buzzword in higher education circles) and is in fact less convenient, more land grabbing, enormously polluting, and certainly more unhealthy when cars rule the campus hardscape. To make that shift is not a stretch; it’s well within the means – and financial advantage – for campuses to take that step. To do so would, like the ciclovia, make the idea of reinventing – and re-envisioning L.A., the onetime bike capital of the country at the turn of the 20th century, into more of that green city and green region that mayors, public officials, and other policymakers like to claim is their vision but still exists at the margins of what they do, rather than what they say."
-Dr. Robert Gottlieb, "L.A. Bike Summit: Next Steps", March 16, 2009

I've got an two ideas of my own:

Midnight Ridazz-inspired (DIY, come-as-you-are, fun, free) rides in South L.A., Southeast L.A., SGV, and SFV

Pool bike collective's money for: legislative change campaigns, media war, and to further create a network of bike/artistic/social services not controlled by the state

Babylon Bike Lane Nixed By Bureaucrats

2009-03-19T17:13:00.001-07:00

I arrived just in time to miss the entire presentation last night at the Los Angeles River Center by the Los Angeles County Public Works Department on a proposed extension of the Arroyo Seco Bike Trail. However, I was able to talk with some of my friends who were there to see the show. I talked with some staff afterwards and also grabbed the County's project packet, and read through it late last night. Here is the deal: the project is going to be stopped, citing a lack of proper places to put the bike facilities.

Anyone familiar with the story of the Tower of Babel will immediately see parallels with that story and the story of the Arroyo Seco Bike Trail and its proposed extension. Both infrastructure projects, both failed at their goals, and both drove humans apart and divided us forevermore.

I left the meeting room upset. First, and most trivially, I was upset that I was late to the meeting! Second, I was pissed off (nay, enraged) that the study of alternative routes for this bike project did not include the Carlota St. right-of-way (controlled by the City of Los Angeles) that runs down the side of the 110 Freeway; nor did this study include the use of the old street car right of way on both sides of North Figueroa St. (the use of which as a car-only corridor is redundant with the 110 yards away, and poorly designed for local businesses and quality of life).

Beyond my extreme agitation at the lack of proper right-of-way selection, I was pissed at my fellow bike advocates who wanted the LA County DPW to go against the wishes of environmentalists, pro-tree advocates, and common sense to build a bike trail in a cement-lined, isolated, drainage channel. To hear car-centric bureaucrats advocate this sort of thing is annoying, but it makes sense - it's what they're trained and paid to do. Hearing my fellow bike advocates opine about the need for a dangerous, poorly sited, disastrous waste of resources like this was shocking and disappointing. That these bike advocates would further push to alienate other advocacy groups with whom we share so many goals in common, was jaw-droppingly stupid.

This plan has millions of dollars behind it: money from the federal government (via an earmark), money from the MTA, and money and staff time from the Los Angeles County Public Works Department.

Why didn't the LA County DPW study the possibility of using Carlota St. or North Figueroa St. for at-grade bike facilities?

Abu Yusuf, Bike Program Coordinator for the LA County DPW said that, "The LADOT has been reluctant to work with us." Hinting that when he picked up the phone to call the LADOT's Bike Program Coordinator that he heard her famous refrain of "Yes, we can't!"

Clearly, there are a lot of heads that need to be pulled from their respective owners' rear ends on this one. As regards the placement of bike facilities in Los Angeles County (ARE YOU LISTENING SUPERVISOR MOLINA - SUPPOSED CHAMPION OF THE PEOPLE?) to benefit state-defined bike commuters (most of whom are low-income service sector employees):

"Bicyclists need access to the same destinations as drivers of automobiles. Origin and Destination Survey results show that the most common destinations for bicyclists are concentrated along major arterials, especially in areas with intense commercial activity"
-MTA's 2002 Enhanced Public Outreach Project,

This bicycle project needs to be placed in the at-grade right-of-ways that parallel the Arroyo Seco. If that can't be done, then the City of L.A.'s right of way should become a pedestrian/equestrian path. The millions of dollars and years of time that went into this plan will vaporize in a few years - if we can get our collective act together, cycling advocates can fight to build the facilities that sound science says we need.

More Reading:

Arroyo Seco Bikeway Meeting This Wednesday Night [LA Creek Freak]

More Concrete in the Arroyo Seco Stream??? [Arroyo Seco Foundation]

New Meeting on LA County's Arroyo Seco Bike Path

2009-03-16T08:21:00.001-07:00

Cut to the chase version of this post:
Meeting at 6 p.m. on March 18, 2009 at 570 W. Avenue 26, Los Angeles, CA 90065 regarding the cancellation of the Arroyo Seco Bike Path by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works.

The Arroyo Seco Bike Trail, locked up because it rained on Friday. This was on a dry Monday morning. Thanks a lot LA County Department of Public Works!

I'm no fan of off-street cycling facilities in Los Angeles County.

When I was in school, at UCSB, there were some well-done off-street bike paths: they were in the flat areas, at-grade, with a high visibility, well-paved, and allowed a cyclist quick access to the heart of campus.

In Los Angeles, off-street bike paths are isolated, poorly maintained (the City has 0% liability if you're injured on one due to the City's negligence), and are not connected to anything useful. Further, the LAPD does not include bike paths in their crime-mapping software - so when you are mugged, raped, or killed in a creek-bed bike path, it's almost like it never happened because it won't show up on a crime map.

Despite these shortcomings, LA's transportation engineers can think of no finer place for a bike path than in a creek bed with limited access (and seasonal flooding). Ergo, we get projects to extend the Arroyo Seco bike trail down to the confluence of the L.A. River.

Which brings me to the purpose of this post: two years ago the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works designed a bike path to extend the Arroyo Seco Bike Path down to the confluence with the Los Angeles River. Their design did not meet their own bike path engineering standards. Meetings were promised to further discuss the issue with the community. These meetings were delayed, delayed again, and then ... like a wisp, they simply disappeared.

Perhaps the LA County DPW was waiting for someone to die or move from the area, and was simply playing a waiting game. Perhaps a "study" was commenced as to which alternative drainage ditch or culvert to place the "bike path" in. Who knows?

In any case, the community meetings are back! The bike path, sadly, looks like it is canceled. God forbids us to consider using a portion of the right-of-way that makes up North Figueroa Street for a protected bike-way. We all know that when the street car right-of-way on that street was replaced with asphalt that was going to stay that way until the end times.

To wit:

Arroyo Seco Bikeway meeting - March 18th, 2009

Good Afternoon. The County of Los Angeles Department of Public Works (DPW) will be conducting a meeting regarding the feasibility of the Arroyo Seco Bicycle Trail project. DPW has concluded that there are no reasonable and feasible options for the construction of the project; therefore, the project is being cancelled.

The meeting will be held on March 18, 2009 at 6 p.m. at the Los Angeles River Center and Gardens located at 570 West Avenue 26, Los Angeles. Please see attached flyer for additional information.

Thank you for your continued interest for this bikeway project. Please contact me if you have any questions.

Abu Yusuf
Bikeway Coordinator
Los Angeles County Department of Public Works
Programs Development Division
900 S. Fremont Ave; Alhambra; CA 91803

Phone: (626) 458-3940
Fax: (626) 458-3192
Email: ayusuf@dpw.lacounty.gov

See you there! If I were Abu Yusuf, I'd put on my asbestos pantsuit and wear a respirator. I'm not going to brush my teeth, and I'm pissed - somebody hand me a microphone!

UCLA Bike FAIL Map

2009-03-14T10:17:00.000-07:00

View Larger Map

A collection of UCLA academics fed up with crappy cycling conditions in Westwood have begun agitating for change.

The released a manifesto recently entitled "Wiltshire Boulevard, The [] of UCLA, Cyclists forgotten and insulted", Limited Edition, 18 February, 2009.

Instead of directing their critiques at the City of Los Angeles' Department of Transportation (one of my favorite kicking/punching bags), these big-brained book readers are lobbying the school they work for (or attend): UCLA.

It turns out that while UCLA's 2006 Bicycle Masterplan (Warning! 5.0 MB .pdf download) states the following:

"To improve cycling conditions and promote the bicycle as a transportation mode on, to and from campus, UCLA will set policies and provide infrastructure to support and accommodate bicycling."

In fact, UCLA "sets policies and provide[s] infrasctructure" to discourage cyclists (and pedestrians for that matter) from easily accessing the campus.

In point of fact, a pleasant, and totally protected bike path through the Veterans Cemetery was closed with UCLA's tacit consent:

"Not too long ago, there was a path which led from Brentwood to Westwood, and allowed the cyclist to bypass the boulevard turned interstate. Into the Veteran Administration, crossing Sepulveda with a traffic light, and then through the National Cemetery. But when 9/11 offered an excuse, the National Cemetery simply closed the gates, and in a scandalous move, tacitly tolerated by UCLA, sent many cyclists back to their car.

And yes, UCLA did something. But rather than intervening with the Pentagon, it designated Ohio Avenue, one mile further South, to be the preferred route to campus. Watch how this employer fulfills his duty of care to his cyclists. Cyclists need the shortest route, and if a closed gate adds one mile in heavy traffic to your commute, back and forth, then you will loose this cyclist."
-pg. 7-8, "Wiltshire Boulevard, The [] of UCLA, Cyclists forgotten and insulted"

These cats have gotten organized, and they've arranged a meeting with the CalTrans District 7 Bicycle Coordinator in the near future. If you bicycle through Westwood, or would like to give it a try if it weren't such an awful experience, check out the Google Map above and add your own comments and points of contention with what UCLA says it wants for cyclists and what it actually does.

Pedestrian Rights Protest in Boyle Heights

2009-03-13T12:27:00.001-07:00

Image link-jacked from LA Eastside's El Random Hero.

Making Los Angeles more livable is at the heart of correcting many systemic injustices this City (and its various departments) has heaped upon generations of Angelenos.

The photo above is from a recent protest in Boyle Heights by residents to bring attention to the danger of speeding car traffic on Cesar Chavez Avenue.

From the post on LA Eastside by El Random Hero:

"With pedestrian traffic accidents increasing in Boyle Heights, the Union de Vecinos wants to make sure that the streets are safe for everyone. Community members staged a protest on Cesar Chavez Ave. and Forest holding up signs and chanting in rhythm for safer streets for pedestrians in Boyle Heights around 6 p.m. today. Elizabeth Blaney is one of those community members who want the [city's] Department of [T]ransportation to place traffic signals in two high traffic areas, Wabash and Fickett and on the corner where they were protesting. Some of the residents, who wanted to remain anonymous, said that they’re tired of having to worry if [their] kids will get home safely from school because drivers don’t adhere to the residential speed limit, which is 35 mph."
- El Random Hero, "Pedestrian safety in Boyle Heights", March 12, 2009

If people constantly cross an intersection as pedestrians and no facility exists to make it safer crossing the street - whose fault is it when those pedestrians get maimed or killed?

We live in a city for various reasons, most of which have nothing to do with being able to drive everywhere. Yet, our city plans and builds in the largest public landholding (the road way) as if nothing better can take place except for car driving.

In the City’s General Plan, the streets are classified based on little else but how many cars, daily, drive on a street.

That is a sick, and inhumane, method of using the public right of way in a dense urban setting.

Many wonderful sections of the Eastside are ruined by car-centric roadway design. We need to talk about removing travel lanes, widening sidewalks, giving buses cut-ins to deliver passengers, and protected on-street bike lanes (copenhagen style) to get people to work and school.

The 3-mile 710 resurfacing is going to cost $70 million - we could re-build the entire Eastside’s sidewalk and bike facilities for that much.

There is a way to fix this, and it is a quote I got from a film about Austin activists fighting tract-home development, "If the people will lead, the leaders will follow." We're awash in vast sums of transportation dollars that can go to fix our streets, yet instead we piss those dollars away on highway widening and traffic signal timing to speed up cars. The money is there, and we'll get it used for properly designed urban roads only if we organize and fight for it.

Bike Safety in the Inner City at Bike Summit LA 2009

2009-03-12T16:25:00.000-07:00

This is a recording of a workshop held during Bike Summit LA 2009 called "Bike Safety in the Inner City", which was led by a Mark Johnson and Lottie Cleveland of City Lites. City Lites is a non-profit organization that, among several other health-related events, organizes large, free to the public, rides for youth in the South Los Angeles area.

Bike Summit LA 2009 took place on March 7, 2009 at LATTC. The Bike Summit web-site is still being worked on by those who attended the conference. Check it out here:

http://bikesummitla.wetpaint.com

More coverage of the Bike Summit is available here:

To Summit Up: The LA Bike Summit in Review[LA Loyalist]

Bike Summit Keynotes: Change Can Only Come with Inspired Leaders[Streetsblog LA]

Reporting Back From The LA Bike Summit[Gary Rides Bikes]

Bike Summit LA Headrush

2009-03-07T17:51:00.000-08:00

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Oh my GOD! What a day!

Aside from having my mind blown by meeting so many people working (not just thinking, but WORKING) on the same issues I have been plugging away on for the past few years ... aside from that, I think I had a bike-gasm looking at so many cool bikes!

There is no better occasion to check out other people's gear than a bike advocate get-together. You hang with roadies, you see road bikes. You hang with low-riders, you see low-riders.

You hang with bike advocates, you see: bakfiets, Bilenky's, Xtra cycles, touring frames as track bikes, track frames as touring bikes, mutant machines, Dutch city bikes, be-stickered monstrosities, and super clean fixies. It just doesn't stop! And the clothes - ooh, it makes me wish I had some dough to throw around on knickers. There were a few old-school spandex dudes, and a few reflective-vesties, but their numbers were low and the transportation cyclists were in effect. Praise Allah!

No offense, but I am definitely a bit of a snob now when it comes to "bike clothes". I feel like there needn't be "bike clothes" per se, just clothes you happen to be wearing when on a bicycle. Knickers and natural fibers being a huge exception, because they be lookin' good to my typically fashion-blind eye and they work really well when bicycling and trying to look like sharp.

DJ Chicken Leather, myself, and a few others tried to video and photograph everything possible - and it will all be online soon. UEPI has notes from note-takers, and there is a lot to share online with those out there in internet-land who couldn't make it the summit.

My favorite find of the day was meeting the people behind an awesome South LA group ride for kids called "City Lites". I met the founder, Mark Johnson, the president, Lottie Cleveland, and their hard-working crew at the "Bike Safety in the Inner City" workshop. I filmed the whole thing, so keep your eyes peeled for that film in the next few days.

Bike Summit LA 2009 Is Here!

2009-03-06T16:23:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow, Saturday, March 7, 2009, all day long at Los Angeles Trade Technical College, Bike Summit LA 2009 will kick off what appears to be a year of big changes in the way bicycling, walking, livability and environmental justice issues are dealt with in L.A.

I was on hand Thursday morning at LATTC to capture the fledgling press conference Bike Summit LA organizers set up, with LATTC college president, Dr. Roland "Chip" Chapdelaine leading the morning event with a rousing call for change in Los Angeles and a touching story of his first bicycle.

Denise Fairchild, Director of LATTC's Community and Economic Planning Department, followed; as did Noah Budnick of NYC's Transportation Alternatives; Elly Blue of BikePortland.org; and, finally, Jen Klausner, Director of the Los Angele County Bicycle Coalition.

Elly Blue rocked up on a lime-green loaner folding bike (a Brompton!) from Clever Cycles in Portland. Noah Budnick, from cruised to the conference on a borrowed single speed vintage Trek frame euipped with rising handlebars and pannier bags.

Browne from The Bus Bench was on hand in colorful couture and bug-eyed shades to hide her transit celebrity status from the bus- and bike-nerds on hand.

Damien Newton from Streetsblog LA rolled into LATTC on an aluminum framed comfort bike, Hello Kitty bell affixed, and sticker-bedecked (almost as many stickers on his bike as Joe Linton (the "LA Creek Freak")).

Get in on the news coverage, and tag you photos and videos on Flickr or Youtube (or whatever media sharing site you use!) with "bikesummitla09".

I've got a set of images from BikeSummit LA 2009's first day on Flickr.

Re-elect Ed Reyes

2009-03-03T08:22:00.001-08:00

Today is a local election in the City of Los Angeles, and I'm voting to re-elect my city councilman (who faces no real threat in this election), Ed Reyes, who has represented Council District 1 for the past 8 years.

I'm a crazy bike advocate, and the councilman's staff have been more than willing to work with cyclists. He's reformed the Los Angeles Bicycle Advisory Committee and he incorporated some very bike-friendly ideas into the Cornfield-Arroyo Seco Community Plan.

The guy has gone to bat for bike riders, and he's also been accessible on a more local, personal, level when I started a small neighborhood watch (now defunct) several years ago.

So, if you're voting in CD 1 today make sure to vote for Ed Reyes!

Oh yeah, "No on Measure B"!

What Happens to the Bicycle License Fund?

2009-02-21T02:03:00.000-08:00

So, I was reading through the 2007-2008 budget for the City of L.A., and I came across a funny thing:

Actual
2005-06 Estimated
2006-07 REVENUE Budget
2007-08
-- -- Bicycle License Fund 62,219
-Budget, Fiscal Year 2007-08, City of Los Angeles, Schedule 29, pg. 237

Actual 2005-06	Estimated 2006-07	REVENUE	Budget 2007-08
--	--	Bicycle License Fund	62,219

The "Bicycle License Fund", as far as I can tell, wasn't tracked in L.A. budgets until the 2007-08 Fiscal Year.

$62,219 isn't that much money for a city with a budget of over $9,000,000,000, but still it made me wonder, "What happens to the Bicycle License Fund revenue?"

In L.A. there are a few agencies that collect this fee, but where does the money go after it has been collected?

Bike Talk! Podcast

2009-02-19T02:29:00.000-08:00

Over the past few weeks I've been trundling through the setup of a web-site for the weekly internet radio show "Bike Talk!" The last episode had a ton of stuff: a true tandem bicycle love story; an update on the Orange Line bike path cleaning; Lance Armstrong's history and chances in the Tour of California; carbon vs. aluminum vs. steel frames; ball bearing questions; flat tire tips, and a lot more.

I'm a geek for all things bike related, so the show is a hit with me. The show is streamed live on the internet (via KillRadio.org) on Saturday's from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m.

Check out the site I'm slowly cobbling together for Bike Talk!, and lemme know what you think.

You can catch Bike Talk! in various forms, my favorite being the podcast available here:

Subscribe to the Bike Talk! Podcast hosted by KPFK:

Politics Preventing U.S. from Changing for the Better

2009-02-09T22:27:00.000-08:00

I just got done reading this week's edition of James Howard Kunstler's Clusterfuck Nation Chronicle column, entitled "Poverty of Imagination", and the following paragraph really stuck with me:

"If this nation wants to survive without an intense political convulsion, there's a lot we can do, but none of it is being voiced in any corner of Washington at this time. We have to get off of petro-agriculture and grow our food locally, at a smaller scale, with more people working on it and fewer machines. This is an enormous project, which implies change in everything from property allocation to farming methods to new social relations. But if we don't focus on it right away, a lot of Americans will end up starving, and rather soon. We have to rebuild the railroad system in the US, and electrify it, and make it every bit as good as the system we once had that was the envy of the world. If we don't get started on this right away, we're screwed. We will have tremendous trouble moving people and goods around this continent-sized nation. We have to reactivate our small towns and cities because the metroplexes are going to fail at their current scale of operation. We have to prepare for manufacturing at a much smaller (and local) scale than the scale represented by General Motors.

The political theater of the moment in Washington is not focused on any of this, but on the illusion that we can find new ways of keeping the old ways going. Many observers have noted lately how passive the American public is in the face of their dreadful accelerating losses. It's a tragic mistake to tell them that they can have it all back again. We'll see a striking illustration of "phase change" as the public mood goes from cow-like incomprehension to grizzly bear-like rage. Not only will they discover the impossibility of getting back to where they were, but they will see the panicked actions of Washington drive what remains of our capital resources down a rat hole."
-James Howard Kunstler, February 9, 2009, "Poverty of Imagination", Clusterfuck Nation Chronicle

I agree with Kunstler'sviews on what the nation ought to be doing, but I disagree about the "Poverty of Imagination".

What is missing is a politically feasible way of moving us from where we are now, to where Kunstler thinks we ought to go. If you are the leader of a political party, and you see that you have to end agricultural entitlements, and you do that - you will be destroyed politically. If you try and reduce the amount we spend on highway construction and upkeep, and divert it to rail and alternative transport - you will be destroyed politically. So on and so on, you can see that what we lack is not engineering solutions, nor good ideas (such as Kunstler's) - what we lack is a political strategy that can bring the leader or party that embarks on the proper course of action through the crisis they will appear to have induced!

At its core, the U.S. has a political problem that is insurmountable - no leader can move us where we need to be without destroying themselves and their party. Thus, we are stuck.

I think that the time for launching recommendations at our leaders passed us by in the late 1970's.

To get out of this rut, we have two options. First, a core of conspirators could try a pre-planned, false-flag style, "crisis" to move our democracy in the right direction. Alternatively, we need to individually take stock of our lives and situations and prepare for the social upheaval about to befall us all.

I'm already trying to do the latter - learning a trade, growing some of my own food, building a social support network, and preparing to hang on when things start to break down.

Campaign for a Car-Free Lincoln Park - Flickr Photo Set

2009-02-05T03:42:00.000-08:00

I just created a Flickr photo set entitled "Campaign for a Car-Free Lincoln Park", and I've added some more photos to it.

I took some more snap shots a few days ago, and when I get the time to edit them (to throw out the out-of-focus shots), I'll have them uploaded.

If you'd like to tag your photos of Lincoln Park to help out with this effort to document improvements you'd like to see in Lincoln Park and the surrounding area, add the tag "carfreelincolnpark" to your images.

Got any info on a good way to see these improvement made? Hate that I've pointed something out that you like? Let me know about it: ubrayj02 at yahoo.com

Campaign for a Car-Free Lincoln Park, Pt. 1

2009-02-02T01:21:00.000-08:00

This map is a work in progress and will be updated with every new Car-Free Lincoln Park post.View Larger Map

Introduction
As a regular visitor to Lincoln Park ("Eastlake" to the more famous Westlake MacArthur Park), I am both enthralled with Lincoln Park and saddened at how portions of it are over-run with cars.

Still, this grand dollop of a landscaped park is an amazingly beautiful, practical, and gracious touch to an area blighted by massive high speed roads, the Eastlake Youth Correctional Facility, and malignant civic neglect.

The park still functions, despite the blight, and plays a number of vital roles in the community. At Lincoln Park there is new playground equipment, large fields, a pool (empty half the year), a massive gymnasium, a man-made lake stocked with fish, beautiful old trees, benches, a skate park, a path-lined hill, and a pretty nice barbecue area.

Lincoln Park also has a car problem.

I have been taking snapshots of Lincoln Park over the past few months in the hope that I can shine a little bit of attention on the problems at the park created by: limited access for pedestrians (namely the youngest and oldest in our neighborhood); an overemphasis on automobile access and parking; abuse of the free parking offered in the park; and, abuse of the park itself by illegally parking cars in it.

Free Parking for El Arca, None Left for You and Me

Near the former entrance to the Selig Zoo and Movie Studio, there is a brick building set back from the sidewalk by a large, gated, parking lot with room for 45 to 50 vehicles.

This brick building is home to EL ARCA, Inc., or rather "East Los Angeles Remarkable Citizens' Association, Inc."

Across the street from the EL ARCA, Inc. building is a large, open, public parking lot with room for about 70 cars to park.

During the day time a host of retirees, disabled, indigent, and otherwise free people congregate in Lincoln Park to relax, pass some time, and generally enjoy themselves. A lot of these people, for a variety of reasons, drive to Lincoln Park.

Unfortunately, when the public shows up to Lincoln Park's Selig Pl. parking lot, it is already stuffed full of vans and buses. The vans and buses belong to EL ARCA, Inc.

I have no ax to grind with EL ARCA - from what I can tell, they pursue a pretty noble cause:

"The East Los Angeles Remarkable Citizens' Association, Inc. (EL ARCA, Inc.) is a community based, private non-profit organization founded in 1965 to provide previously unavailable services to the Developmentally Disabled population of the community."
-from EL ARCA, Inc's website

The pursuit of this noble cause, unfortunately, has some by-products: large, white, buses choking off access to a public park; and, a whole lot of speeding buses charging through my neighborhood's quiet side streets.

EL ARCA's buses move into the public parking lot in the early morning, around 7 a.m. This early parking space grab is done to either secure parking against a rush of early-birds from the general public arriving at the park, or it signals the beginning of the work day at EL ARCA - probably both.

Once the buses have secured 25 or 30 parking spaces, they come and go regularly as one driver makes his deliveries and another trades parking places with him to pickup his passengers. The drivers don't always drive with the caution one would expect given the proximity to the toddler playground, the donut shop, and continuation school nearby. EL ARCA's drivers certainly don't heed the speed limits on Baldwin Street, as they cut across to reach Lincoln Park.

Strangely, there is a large, fenced, gated, paved, parking lot just across Mission Rd. where Selig Pl. intersects Mission. This private amenity sits vacant for reasons unknown - yet the public parking lot is crowded, choked and made hazardous by the traffic of large white buses.

I don't want to shut EL ARCA down. I don't want EL ARCA to stop providing vital transportation services to their clients.

All I want is a safe, calm, clean place to access the public park near my house. I don't think it is fair (or legal?) for a commercial operation to take over a public parking lot at a park. I don't think this state of affairs is safe either.

The blame is not all EL ARCA's - the sidewalks on Selig Pl.. are in pretty bad shape, and the road is as potholed as they come.

Something must be done to fix this situation. Here are some options:

EL ARCA needs to pay for its parking, or park its commercial vehicles elsewhere;
Selig Place needs to have its sidewalks widened and improved;
Traffic calming must be employed on Selig Pl. to force a 15 mph speed limit on this narrow street.

The Selig Place parking lot at Lincoln Park is regularly filled by large numbers of commercial buses and vans from nearby EL ARCA, Inc. These buses block public access to the park, and degrade conditions on Selig Place by moving to fast and by degrading the asphalt. Selig Place itself has been neglected - and its poor sidewalks force pedestrians into the street.

Lincoln Park is an amazing amenity, yet it has its share of problems. The abuse of the Selig Place parking lot is easy to fix, and the fix is inexpensive. Making the Selig Place parking lot accessible, and making Selig Place safe for pedestrians, will go a long way towards giving us a Car-Free (or in this case, "Car-Lite") Lincoln Park.

LADOT - a Friend to Pedestrians?

2009-01-21T20:33:00.000-08:00

A map of the first 10 diagonal crosswalks installed by the LADOT in late 2008.
Click here to view Larger Map.

On January 8, 2009 intrepid cycling librarian, Ingrid Peterson, was witness to the aftermath of an LADOT bus vs. 58 year-old female collision at the intersection of 5th and Flower in Downtown Los Angeles. The 58-year-old pedestrian, Gwendolyn Coleman, lost her life in the crash.

This is not the sort of thing that makes a transit agency appear "pedestrian friendly". Thankfully, the LADOT has recently broken with it's auto-throughput-only past, and is taking tiny steps towards improving conditions for pedestrians.

There were no print reports of Ms. Coleman's horrific death, but local blogs published information about it as soon as Ingrid Peterson tipped them off. Streetsblog LA did two follow up posts to its original report, and one of those, "What to Do About Fifth and Flower?" published on January 16, 2009 brought up the following:

"My thought, given that Coleman was killed crossing the street with a walk signal and the bus that killed her had a green light also, is to install scramble crosswalks at high volume intersections of one way streets. This way, each mode of transportation will have its own time to cross the intersection while instead of having turning traffic compete with pedestrians for the intersection."
- Damien Newton, "What to Do About Fifth and Flower?"

As it turns out (and as Streetsblog LA has covered in its post "LA Gets Diagonal Crosswalks (again)"), when the LADOT is not running over pedestrians it is also busy protecting them with the "scramble" crosswalks Damien Newton mentions above!

The LADOT is a big department, with more than 2,000 employees. While most of the department is focused on our large automobile network, a few folks at the LADOT get to work on projects that help other modes of transportation.

In the Fall 2008 edition of the LADOT's internal newsletter, a small article by Glen Ogura, Principal Transportation Engineer, entitled "Diagonal Crosswalk in Westwood" describes a the modest installation of "scramble" crosswalks in portions of Los Angeles.

"The Department of Transportation activated the first pedestrian diagonal crosswalk, in 50 years, at the intersection of Le Conte Avenue and Westwood Boulevard on Thursday, August 7, 2008. This is another example of how LADOT provides pedestrian safety and amenities.

The pedestrian diagonal crosswalk has the advantage that pedestrians can cross the street without vehicle conflicts, pedestrians can cross diagonally to avoid two crossings, and vehicles can turn right or left without having to yield and wait for pedestrians when the traffic signal is green for them.

This location is the first of ten intersections that will have the diagonal crosswalk. The other locatoins are Broxton Avenue and Weyburn Avenue, Pacific Avenue and Windward Avenue, 11th Street and Maple Avenue, 11th Street and Santee Street, 12th Street and Santee Street, Hoover Street and Jefferson Boulevard, Jefferson Boulevard and McClintock Avenue, and Erwin Street and Owensmouth Avenue."
-"Diagonal Crosswalk in Westwood", LADOT Newsletter, Fall 2008

The LADOT is a big department, with buses, meter attendants, and a lot of civil engineers. When an LADOT bus driver kills a pedestrian, it is easy to see the LADOT as a menacing source of problems in L.A. On the other hand, the LADOT has recently taken some enlightened steps in a pro-pedestrian direction. That is, of course, of little consequence to the late Ms. Coleman, but it can be of some comfort to those of us still getting around using our two feet.

Additional Reading:

Diagonal Crosswalks:

Scramble crosswalks, August 05, 2008 [Bottleneck Blog, LA Times]

Scramble Crossings Coming to L.A., but Not for the First Time, August 05, 2008 [blogdowntown]

LA Gets Diagonal Crosswalks (again), November 7, 2008 [Streetsblog LA]

LADOT Bus Kills Pedestrian:

Media Silent on Horrific Bus Crash Downtown, January 8, 2009 [Streetsblog LA]

DASH Bus Hits & Kills Woman Outside Central Library, January 8, 2009 [LAist]

Pedestrian killed downtown was in crosswalk legally, LAPD says, January 9, 2009 [L.A. Now]

The Kindness of Strangers: Memorial Setup for DASH Victim, January 9, 2009 [LAist]

Update on Last Week’s DASH Crash and Pedestrian Fatality, January 13, 2009 [Streetsblog LA]

What to Do About Fifth and Flower?, January 16, 2009 [Streetsblog LA]

Making LA’s Deadly Crosswalks Safe, January 16, 2009 [CityWatch LA]

Let's Sue the MTA for Bikeway Money

2009-01-20T23:18:00.000-08:00

For a little over a year, I have been demanding that bicycles be considered "transportation" in order to receive general transportation funds from the City of L.A., the County, and the MTA.

It turns out, I think, that bicycles are defined as "transportation" in a state law. Here is the relevant section:

CALIFORNIA CODES
STREETS AND HIGHWAYS CODE
SECTION 885-886

885. The Legislature hereby finds and declares that traffic congestion, air pollution, noise pollution, public health, energy shortages, consumer costs, and land-use considerations resulting from a primary reliance on the automobile for transportation are each sufficient reasons to provide for multimodal transportation systems.

885.2. The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:
(a) California's bicycle programs have not been fully developed or funded.
(b) The Legislature and Congress have enacted laws to reduce traffic congestion and improve air quality.
(c) The components of a successful bicycle program include engineering and design of safe facilities, education of bicyclists, and the motoring public on lawful use of the highways, and enforcement of traffic laws.
(d) Efforts to improve safety and convenience for nonmotorized transportation users are a proper use of transportation funds.
(e) The design and maintenance of many of our bridges and highways present physical obstacles to use by bicycles.
(f) The bicycle is a legitimate transportation mode on public roads and highways.
(g) Bicycle transportation can be an important, low-cost strategy to reduce reliance on the single-passenger automobile and can contribute to a reduction in air pollution and traffic congestion.

886. There is in the department a bicycle facilities coordinator who is responsible for the administration of bicycle-related activities of the department.

If "[t]he bicycle is a legitimate transportation mode on public roads and highways", then why doesn't the bicycle receive funding from general transportation funds? There can be no legal argument for this modal discrimination, can there be?

If there is no legal justification for preventing bicycle projects from receiving general transportation funds, then there must be some sort of bias built into the process of funding "transportation" projects.

Why sue the MTA? When the MTA accepts applications from cities and other agencies for projects, they employ a set of policies and guidelines to judge those projects. This is the MTA's policy with respect to bicycle and pedestrian projects:

"Construction of a bikeway and/or pedestrian path is prohibited unless the bikeway or pedestrian path is designed so that the sponsor can demonstrate that it will not have to be relocated or removed to allow for construction or operation of a future transportation project."
-pg. 19, MTA's 2007 Call for Projects Guide.

I believe that it is a non-scientific, unjust, pro-automobile bias that keeps bike projects from getting funded. As demonstrated above, this can be easily shown.

Grounds for a law suit?

I think so.

Reforming the Los Angeles Bicycle Advisory Committee

2009-01-02T23:11:00.000-08:00

A set of new rules to govern the Los Angeles Bicycle Advisory Committee were approved by the City Council recently, and they have now (I believe) officially gone into effect.

The Los Angeles Bicycle Advisory Committee (LABAC) has been a non-functioning citizen advisory board for a number of years. These reforms, initiated at the enlightened directive from Councilman Ed Reyes of the 1st District do not go far enough.

Let me explain why they do not go far enough, and what can be done about the situation.

These reforms do not go far enough because the majority of the members of the 15-member LABAC are the worst kind of chair-warming rot. Few LABAC members have said a single word to the council office that "appointed" them. Instead, quite a few members of the LABAC were appointed by now out-of-office city council members, and their seat on the LABAC never came up when the next council member was elected!

The majority of the Bicycle Advisory Committee, therefore, do not advise at all! Few of them even speak with the council member whose district they are appointed to represent.

Further, many members of the LABAC are there for reasons that have nothing to do with forming legislative proposals or pushing through a pro-bicycle agenda. They serve because they might have ridden a bike competitively for several years, or they worked in the bicycle industry, or simply because they like bikes. A few are there in the vain hope that this will serve as some sort of civic stepping stone, as a mitzvah, or a little of both.

One thing is clear: few LABAC members are doing anything to get Los Angeles' laws or policies changed to help bike riders.

The solution to this dilemma is clear: get rid of most of the LABAC!

The LABAC is made up of 19 members. 4 are appointed by the mayor. Each council member gets to appoint one LABAC member. There are 15 council districts, so there are 15 council-appointed LABAC members.

19 members on a committee means that 10 members form a one-vote majority if they disagree with the other 9.

Bicyclists in L.A. need 10 new LABAC members appointed in order to push a pro-bicycle legislative and policy agenda. Or could it be done with less? Let's do the math, but first, what does it take to be on a citizen advisory board?

Getting appointed to a citizen advisory board can be difficult, when you think about it. You've got to imagine the mind of the person appointing you to a seat of minor power, in their name. A council member is not going to be looking for a hot-headed wild man (or woman) who just loves, loves, LOVES a given topic.

A council member will more likely look for someone they can trust will keep from making a fool out of themselves, who will garner little press, and never (never ever) make the council member look bad. It would be a big bonus for an appointee to actually serve up softball, low budget, legislative ideas that the council member can milk for positive press and good vibrations in their district.

If you know any of L.A.'s more involved bike advocates, you also know that they hardly fit the description above - but that isn't that big of a deal. Unlike most of the current LABAC, we have a plan.

First, we've identified the seats on the LABAC from which nothing meaningful has come in a number of years (technically this could be all of them, but bear with me). This is our group of seat-warmers.

Second, we've identified the seats on the LABAC who don't need to be removed, because they are already in favor of a pro-bike legislative and policy agenda. This is our group of good guys (and gals).

Hey, only two steps in and here is some good news: we need 10 seats to control the board and the goodies number 7 (or 8)! We're only 2 or 3 seats away from a majority of votes on the LABAC!

Third, of the seat-warmers, we need to find the most dysfunctional, or nonexistent, board member-council member relationships. We only need to find 4 crappy realitionshios. Not counting the mayors appointees (we have no leverage with the mayor's office!), I've made a list of some pretty awful (or nonexistent) relationships between LABAC members and their council members - and I count EIGHT crappy relationships on the LABAC. JACKPOT!

Fourth, we put a call out to Midnight Ridazz and bike advocates:

"Go forth, Ridazz, and contact your local neighborhood councils! Put together a little proposal for improving small things in the targeted council district of your choosing - and shop it around to local neighborhood councils it might affect. Get local councils and other community groups to endorse your idea(s) and/or plan(s).
Once you've gotten your name established in the community, approach the council office and ask the chief of staff to be considered for the LABAC. Show them the work you've done, your endorsements, and how you will actually (maybe) help them a little bit (which is a hell of a lot more than their current appointee is doing)."

Fifth, in six months we all get together on the 1st Tuesday of June and vote, as LABAC members, to recommend legal and policy changes be made in L.A. to make bike riding safer, easier, and in accordance with the Cyclists Bill of Rights.

The LABAC is a body that recently had its operating rules changed by the city council - but those changes did not go far enough. Many members of the LABAC do not perform their duties as citizen advisers to the city council and the mayor - these members need to be replaced.

Fortunately, only 3 or 4 LABAC members need to be replaced to get a majority of the board on a pro-bike agenda. Even better, many current LABAC members have a terrible or nonexistent relationship with their council office - which makes their replacement relatively easy!

If you're interested in giving a seat warmer on the LABAC the boot, and want to vote for a pro-bike agenda once every two months (that is how frequently the LABAC meets), then send me an email and I'll help you develop your neighborhood bike projects, and help you shop those ideas (and you) around to local groups for endorsements.

My email: ubrayj02 @ yahoo.com

Got Mugged While Riding a Crippled Bicycle

2008-12-13T01:13:00.000-08:00

On my way home from the bike shop, at 1 a.m., I got held up by a bunch of guys in a modified truck/van about a block from my house.

I took $20 out of our till to buy dinner and pay for a few spare parts at the Bike Oven for one of my bikes. I had a little change left over, maybe $11.

It was a long day - we sold a bunch of bikes and I had to pack each bike in a hand-made box. When I went to drop the bikes at Fedex, it was too late, and they had closed already.

The parts from the Bike Oven didn't work with my bike - so I decided to ride a crippled Flying Pigeon home instead. I hammered it's improperly set cotters into place and off I went.

God, the moon was something else tonight. I got a good long glimpse of it floating above through my greasy glasses while slowly coasting down Marmion Way.

I really slowed down after riding up Avenue 37 to Griffin - because the cotter on the non-drive side wiggled loose on me. For some reason I decided to switch off my front light. I passed by Manitou Elementary and saw that it was 12/13/08 - and I though that it was Friday the 13th. I smiled, "Lucky day," to myself.

One block to go and I switched off my rear light too for some reason. Then I really slowed down. Someone could have walked faster than I was riding.

Very smoothly, a well groomed SUV with a two-tone paint job - silver on the bottom and black on top - pulled in front of me and stopped. I thought they were going to kick my ass for no reason, but then I remembered that I didn't give a shit what they thought they were going to do.

I saw two guys get out of the car. One, taller, two cheap blue tear drops below his right eye was talking. His sagging blue jersey and wild eyes tried to threaten me with his gangster bull shit. "Homie" this and "homie" that.

I ripped my hood off my head, and said, "What do you want?" I backed away from them, tossing my bike down. They could have that piece of crap, if they wanted it.

Bald man's buddy was in a dark sweater. He was shorter, stockier, in a black baseball cap and had some sort of mustache.

"You money homie, give us your money!" said Baldy.

I said, "Sure." I reached into my left pocket and grabbed the tiny wad of cash I had (thank God I had that in my pocket - otherwise they would have wanted my bag, which had a bunch of papers, my various sets of keys and my camera).

I gave each of them half of whatever paper was in my pocket. Baldy saw my pocket dangling out of my pants, and said, "Money!"

"That's all the cash I have."

"You're a little bitch, homie", said Baldy.

"Whatever, man."

"Yo this is our hood homie", as his friends u-turned the car to pick him up.

"You can have it."

"This is our hood. You're a little bitch." Baldy said.

"Two on one, huh? You can have it."

"Bitch", said the driver.

They didn't even drive away all that quickly.

I slowly walked up my driveway and went inside.

The cops are allegedly on their way now - but when I called 911 I was dumb and told the truth - no guns, no violence. That means no cops until 3 a.m. to take my stupid report. I guess it is better that they are out chasing ballasos and real crime.

It took 5 years of living in North East L.A., and it finally happened - I got robbed. Everyone around here has told me, "Hey, watch out man." It took a lot of trying but rolling the dice finally caught up to me.

I still don't know why I did what I did - riding slowly, no lights, 1 a.m., Lincoln Heights. It felt like destiny. I'm not scared nor am I angry. I was lucky, that is all. Really lucky I took that $20 out of our till. Otherwise I would have had to find out if those guys really were packing weapons or not.

Brooms - The Undoing of a Leftist Critique of Los Angeles

2008-12-10T00:14:00.000-08:00

I've nearly finished breezing through a copy of "20th Century Los Angeles: Power, Promotion, and Social Conflict" by Norman M. Klein, James K. Libbey, Martin J. Schiesl.

It only took me 6 months to get through the first essay of the book, by Norman Klein, "The Sunshine Strategy: Buying and Selling the Fantasy of Los Angeles". Chalk that up to my personal life, and not this scorcher of an essay. Klein has constructed a engaging walk-through of Los Angeles' history of selling itself and being sold several times over in service to various groups' interests.

The closing paragraph of this essay made me feel like my life in Los Angeles had a central thesis written about it that I wasn't even aware of until reading it quietly in my bedroom at 1 a.m. a few night ago:

"L.A. is the most photographed and least remembered city in the world. But despite its seemingly short memory, much of what planners had hoped to avoid - or erase -has come to pass anyway. The social pathology of the city cannot be ignored, particularly its extraordinary disregard for the fabric of community life, in pursuit of both a new Babylon and a new Jerusalem."
-Norman Klein, pg.33, "20th Century Los Angeles: Power, Promotion, and Social Conflict"

Klein's sharp view of Los Angeles' "social pathology" extends to his fellow authors in this book!

Most of "20th Century Los Angeles: Power, Promotion, and Social Conflict" consists of a vague, and justifiably pessimistic, history of non-white minority groups in L.A. This can quickly be summarized thusly: Los Angeles became, was, and is (at the time of the printing of this book) an "Anglo" town. If you weren't an Anglo, or if you weren't the right kind of Anglo, chances are you didn't count for squat in this region's governance, management, and plans for the future.

I quickly skipped over this yawn-inducing civil-rights filler material. I prefer my L.A. history first-hand from my neighbors and friends, or through the reading of old newspaper reports in archives.

The final chapter, a postscript by Eric Schockman entitled "Los Angeles: Toward the 21st Century" takes Klein's clear-eyed vision of Los Angeles and, oddly, pines for a bizarre "solution" to the problems in Los Angeles' governance throughout the book.

Schockman describes the problem with Los Angeles:

"[I]nstitutional patterns designed to conform to the dominant motif of governing have factored out democratic reform elements to make local officials and agencies less accountable to the majority of the citizens."
-Eric Schockman, pg. 230 "20th Century Los Angeles: Power, Promotion, and Social Conflict"

Oddly, the proposed solution to this meta-level problem is not to develop a political machinery to re-engage in the planning and upkeep of small communities and economies. Instead this collection of critics of Los Angeles' idealism over social justice suggest the following:

"...[E]nd the municipal 'balkanization' that frustrates regional solutions and a common zeal. Regional problems such as traffic, air pollution, solid waste disposal, do not lend themselves to solutions within neat micro-geographic boundaries."
-Eric Schockman, pg. 232 "20th Century Los Angeles: Power, Promotion, and Social Conflict"

Something strange happens at the end of this book, and it reflects something that perhaps took place in the left-wing in Los Angeles or the United States in the time before my intellectual awakening. What I believe happened was, those on the bottom couldn't get anything of substance done to improve their situation. So instead of trying to get their street swept, or keep their brother's head from being cracked open, every other week (and continually failing), they tried to fight for a similar set of insane ideals that their oppressors fought for for themselves. Upon achieving political power upon a base of such insanity, those formerly oppressed people believed that they ought to rule as their oppressors ruled.

In this case, they decided to rule by keeping highways and roads paved over the interests their weakest citizens; keeping regional interests ahead of local interests; by protecting first those who helped them gain their position; and, by ignoring the very real social problems they allegedly rode to power to "solve" with their insane ideals.

When dealing with the big questions of this City, this group of folks decided that we need only put someone with darker skin and hair at the helm of the monstrous machines that run L.A.

To re-make that machine into something more functional, "balkanization" is desperately needed! Balkanization, of a sort, is a fundamental precondition for an accountable local government - regional interests be damned.

Who else but a group of concerned neighbors will work to prevent garbage incinerators from being built? Who but a coalition of small businesses and advocates for children and the elderly will fight to stop freeway construction? Our region suffers from an over-emphasis on the regional! We need to think about our problems as local issues, which need to be dealt with locally by citizens organized around their collective self-interests and social identity. Kicking our local problems up to some do-nothing beast fed by our property and sales taxes will not keep out park bathrooms clean, nor will it protect us while jogging or walking our dogs late at night.

Los Angeles' has ignored the fabric of its various communities for so long, some of our city departments have forgotten who they work for: us, the people. Hewing on with malarkey about "social justice" and "regional solutions" will not do what needs to be done to make our lives better, to protect the weakest members of our community, and will not secure for our young the future they deserve.

Ultimately, critiques of Los Angeles which remain at the regional level fail in the same way that building housing for the poor in Chavez Ravine failed. If you are ignoring the base reasons for a problem, you can't fix it by ignoring those reasons some more and simply throwing money at the issue.

Here is a new motto for Los Angeles, one free of the meta-level vapidity of our self-proclaimed intellectual elite: "Citizen, pick up a broom, it is a weapon!"

Cargo Bike Musings and Bike Financing

2008-11-26T06:33:00.000-08:00

Now that I am part owner of a small bicycle boutique (Flying Pigeon LA), my mind has been in deep research mode trying to plan my product purchases out for the next year.

I am a deep believer in "The End of Suburbia", and of the practicality of cargo bicycles. Those beliefs have hit a two major barriers: will anyone want a cargo bike as much as I did; and, can people afford a cargo bike?

From the research that I've been doing, I still have no idea if the L.A. area has enough cargo-cycling customers to justify me bringing a bunch of them here.

There are some pretty awesome cargo bikes out there, so I thought I'd run through a few of them to let anyone considering buying one to get a look at the what's available domestically in the U.S. There is a little stub at the end about paying for these bicycles (which can be a big barrier to buying a cargo bike).

Rear Loading Cargo Bikes

Surly's Xtracycle-compatible "Big Dummy" available through QBP-connected bike dealers.

Xtracycle is likely the most familiar to American cyclists. Xtracycles allow Americans to use off-the-shelf products on a bike that can haul a lot of stuff. This is not to be downplayed, since very few bike components are made in the U.S. The drawback to this is that the design of the bike hardly makes it "all weather" or able to (as an off-the-shelf product) withstand the punishment of a novice rider using it as it is purportedly intended to be used.

Whether you use your own bike and Xtracycle's add-on, or you purchase a Surly Big Dummy fully built, you'll end up spending $1,000 to $2,500 on an Xtracycle. You can get the cost down by finding a good, old, mountain bike on the cheap - but fixing it up with an Xtracycle to haul cargo will still cost several hundred dollars.

Yuba's "Mundo" has a lot of straight tubing to keep costs low and frame strength high.

Bicycle maker Yuba produces the "Mundo" cargo hauling bike, which run in the $900 to $1100 range. Yuba reduces the price of their Mundo cargo bike by removing essentials like fenders and gears (wha!?). Though not as attractive looking as one of Surly's bikes, the Mundo offers the same sort of design features.

Kona's "Ute" available through bike dealer's who carry Kona's line of bikes (see: Orange20 on Heliotrope and Melrose!).

Bike maker Kona has its own cargo bike now too, the "Ute" - which is similar to the Surly Big Dummy, except that all the bags and trimmings are Kona-specific. You can buy a Ute for ... $800 to $1000 (I believe).

The above bikes, to me, cling desperately to the sporty and recreational aesthetics of bikes in the U.S. market. Each of them can be easily crippled with a dirty drive train on their exposed chains and gears. A rider of these bikes is not allowed to wear what they want, as the bike will easily take a chunk of cloth off of your pants leg, or splatter you with road mud (unless you have some forethought and mount extra fenders). Further, each of these bikes will require after-market additions to make sure that you are seen at night - as none come with a dynamo hub to power front and rear lights.

Madsen Utility Bicycles has two models: With Bucket and Without Bucket.

There are now a few more polished cargo bike makers in the U.S., and one definitely worth mentioning is Madsen Utility Bicycles. Madsen makes a Yuba-esque rear loading cargo bike - with a fully enclosed rear cargo case. Of all the rear-loading cargo bicycles, this makes the most sense for moms and dads. Madsen's bikes are still stuck in the "exposed drive train" rut, and do not come stock with lights or a dynamo to power them. These bike cost $1,200 to $1,400.

Front Loading Cargo Bikes

I ride a special Dutch-style bakfiets, or "box bike". The bikes cost anywhere from $2,500 to $3,000. They come equipped with the sort of utilitarian amenities that I believe should come standard on most bicycles: internal dynamo hubs (to power lights on the bike), drum brakes, and a fully enclosed drive train. The best way to get a bakfiets is to order one from Clever Cycles in Portland.

Metrofiets' handmade and custom tailored cargo bikes for the discriminating Prius owner.

A bakfiets competitor recently lit up the cargo-cycling world online by mildly appropriating the bakfiets design. Metrofiets, of Portland, offers an incredibly attractive (but slightly less functional) bakfiets-type bike. Metrofiets cost $2,700 (to start), but offers a bunch of "upgrades" to make the bike work as well as a VanAndel designed bike. Te big benefit of Metrofiets has to do with its local manufactur by a talented craftsman.

Paying For A Cargo Bike

If you're blessed with great foresight and wealth, then you've already paid cash for your bakfiets! Congratulations!

If you have the foresight, but not a lot of money, buying a cargo bike can be a big purchase. Your first option is always the dreaded credit card (with interest!) which can easily turn your modest $1800 purchase into $5000 in debt over three years.

If you're lucky enough to live in parts of Oregon, you can finance your cargo bike purchase with the Unitus Credit Union for 7.99% interest annually (for up to $2500 worth of bike).

This is the crux of my dilemma as a bike shop owner in L.A.: I am not located in Portland! I don't have a city that believes in building a high quality bikeway network in my neighborhood; and, I don't have an amazing credit union offering bike financing!

Bike financing is the sort of micro-credit that will truly keep portions of our local economy afloat in these dire economic times. For those of us who wan to sell a $1,000+ utility bicycle, it is just what is in order. As a small business owner, I've got plenty of work in my shop. Setting up and tracking a customer's credit and payments is another business entirely, and one best suited for money lenders.

So, the good news: there are plenty of moderate to high quality cargo bike options. If you're super sporty, Surly's got an Xtracycle cargo bike for you, if you want Honda-like reliability and design, you can ship a bakfiets from Clever Cycles in Portland. If you're looking for something in between, Madsen Utility Bicycles, Kona, or Yuba have what you need to haul you groceries or your kids (or both) around town.

Good Luck Barack Because I'm Tapped Out

2008-11-11T20:57:00.000-08:00

In the 10 minutes I have to write this, I hope I can capture some of the experiences of the past few days for those who know me.

Last Tuesday's election was something of an anti-climax for me. I watch my daughter on Monday and Tuesday while my brother minds our bike shop in Highland Park. So last Tuesday, I watched the baby all day while my wife finished her second day of work at the nearby USC medical school.

We took mom to vote (I had already voted absentee), and were going to drive to a local Italian food joint in the car. Baby decided she had had enough, so while we tried to tough out the drive to the restaurant, our daughter drover herself practically apoplectic with fear and discomfort isolated in her car seat.

We turned the car around and went home while the east coast results were coming in. I dropped mommy and baby at home and I was dispatched to pick up crappy fast food in the car. On the drive I got to listen to McCain's concession speech.

That was something else. The tone of his speech made him sound psychologically relieved - having been forced to run a horrible losing campaign based on little else but smears against his opponent.

I didn't get to revel in the moment at all. In fact, it really sucked and I am very bitter that I didn't get to feel that special mix of emotion that other hippy/liberal/etc. bloggers reported the day after.

The week just got harder and harder. Work piled on top of work. I had a lengthy meeting at the Bike Oven to attend to. One of our customers needed some special mechanical attention on her bike.

I just finished two full days of non-stop bakfiets riding around Lincoln Heights. I no longer like to ride bikes everywhere. I have been schlepping baby to see mom twice a day, then out on errands while she naps in the bucket in front. It's cool and everything, but when i get hungry or tired there really is noone and nothing that I can rely on to watch over the baby while I unpleasantly stuff my face with food or hurriedly go to the bathroom with a kid whining and screaming for me. I have less than 3 minutes of free time to myself at home, because the kid only sleeps when the bakfiets is in motion. My legs are totally destroyed after riding up the back side of Montecito Heights this morning, then up to Highland Park, then back to USC, then to Lincoln Park, then home then back out to put the baby to sleep again, then back home, then out on a long walk to settle the baby down.

My long rant is at an end.

Let me finish with this: my life is over. That sounds too negative. My old life is over. I read my friend Stephen Box's editorial in City Watch LA this morning (kid was asleep for two minutes after I woke up) and my inability to do anything in the field I spent the last two to three years becoming an expert in finally sunk in. All of that reading, the late nights, the hard work - it is just going to evaporate from my mind like water in a boiling kettle.

That really hurts quite a lot, but I guess that is what being someone's dad really means. This is going to be rough.

Car-Free Life With a Bakfiets

2008-09-18T11:00:00.000-07:00

Click on this picture to see the Flickr pictures I uploaded.

I added a couple of photos to my Flickr account to show some of the things I've done with my bakfiets since I bought it late last year.

It is hard to remember to take photos for posterity when I'm riding around Lincoln Heights eating ice cream and making baby noises to my daughter on a bakfiets, but I think I've managed to capture some of what is possible with the awesome machines that Azor bicycles in the Netherlands puts together.

The model of bakfiets I have is named after its creator "Van Andel". The excellent bags and rain shield were made by Clarjis Covers in the Netherlands (they ship to the U.S.!).

So, Angelenos, it is possible to live a car free life in L.A. - in fact it is quite enjoyable most of the time. I would argue that life is measurably better on a bakfiets than in a car, but I'm not an objective judge of these sorts of things.

Interested in buying a bakfiets? I purchased my bakfiets through Rain City Bikes in Vancouver. Clever Cycles in Portland also carries them. A friend of mine, Yonni Afman, has been working to bring these bicycles (and tricycles) to the U.S. for the past couple of months - he has a web-site for Bucket Bikes.

Got Hitched, Started a Business

2008-09-10T01:25:00.001-07:00

I recently got married, and started a business with my brother selling Flying Pigeon bicycles.

The picture above, to me, says a lot about my life from now on. I've got bicycles on the brain. I'm a lucky guy though - without my family and friends, none of this would be possible.

The shop I opened up with my brother has an online store, blog, etc. We call it Flying Pigeon LA, and things have been going pretty well so far.

I've got some photos of the shop, our bikes, and a bunch of other stuff posted up in my Flickr account if you want to take a look.

There is a lot going on in my life - and there likely will be for a long time to come. I wish I could share it with the internet, but there just aren't enough hours in the day it seems.

The bike policy thing has, for me, fallen a bit to the wayside - as I've got to find a way to make a living selling and working on bicycles now! I quit my 9-to-5 job to start a business, there's my daughter to look after, the Bike Oven, and (of course) kicking it with my wife (when we're together).

LADOT and the MUTCD

2008-08-05T10:05:00.000-07:00

Canary in a coal mine? Nah - it's a chick under a truck tire.

There are two articles online today that got me thinking, "How does the way the LADOT operates differ from other cities' DOT or Public Works Department?"

The first article, "LADOT's Faster Traffic/Safer Streets Initiative" by Stephen Box of the Bike Writers' Collective , is on LAist. The second is an article stub by Steve Hymon on his Bottlneck Blog and is entitled "Speed limits to increase on some streets".

Both articles deal with the way the LADOT determines the correct speed limits on surface streets in Los Angeles.

State law requires cities to regularly asses the speed limits of their streets, and provides a guide to doing this assesment in the California Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (or the MUTCD). The assessment is, of course, slanted in favor of increasing speed limits - but this can be overridden by other concerns. For example, proximity to a bike lane, a park, a school, or single family homes - all of these types of land use would obviously make a road designer lean toward slower speeds. As you'll soon seen, the LADOT has the option to take the above concerns into consideration using the MUTCD's guidelines, but opts not to.

The assessment the MUTCD requires is called an "Engineering and Traffic Survey" (or E&TS).

The LADOT has performed this survey on several streets in the Valley recently and found, in every case to be presented to the Los Angeles City Council's Transportation Committee this afternoon, that speed limits on the surveyed streets should be increased - from 35 to 40mph, from 40 to 50mph.

The only types of surveys and measurements the LADOT used to make this determination had to do with the average speed of cars travelling on these roads. Their E&TS' mention rates of "accidents per million vehicles", but in every case dismiss these numbers as being beneath some unstated threshold of acceptability.

I can't fault the LADOT with too much - the E&TS guidelines are handed down to them from the State of California. However, they are ignoring choice portions of the E&TS that call for the surveying engineer to use their professional judgement. Here are the additional requirements that an engineer is asked to consider:

When qualifying an appropriate speed limit, local authorities may also consider all of the following findings:
1. Residential density, if any of the following conditions exist on the particular portion of highway and the property contiguous thereto, other than a business district:
a. Upon one side of the highway, within 0.4 km (0.25 mi), the contiguous property fronting thereon is occupied by 13 or more separate dwelling houses or business structures.
b. Upon both sides of the highway, collectively, within a distance of 0.4 km (0.25 mi) the contiguous property fronting thereon is occupied by 16 or more separate dwelling houses or business structures.
c. The portion of highway is larger than 0.4 km (0.25 mi) but has the ratio of separate dwelling houses or business structures to the length of the highway described in either subparagraph a or b.
2. Pedestrian and bicyclist safety.
-E&TS guidelines from pg. 114 in the MUTCD

The MUTCD hands out a set of guidelines to survey speed limits - but as you can see above, the speeds of cars are not the only thing engineers are asked to consider. So, now that the LADOT's work is before us, we can ask:

"Why did you decide to increase speed limits to 50mph on Reseda Blvd. adjacent a bike lane? Surely it wasn't cyclist safety."
"Why did you decide to increase speed limits to 45mph on a road that runs through right through a district of single family homes. Surely it wasn't because of the interst of those homeowners."

It's all good - I used my professional judgment and saved this lil' chikin.

That, of course, is precisely what I will ask this afternoon in the City of L.A.'s Transportation Committee. You can join me, Stephen Box, Eric Knutzen, and the members of the Transportation Committee today, Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 2 p.m. in Room 1010 of City Hall. See you there?

There is one question that I know I won't get an answer to at today's meeting: "How do other cities employ the E&TS?" I wonder how Burbank, Pasadena, South Pasadena, Culver City, Santa Monica, and Whittier deal with this requirement from the State. How do Northern Californian and Central Californian cities deal with this requirement - like Davis and San Francisco?

Our engineers, in Los Angeles, like to refer to "engineering practice" when they run out of excuses for their car-only focus. I think, more than the whining questions I will present to the Transportation Committee today, finding out how other cities deal with the E&TS will be a good way to establish how the LADOT is performing in its role.

A Solution to the NELA Hillside Development Controversy

2008-06-17T18:04:00.000-07:00

To Whom It May Concern:

Much of the vacant hillside land in North East L.A. (NELA) is owned by individual property owners, and not large developers or investment firms. Many of these small land owners purchased their hillside properties 20 to 30 years ago, as an investment.

To these small property owners, the land has value because there is the potential to build structures on the land, and then sell the entire property for a profit at some later date.

The value of the land is not intrinsic to the property, but is derived from the ability to build homes and then convey the property. The ability to add a certain floor area of building imbues these properties with value.

One reason that these small land owners have been adamant in their opposition to the ICO, and similar efforts to prevent construction on their property, is that these initiatives deprive the owners of the ability to sell the land and a structure (or the right to build a structure on the land) to another person at a profit.

This land, to the rest of the community, is an invaluable asset that adds to the beauty and biodiversity of the area. The vacant hillsides of NELA represent the last ties residents in the area have to the natural world - and many see the interests of these small land holders as ethically and morally wrong.

I believe that a mutually beneficial compromise has already been developed and implemented in the City of Los Angeles, and need only be slightly updated and then applied to the hillside properties of NELA.

The City currently allows property owners of certain commercially zoned properties to convey the right to add floor area to a property to another property owner - who is then allowed to build above the zoned maximum on their property. This Transfer of Floor Area Rights is described in Article 4.5 of Chapter 1 of the Los Angeles Municipal Code relating to the transfer of floor area rights in the Central Business District and City Center Redevelopment Project Areas and Chapter 45 of Division 5 of the Los Angeles Administrative Code relating to the Transfer of Floor Area Rights Public Benefit Payment Trust Fund.

Allowing this scheme on the hillsides of NELA will allow the small property owners to cash out their investments at a fair market rate for floor area in the commercial floor area market of the City's choosing. Few small property owners would have reason to oppose this - as it would allow them to obtain a return on their investment of 20 to 30 years ago.

Once the right to develop their property has been conveyed and the property owners have cashed out the right to develop - the residents of NELA will be able to enjoy the benefits of the natural landscape that blankets their neighborhood.

No party need be the loser in this situation, if only our city leaders would use the tools they have at their fingertips to see that the city's residents interests are equitably protected.

How to Make the Benefits of Bikes Visible

2008-05-29T22:46:00.000-07:00

Bike Oven heavy, Steve I., shows off his restored road bike. The virtues of this bike are obvious: it's shiny.

I am going to assume in this post that the virtues of having hundreds of thousands of bicycle commuters in L.A. are understood and accepted by the reader. Here is a short list of a few of those virtues:

Less cars on the roads;
Stronger local business districts;
Clean air;
Healthier commuters;
Roads that last longer;
Measurably better quality of life.

How Do You Get People Riding Bikes?
This question has, surprisingly, been answered.

The MTA's 2002 Bicyclist Survey established that bicyclists in L.A. County need safe access to arterial roads. Alta Planning's 2005 "Bridging the Gaps" study [2.5 MB .pdf] demonstrated how an increase in high quality connected bikeways correlate with an increase in bicycle use.

So, if you want to get more people in L.A. riding bicycles you need to make a network of connected bikeways on arterial roads.

That wasn't so hard, was it!?

The reason this simple solution has not been employed to induce more bike riding in L.A. has to do with politics. The benefits of bike riding (and for that matter walking and transit use) are invisible to the policy makers in Los Angeles.

Making the Benefits of Bicycling Visible

Two bicyclists outside the Bike Oven during the Pornography of the Bicycle after party hosted by Rev. Phil, pondering their visibility at said event.

How can the transportation benefits of bicycling be made visible?

Here is one solution: "transportation" must be officially defined by the city council, in order to eliminate ambiguity in transportation funding and performance evaluation of transportation projects.

Automobile projects are identified as transportation projects, yet bicycling (and walking) is segregated by mode into a small sliver of transportation dollars. Those dollars typically get spent making roads wider - which is of marginal benefit to cyclists (or pedestrians).

Bike riders Leticia Z. and Arturo S. trying to safely navigate their way into downtown Los Angeles through morning traffic and on roads that are designed to pipe as many cars through as possible.

An official definition of transportation, for funding and performance evaluation of projects, that includes bicycling, walking, and transit use as transportation will go a long way in allowing us to build for the types of transportation network so many Angelenos clamor for.

This legal change will allow other modes to access the "transportation" funds that are, for all practical purposes, exclusively auto-only funds right now.

Further, automobile projects will be identified as such, and evaluated using language and measures that more appropriately measure their effects on the city.

This will serve as a political tool as well. There is a perception that when bicycle lanes are built, sidewalks are widened, or buses are put in service, that these improvements equate to some sort of unfair transportation welfare to poor people. Automobile roadway construction is never examined in such a critical light even though it receives the lions share of funds and staff time. Auto projects are masked under the neutral term "transportation" while other modes are called out specifically by name.

Imagine a pie chart at the Mayor's budget conference with Neighborhood Councils when people see the massive slice apportioned not to "transportation" but to "car-only projects". I can guarantee you more than a few local activists will immediately seize upon the issue and ask critical questions about our massive local subsidies for cars relative to our investment in other modes.

Damien Goodmon In His Own Words

2008-05-23T19:53:00.000-07:00

Damien Goodmon speaking during the Januray 29, 2008 City Council meeting on transportation.

I've seen Damien Goodmon publicly speak about the Exposition Line this year. I am not very familiar with the topic, but his speeches swayed me to his cause.

He has come under a lot of fire and criticism lately, and that has garnered him some negative press in local L.A. blogs. Friends 4 Expo (a pro-Exposition Line group) member Darrell Clarke wrote a critical essay about Goodmonthat ran on City Watch.

Curbed LA ran a story entitled
Fight, Fight! Expo Line Smackdown about the beef between Goodmon and the Friends 4 Expo.

Many of the negative comments I've read online about Damien seem to carry with them a hysterical intent to build a train line to the westside of Los Angeles as fast as possible, consequences be damned. Here is a quote from Curbed LA's comment section:

Damien is an ignorant idiot. Apparently he's never been outside of Los Angeles. Many light rail lines in other city's run at grade level (they Bay Area, Portland, etc).
-guest

I think that giving this young community leader a chance, and making the changes he (and those he is working with) suggest, will see a better light rail project in the end.

Damien Goodmon is a part of Citizens' Campaign to Fix the Expo Rail Line. He also organized a groups of Los Angeles residents around a dream map of transportation in L.A. that you can check out at http://getlamoving.com/

Darrell Clarke is Co-chair of the Friends 4 Expo Transit.

Curbed LA is the home of snark and real estate news-like substances.

Kickstart Citywide Bike Network Construction

2008-05-22T11:12:00.000-07:00

With a fully built-out Citywide Bike Network, ridazz will be able to proclaim, as Dingo did on this rickshaw ride in October of 2007, "Whose streets?! Our streets!"

What kind of strategy will lead to the completion of the Citywide Bike Network (designed in L.A.'s 2002 Bicycle Plan)? The Citywide Bike Network is a scheme to induce 5% of Angelenos to commute by bicycle by adding over 350 new miles of Class I and Class II bike lanes to Los Angeles.

Whether or not you like the idea - what sort of strategy would it take to get the Bike Network built?

I suggest we build a pile of money and offer that money to City for the purpose of building bike lanes. The money donated to this cause is contigent on full funding for the total build-out of the Citywide Bike Network (the cost of which totals to around $60.7 million).

How much of a bribe/tribute would need to be generated?

To fully fund the first year of Bike Network construction, let's assume that $6 million will have to be raised and then paid to the City of L.A. for the purpose of building a Bike Network. Maybe $500,000 will be spent on rent for an office, wasting time in council offices, hiring a staffer or two, a lawyer, and a lobbyist downtown. So, we're really looking at giving the City around $5.5 million to start it on its way to fully funding the Citywide Bike Network.

Hey, they'd be getting a $5.5 million discount! That would bring the cost of the whole project down to $55.2 million. The money we give will commit City staffers to finding other government pots of money to rob from to build this project. The money will also buy us support from anyone on the City Council looking to hit one out of the park with environmentalists, left wingers, and any local business interests that will be helped by slower car speeds in front of their shops.

I'm not sure what kind of contract would need to be written to ensure that no dirty tricks get played with this money, but I guess that is what the lawyer will be there for.

Who will give money to build a Citywide Bike Network that will turn 5% of L.A.'s commuters into bike riders? I've got a few donors in mind, but I'd like to hear from anyone out there on the internets with some leads. Post your ideas here or email them to me at ubrayj02@yahoo.com

Let's talk.

So, You Want to Help Bikes in L.A.?

2008-05-21T23:54:00.000-07:00

So, You Want to Help Bikes in L.A.?

Bicycle Transportation Policy Goals for Los Angeles

Rev. Borfo, making a point during the Gypsy Ride in April of 2007.

So far, people interested in making things better for bicyclists in L.A. have been able to wring public relations victories out of local politicians and opinion makers. Extending those victories into substantive changes in the way the City and County of Los Angeles deal with bicycles is a challenge that confronts all bike advocates.

It is often easy to get a politician to stand with you on a podium and loudly proclaim their "support" for your pet issue. It can be quite another to see something get done. I've developed this short list of specific policy recommendations that are within the power of the Los Angeles City Council and the Office of the Mayor to enact.

These are not massive changes. Several of these recommendations can be achieved in a matter of months, as they are quite technical and require only a one or two sentence ordinance and vote of the council.

So, here is my short list of bicycle transportation policy goals for Los Angeles:

Get Money for the Citywide Bike Network
At the direction of the City Council or the Office of the Mayor, the City should find, apply for, or allocate the $60 million required to completely build-out the Citywide Bike Network described in the 2002 Bicycle Plan. As planned in the 2002 Bicycle Plan, this money can be allocated piecemeal over the course of 10 or 15 years in amounts ranging from $4 million to $6 million per year. This amount, for a City the size of Los Angeles, is peanuts - but a completed Citywide Bike Network has the potential to get 5% of all trips in L.A. to be done by bicycle.

New, Official, Street and Highway Designations
At the direction of the Council, the Planning Department, the LADOT, and the LADPW should develop new Street and Highway Designations that are inclusive of bicycle, transit, and pedestrian uses of the right of way. This process would require at least one or two years to complete, and would require public hearings, it would likely require an EIR as well as $1 to $2 million in staff time and material.

Legal Definition Tweaking
These redefinitions will allow any unrestricted "transportation" dollars to be allocated to projects that do not speed up cars. Sidewalk improvements, traffic calming, bicycle facility construction, bus bench improvements - all of these will be able to use non-restricted transportation funds.

Legally define "Transportation", in the Los Angeles Municipal Code, to be:
"Any method or mode of moving goods or people using a street, highway, road, or public right-of-way. Bicycling, walking, using transit, and vehicular use are transportation."
Add "Bicycling is a mode of transportation" to the legal definition of bicycle in the Los Angeles Municipal Code;

Add "Walking is a mode of transportation" to the definition of walking and pedestrian in the Los Angeles Municipal Code.

Monitor and Evaluate the Street in a Different, and Scientific, Way
In the Monitoring/Evaluation segment of the bike plan (and the General Plan), as well as in the City's Street Designations and Standards, it would help cycling a great deal if something more than a cyclist count was employed to measure the performance of the roadway.

Currently, the streets of L.A. are measured by the City primarily by observing how many motorized vehicles can go as fast as possible on a street. This is a dysfunctional method of roadway performance measurement. Measuring the road this way turns the public right-of-way (which should serve commerce, civic life, and transportation) into a car-only sewer pipe that hurts local business interests, and destroy traditional civic life.

We all know the proportion of cyclists on the road is minuscule.

However, the effects of cycling, and bicycle infrastructure, are not minuscule.

Slower auto speeds relate to greater social cohesion, higher retail sales, fewer deaths and injuries, less air and noise pollution. Deemphasizing car throughput also increases the likelihood that both the oldest and youngest people in the neighborhood can use the streets safely.

Here are some scientific performance measures that can be applied to measurement of the public right-of-way to ensure that local business interests and civic life are taken into account in roadway design and construction:

Trends in retail sales tax income;
Crash, injury, and fatality reduction and monitoring;
Social surveys to establish live-ability;
Air pollution reduction and monitoring;
Noise monitoring;
Substituting automobile-based counts of speed and throughput (like Level of Service, Average Daily Trips, and "accessibility") for people-based counts;
Demographic surveys of street users.

All of the above can be reliably, and scientifically, measured. These measurements need to be a part of the the Monitoring/Evaluation section of the Bike Plan (and the General Plan). The City's official street designations and standards (see LAMC 17.05-A) must also be amended to reflect an increased focus on roadway performance for bicycles, pedestrians, and transit vehicles.

You can see the Monitoring/Evaluation section of the (soon to be old) Bike Plan here:
http://www.lacity.org/pln/cwd/gnlpln/transelt/BikePlan/B7Monitr.htm

The General Plan's Monitor and Evaluate section can be found here:
http://www.lacity.org/pln/cwd/gnlpln/TransElt/TE/T8Monitr.htm#citywide

So, that is it! There are some other policy goals that I am sure a group of cycling advocates could generate, but these are what I've done my research on. All of these would not take more than two city council motions apiece to achieve, and they are things that will actually improve the lot of bike riders in the City of Los Angeles. None of these ideas are particularly expensive. None of these ideas are off the wall. They get right to the heart of of the matter, and speak directly to the power that the City Council and Mayor wield.

Fortunately, the work of bicyclists over the past few years has already gotten local councilpeople thinking and working on bicycle issues. If we act now and present a clearly defined set of recommendations, we stand a good chance of actually seeing something come out of the explosion in bike culture and advocacy that has recently developed in Los Angeles.

Ghost of L.A. Bike Plans Past

2008-05-21T01:00:00.000-07:00

The $100 million that went towards this grade separation on Valley Blvd., currently under construction, could have built L.A.'s entire bike infrastructure. I know this because the ghost of an old L.A. Bike Plan told me so. Read on for more details.

The City of Los Angeles is having it's Bicycle Plan updated. The last time the City of L.A. had it's Bicycle Plan updated was in 2002. I was reminded of this fact tonight, as I sat organizing the mounds of digital research and reading I've done over the past three years. The ghost of an Bicycle Plan past re-revealed it's insights to me tonight, and I would like to share what I found so many months ago (but hadn't remembered to tell anyone about until now).

For your future reference, you can look up a lot of old L.A. city council business in the Los Angeles City Clerk's "Council File Index" web-site.

The motion that approved the 2002 Bike Plan, with the juicy tid-bits I am going to share with you, is identified with Council File Number 01-2396.

Juicy quote number one (I want a copy of this report!), from pg. 100 of CF 01-2396:

"Planning for Safe Urban Bicycling: An Analysis of Bicycle Collisions in Los Angeles

In 2000, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation undertook an evaluation of its bicyclist / motor vehicle conflicts between the years of 1994 and 1998. The project evaluated 6,611 traffic collisions involving bicycles and attempted to assess the safety of bicycling in Los Angeles. The study also sought to identify factors influencing bicycle safety which the City could address in future bicycle policy, in planning efforts, as well as in educational and capital projects in order to improve bicycle safety in the future."

It would be a great public benefit to see this analysis of over 6,500 bike vs. car collisions in L.A. in a digital format (I will accept .pdf in my inbox - ubrayj02@yahoo.com). I can only imagine the insight one would be able to gain by taking a look at this raw data. I wonder where this information on collisions came from? Is this data still being collected? Is it comprehensive?

So many questions, so little political will.

Oh my goodness!

That reminds me, there is one more thing from Council File 01-2396 that I wanted to tell you about. Here is the quote and the table it references from pg 102-103 of CF 01-2396:

"As presented in the accompanying table, the aggregate cost of full development of the Citywide Bikeway System is approximately $60.7 million.

To completely build out the Citywide Bikeway System, in a little over a decade, it would take about as much money as the city spends annually on traffic guards at congested intersections (The city spends a little less than $4 million on guards at congested intersections, annually).

The recommendation in the 2002 Bike Plan to have the City of Los Angeles fight for a 40% share of the MTA"S Call For Projects Bikeways funding fell on deaf ears in the years after the plan was approved.

Instead, things like this happened: Mayor Villaraigosa worked his influence on the MTA in 2006 and 2007 to bring $100 million of the MTA's Call For Projects dollars to pay for a Valley Blvd. grade separation in Councilman Huizar's district. It was an election year for the councilman, and the mayor wanted his replacement in Council District 14 to have something to show his constituents on one of the many mailers the mayor's political connections paid for on the councilman's behalf.

We certainly don't lack the money to make cycling into a viable means of moving many thousands of people. In fact, we're rolling in piles of dough each year - billions of dollars of taxes and bonds are allocated to transportation. We're lacking the political mechanisms to make the mayor, and the council, fight for the long-term interests of this city.

When the gas runs out of our oil based economy, and our citizenry fall into recession mode, how will we keep consumer dollars, goods, and people circulating in L.A.? I don't think cars are going to do it anymore. Bikes, public transit, and pedestrian-friendly streets are one way to secure Los Angeles' future against the coming scarcity in energy and other natural resources.

Oh, the ghosts of L.A.'s Bike Plans Past have revealed much tonight. Those responsible for their creation are owed a debt of gratitude. Lo, they are recognized! On the last page of CF 01-2396:

"Lock 'Em Up" Leads to Prisons for Profit

2008-05-14T16:41:00.000-07:00

This screen grab is from a recent NOW show called "Prisons for Profit". NOW is a weekly investigative journalism show distributed by PBS.

When I worked in the Assembly, my boss was heavily beholden to the prison guard union in California (the CCPOA). They gave his campaigns a lot of money, and he went to bat for them in Sacramento (at least symbolically) lots of times.

I spent a lot of time ovre the years reading and thinking about how the CCPOA got so powerful in this state, especially with people that were supposed to be "liberal", "left-wing", and allegedly interested in the protecting the rights of all humans.

The guy I worked for was a Democrat, but that distinction, I have since learned, means very little when it comes to California's prisons. Here is what I have pieced together that describes how and why the prison guard union has become such political heavyweight: Republicans and Democrats in California worked out an insane deal when I was finishing up my elementary school career.

The deal was this: Republicans would stop blocking Democratic spending bills from being passed in exchange for a "yes" vote on any law-and-order/prison construction bill that came before the legislature.

The result of this little deal? A score of new prisons, an inmate population of over 300,000 people, and a state budget that will not stop growing beyond our ability to give it our tax dollars. The twin towers prison downtown? It is a part of this little devils bargain. I like to call it the Willie Brown-Pete Wilson University.

This political coalition broke down in its more explicit terms, but the politics and money that keep it going have only grown in their power over the past decade. There is no political mechanism I am aware of to stop this machine.

Things, in my opinion, are only getting worse. I just got done watching an episode of NOW on PBS called "Prisons for Profit" that scared the crap out of me. Now, instead of just having to worry about the public correctional officer's union and the police union pushing for harsher sentences and "tougher" drug prohibition laws - there is a large private, for-profit, corporate, correctional facilities industry the is busy buying its way into our elected officials' hearts.

Don't miss the extra online feature on private detention centers for immigrants (and their kids) being deported as part of the Depertment of Homeland Security's recent crack-down on people who don't have their papers.

The time I spent in the Assembly scared me for California's future. This PBS special has got me questioning the entire "lock-em-up" attitude that has created this monster. I used to think that this philosophy was the only real way to deal with crime, but I don't think that way anymore. "Lock-em-up" creates a business out of putting people behind bars and subjecting them to the worst of humanity. This is a serious problem, and people selling drugs, joining gangs, or living here without papers is not the cause of this problem. It is not just California I am scared for - but the entire nation.

Traffic Engineer's Distate for Commerce and Civil Life

2008-05-08T18:45:00.000-07:00

This is footage of Rita Robinson, the newly appointed head of the Los Angeles Department of Transportation, responding to questions from Councilman Bill Rosendahl about a plan her department has been drafting to make two large surface streets, Pico and Olympic Boulvards in Los Angeles, into a pair of one-way streets.

There has been a considerable amount of negative feedback from people who live or own businesses next to, or on, Pico Boulevard or Olympic Boulevard.

The council meeting was a special single-issue day in meeting, and dealt only with transportation. The impetus for the meeting came from Councilwoman Wendy Gruel, Chair of the Transportation Committee, who found out that the City of Los Angeles has no long range transportation plan (and has not had one for a long time).

On May 6th, 2008, Damien Newton of StreetsblogLA wrote a post about an article entitled "Lessons Every Transportation Engineer and Planner Need to Learn" by Howard Stein in the Institute for Transportation Engineers (ITE) Journal. Damien's post inspired me to compile this footage from this special Los Angeles City Council meeting held in January of 2008.

As you can see in the video, Ms. Robinson treats some valid concerns from local business groups and residents as childish complaining about inevitable facts of life.

When I watched Ms. Robinson give her testimony, I remember thinking that she was being very dismissive about the public outcry against this project. Her department's proposal would turn two surface streets into, basically, freeways with stop-lights. I should add that both of the boulevards (Pico and Olympic Boulevards) run parallel adjacent a real, eight lane, freeway (the 10) - so automobile travel has been quite well taken care of in this part of the city.

I was puzzled about her attitude until I read Damien Newton's post on StreetsblogLA. Damien quoted Howard Stein's article in the Institute for Transportation Engineers' (ITE) Journal:

Lesson 1: Only traffic engineers/planners understand the concept of Level of Service
Lesson 2: Traffic engineers/planners know too much math
Lesson 3: The public often are the real local traffic experts
Lesson 4: Visit the study area several times during the project, especially during the most relevant time periods and just before key meetings
Lesson 5: Understand each jurisdiction's traffic study requirements, design standards and hearing/meeting procedures

Taken together, Rita Robinson's testimony and the ITE Journal article, show that the practice of traffic engineering is in need of some reform in its attitude towards its effect on public life and commerce. From other readings, I have surmised that the purpose of traffic engineering is to move automobiles on public roads as fast as possible. Given this purpose, I can see how public comments and criticism of a traffic engineer's plans is an irksome and confusing experience for the engineer

When the confluence of the L.A. River and Arroyo Seco had the Figueroa Street bridge built over it, the L.A. Times proudly proclaimed that both engineers and lay-people saw it as a part of, "... one of the most important, most picturesque highways in the system of great traffic arteries prepared and planned in the Southland." (L.A. Times, "Arroyo Seco Parkway Receives Strong Impetus", May 3, 1936).

The regular disdain for public input into transportation planning and roadway design lies just beneath the surface of even the slickest of presentations and speeches by traffic engineers. I've heard my share of traffic engineers give their tedious lectures about "reducing congestion" and "bringing relief" by building ever wider and faster roads for car travel.

When community members ask about the ease of crossing the street on foot, the thought alone of walking often elicits either a sneer or a quick chortle from the engineers as they gather themselves for their technical critique of walking as a source of congestion and travel time delays at intersections.

Neighbors living next to a proposed "improved" street (which will be converted into high speed car-only routes) ask, "Will this make it safer for my daughter and her friends to ride to the park?" The engineers at hearings typically have nothing to say, but will often resort to bringing up the "safety" of your child bicycling at all. In fact, the way they design roads makes them unsafe for your child to enjoy a bicycle ride to the park.

When businessmen ask, "Will faster car speeds through our commercial district, and reduced parking, help us grow our foot traffic and improve our business?" they are told that they are standing in the way of progress, or that they should expect a handout from the government to keep them afloat during construction, or they are simply ignored. In most commercial areas, slower auto speeds lead to better business foot traffic.

Fifty-two years after it's construction, this is what the Figueroa Street Bridge looks like. Picturesque, it most definitely is not. Anyone caught on this road at rush hour can testify to the impracticality of forcing thousands to use cars to get around L.A.

For some reason, traffic engineers, the people with the alleged expertise about how to design the public right-of-way (the largest public land holdings in the every urban environment), only see the right-of-way as a pipeline for cars. They do this over the very real concerns of local residents. They do this over the real concerns of employers, businesses, and local politicians.

Their professional advice to one another is that the public just doesn't understand their mathematics, which implicitly represent the inevitable hand of modernity and an improvement in the quality of life (neither of which they have a mathematics to measure). They view us not as citizens, but only as "motorists" - as if an automobile were a pre-requisite for citizenship.

Mission Road in Lincoln Heights: four, wide, lanes of auto travel and this is what the sidewalk on Mission leading to Lincoln Park looks like.

Generally, traffic engineers look down upon the necessary functions of the city: commerce and a civil life. They view these things as impediments to the world of their diagrams and drawings of high car speeds and uninterrupted travel over great distances.

The only real way around this, that I see, is to make traffic engineers follow Damien's suggestions by using direct political action. Damien suggests the following alternative "Lessons Every Transportation Engineer Needs to Learn":

Lesson 1: There are ways to move people that don't involve cars.
Lesson 2: Transportation projects should enhance the community character, not destroy it
Lesson 3: Environmental studies are part of the process of deciding how to proceed. Not something that should be rushed or subject to politics.
Lesson 4: Community plans are important guidelines in designing a road project. Don't ignore them
Lesson 5: Listen to the people that live and commute in the study area. Projects get completed faster if there isn't a judge involved

The direct political action I leave to you, dear reader. I'm working on a few things myself (locally, of course, and on a limited budget).