Bicycle! Bicycle!

EoA back on the set

Did you know that the LA Department of Transit has a bikeways department?
There are over 3,000 bicycle racks owned by the city that needs maintenance and miles and miles of bike paths that need to be kept in top condition. And this year, the bikeways deparment is working on a draft of the Los Angeles Bicycle Master Plan. The Plan, once completed, should direct the development of bike lanes throughout the city of Los Angeles for the foreseeable future. If you really feel like reading all 212 pages of it, here you go. It's quite a monster, but that's to be expected with a city as large and as complicated as LA.

Now, there's been some real outcry from the bicycle community in LA about the plan. You can read here, here, here, and here about the plan. The long and short of it (for my lazy readers) is that many bike advocates feel like the plan is doing far too little for the bicycling community. There aren't enough bike lanes, and the most bike routes on the map are sharrows rather than lanes.
Now! This isn't to tweak the nose of the LA bicycle community (well okay, maybe a little - but I'm a bike rider too, so I feel like I can get away with these things), but rather to encourage them to take a more realistic view. If I may, I'd like to point them to the example of Oakland.

that's a whole lotta dotted lines....

Oakland passed their bicycle master plan back in 2007, and while there are a *ton* of bicycle advocacy groups in the area, and far more public and political good will towards bicyclists than in Los Angeles, Oakland has been only able to make the smallest of dents in their overall bicycle master plan. Some sections won't see the light of day until our state and local budget crises pass. And if a city like Oakland is only meeting small success, what about a city like Los Angeles?

Los Angeles is currently running a $1 million a day deficit in their city budget. If you're looking for the city to spring for improvements in bicycle lanes, look again. That means the city will have to look elsewhere when trying to get the funding for new lanes and sharrows. In our current economic situation, there aren't many places to look. A master plan that has feasible goals is far better than a visionary document that no one can implement: That risks losing credibility. Let's keep chipping away at the enormous monolith that is car culture and we'll start to get somewhere. If you try to make everything happen right now, you risk squandering what public and political goodwill you have.

I've always envisioned a city where cars aren't necessary. A place where you can walk to stores that would fulfill your daily needs; A place with vibrant, dense neighborhoods that have adequate open space and a lively street scene. But that vision doesn't just drop out of the sky into your lap. We've got to make it happen ourselves, little bit by little bit. If you want to do your little bit, here's a list of all the public meetings LADOT is going to have for their bicycle master plan:

Harbor Area
Date: Thursday, October 22, 2009
Location: Peck Park
Address: 560 North Western Avenue, San Pedro, CA 90732
Time: 5:00pm-7:00pm

Central/South Los Angeles
Date: Saturday, October 24, 2009
Location: Exposition Park - Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune Regional Library
Address: 3900 S. Western Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90062
Time: 10:00am-12:00pm

San Fernando Valley
Date: Monday, October 26, 2009
Location: Marvin Braude-San Fernando Valley Constituent Services Center,
Conference Room 1B
Address: 6262 Van Nuys Blvd, Van Nuys, CA 91401
Time: 5:00pm-7:00pm

West Los Angeles
Date: Wednesday October 28, 2009
Location: Felicia Mahood Multi Purpose Center
Address: 11338 Santa Monica Blvd Los Angeles, CA 90037
Time: 5:00pm-7:00pm

Northeast Los Angeles
Date: Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Location: Ramona Hall
Address: 4580 N Figueroa Street, Los Angeles, CA 90042
Time: 6:00pm-8:00pm

And if you've stuck around until the end of this here post, well I've got a present for you.