Archive for April 7, 2010

So you say you want a revolution? Introducing the League of Bicycling Voters LA

Save the date — the politics of local cycling will change forever Saturday, May 15, on the UCLA campus.

Love her or hate her, LADOT Bikeways Coordinator Michelle Mowery got it right.

Appearing as part of the panel for An Evening With David Byrne last October, Mowery said that if we wanted to see any improvements in L.A. bicycling, it was going to take technical support, funding, and most of all, the political will to make changes.

A will that has been sadly lacking, both here in Los Angeles and in countless communities through the county — with one or two notable exceptions.

That changes now.

Because today marks the official unveiling of the League of Bicycling Voters LA.

An organization of bicyclists, by bicyclists and for bicyclists, dedicated to influencing the political process to ensure the election of politicians who will support cycling in every nook and cranny of L.A. County. And holding their feet to the fire to ensure they keep their promises and maintain their support long after the election is over.

The idea comes from the League of Bicycling Voters in Austin, TX, which had its genesis in a successful campaign to repeal Austin’s 1996 mandatory helmet law. Then when the city reconsidered the law a few years later, the League was born.

Not only did they defeat the helmet law once again, they’ve continued to play an active role in influencing the political process through volunteer work, hosting political forums and promoting a massive turnout at political rallies. They’ve also become one of the city’s most highly sought-after endorsements, resulting in the election of their full slate of bike-friendly candidates in the last election.

But that doesn’t mean we’re going to be their clone, either.

Exactly what this group turns out to be is up to you. At this point, nothing is set in stone. Not the bylaws, not the dues, not the officers or Board of Directors.

Not even the name. Although I like it.

In fact, still to be determined is whether this will take the form of a 501(c)4 — which would allow us to take part in political activity and endorse candidates, like the Austin group or the new Bikeside LA. Or whether it will be a registered as a Political Action Committee, which would let us raise and spend an unlimited amount money to support a candidate or proposition.

Or both.

It would have been easy to make those decisions myself, or together with Dr. Michael Cahn and Josef Bray-Ali, who’ve done as much or more than I have over the last few weeks to get this off the ground.

But one of the first decisions we made was that this should be a very democratic process. And it should be up to you, and everyone else who joins in, to decide exactly what form this takes and who should be elected to lead it.

There’s not even a guarantee that the three of us will have any role to play once the group is formed, except as voting members.

As for the Board of Directors, one of the smartest decisions the Austin League of Bicycling Voters made was to include a representative from each of the area’s leading bike organizations on the board, to ensure that it represented the broadest possible spectrum of cyclists.

So we’ll be reaching out to as many of the leading local biking groups as possible over the next few weeks, asking each one to nominate one or more of their members to serve on the board — from LaGrange and the Wheelmen, to the Ridazz, C.I.C.L.E., Bikeside and the LACBC. And just about everyone in between, from every possible corner of the county.

And if we don’t reach out to your group, feel free to reach out to us.

Meanwhile, we want to hear your ideas. We’ve set up a Google group where you can sign up for the interest group and freely share your thoughts on any part of this process.

Then we’ve reserved an auditorium on the UCLA campus for the morning of Saturday, May 15th, where we’re going to start making some of these decisions.

And yes, you’re invited.

Right now, the only requirements are that you live or work in Los Angeles County and ride a bike. We might even waive the last one if you can convince us that you support cycling and have something to contribute.

We’ve already seen what one person, working alone, can do to influence an election.

Now it’s time to find out what we all can do, working together.

Visit the League of Bicycling Voters LA at our new website at http://www.bikevotela.org and on our Facebook page. And sign up for the interest group at http://groups.google.com/group/bikevotela.

Reporting dangerous drivers online — Philadelphia, London and coming soon, L.A.

We’ve all been there.

And if you haven’t yet, just keep riding and you will.

Sooner or later, some driver will take offense at how you ride, where you position yourself in the lane or the simple fact that a bike is taking up space on his road.

So he’ll show his anger by buzzing you, passing way too close for comfort, or maybe making a sudden right-hook turn or braking directly in front of you, forcing you to jam on your brakes to avoid a collision. See Thompson, Dr. Chistopher.

Or maybe it’s just someone who doesn’t have the good sense to put down her cell phone, blowing through a stop sign just as you were about to enter the intersection.

Whether it’s your skills or the fact that the driver has just enough sense and ability to avoid a collision, you escape unscathed but shaken. And mad as hell, wishing there was something you could do about it.

Even if you did call the police, the driver would be long gone before they could respond, or off the phone, or just deny everything. Or the police would tell you that they have to witness the infraction before they can do anything.

Which means you’re on your own and SOL.

That should be changing soon.

While the police may not be able to do something about a specific incident, they can do something about the larger trends, like policing intersections where cyclists frequently encounter problems or stationing officers along a stretch of roadway where drivers refuse to play nice.

The problem is making them aware of these issues.

Philadelphia police, working in conjunction with the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, have addressed that by developing an online system that allows cyclists to report hazards, harassment, crashes and blocked bike lanes.

Locally, the LACBC recently forwarded a list of the city’s most dangerous intersections to the police as part of their work with the LAPD Bike Task Force, enabling officers to examine them and determine if the problem can be resolved through roadwork, better signage or tougher enforcement.

Meanwhile, Bikeside has worked with the LAPD, as part of that same task force, to develop an interactive map that combines police collision data with a system to report near misses, collisions, harassment and bike thefts. It not only gives you a way to report incidents you’ve experienced, but allows you to search for dangerous areas you might want to avoid or at least use a little more caution when you roll through.

As they say, forewarned is forearmed. Not that I’d recommend carrying weapons on your bike, as tempting as that might seem sometimes.

You’ll find a similar system for reporting crashes, hazards and thefts — without the integrated police data — at Bikewise.org.

And the LAPD is working with the Bike Task Force to develop an interactive system similar to the one in Philadelphia, which should be online later this year.

Now comes word that the London Metropolitan Police have developed an online system allowing anyone to report dangerous drivers and unsafe conditions. But it goes further by asking people to report uninsured or unlicensed drivers, as well as people who make a habit of drinking and driving.

Around here, it would also have to include a way to report drivers who consistently phone or text behind the wheel.

But if there’s any question whether their system works, consider this.

After a London driver honked, swore and swerved his car at a cyclist, the rider reported the incident on the Roadsafe London website. The police followed up by contacting the employer, which prompted the company to review their tapes from the car’s on-vehicle cam.

And then they promptly fired the driver.

Even if you use an online system to report an incident, you should still report crimes to the police by calling 911 for emergencies, or 1-877-ASK-LAPD (1-877-275-5273) for non-emergencies — and yes, you should have that programmed into your cell phone. And if there’s any question whether you should report an incident to the police, call them and let them figure it out.

………

After coming in for harsh criticism from Dr. Alex, LACBC explains the facts behind their recent grants, and how they intend to work with the South Bay Bicycle Coalition to develop an integrated bike plan for the South Bay area.

And yes, the work will be done by professionals with training and experience in the field, despite what you may have heard.

………

Thanks to Green LA Girl for the reminder about Thursday’s Bike Night at the Hammer, and the first ever Streetsblog Fundraiser this Friday at Eco-Village; Damien says admission to the Streetsblog event is a suggested donation, and no one will be turned away due to empty pockets.

And check out Bikeway Central, a new compendium of nationwide bikeway maps, information and advocacy organizations.

………

Meet Congressional candidate Marcy Winograd when she speaks at Bikerowave on Wednesday. The L.A. Chapter of the American Institute of Architects endorses the 4th St. Bike Boulevard. Santa Monica unveils its draft Land Use and Circulation Element Wednesday; Gary explains why this matters to cyclists. A Claremont cyclist says an effective traffic signal button would work even better with a green bike box; I seriously want his banner art. Better directional bike signage is popping in Long Beach, even if they misdirect sometimes. The California Bicycle Museum is merging with the U.S. Bicycle Hall of Fame; bet you didn’t know either one existed. A Colorado Springs cyclist faces down a gun in a road rage incident. The bikefication of New York continues, with upcomming green bike lanes leading from the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges. It’s spring, when a rider’s fancy turns to riding rough roads. How to pass a horse when you’re on a bike; that’s not a problem we have too often around here. EcoVelo offers a pretty picture from a springtime commute. I understand getting hit by a car, but how does a cyclist get hit by a train? Miami police investigate the outgoing mayor for corruption after he accepted a $321 bike from his staff, while Miami cyclists get tickets for doing exactly what the city encourages. In more Miami news, yes, that is Jamie Foxx on a bike. A little further north, drivers are an increasing danger to Jacksonville cyclists and pedestrians. Austin’s planned bike boulevard shrinks. A Vancouver cyclist struggles to reclaim his life nine years after an excruciating collision, while an Edmonton cyclist collars a firebug. A New Zealand truck driver is charged with killing a German tourist just three days after she wrote about the dangers of Kiwi truckers, while the family of a Christchurch cyclist says there was nothing she could have done to avoid a fatal collision. A London cyclist faces charges of involuntary manslaughter by recklessness and negligence after a fatal collision with a pedestrian. We Yanks might call it something else, but all cyclists seem to face that Oh Sod It, Just Carry On moment.

Finally, a Holland, Michigan cyclist looks at the bike path from the mindset of an impatient driver; some of the commenters don’t seem to get the joke.

Whose bike movement is it, anyway?

I confess.

I didn’t have a thing to do with the recent incident in which a cyclist was hit by a Metro bus and Metro appeared to go into damage control mode.

I didn’t ride to Metro headquarters to protest. I didn’t make a single call. In fact, I wouldn’t even have known about it if Stephen Box hadn’t written about it. Does that make me a bad bike activist?

Evidently, some people think so.

I received an email recently taking me to task for just such a perceived failure, in which I had left a long-forgotten comment on a Streetsblog post last year suggesting that a rider contact the then-LAPD point person for the cycling community. Apparently, what I should have done, as this person saw it, was drop everything and march down to police headquarters to demand a full investigation.

That, the writer pointed out, is what Stephen would have done, as evidenced by the days and nights he put in at Metro headquarters arguing the cause of the afore-mentioned cyclist. And fighting for a resolution that would have ensured a different result from this day forward.

I’m the first to admit I’m no Stephen Box.

Then again, I never claimed to be.

What he does is, simply put, amazing. With the possible exception of L.A. Creek Freak and C.I.C.L.E. meister Joe Linton, no one has done more to represent riders or change the face of cycling in this city.

But it’s not what I do. And quite frankly, not what I want to do.

No offense.

Does that mean that I don’t have anything to contribute? Of course not.

I used to feel bad that I couldn’t spend more time on the front lines of the bicycling movement. But as Alex Thompson pointed out awhile back, during the French Revolution, some people manned the barricades while others wrote the pamphlets justifying their cause and calling the sans-culottes to arms.

And both, he said, played a vital role in the revolution.

I can live with that.

I write a blog. When time allows or various issues demand, I also attend meetings of the City Council, the Transportation Committee, the LAPD Bike Task Force, the Bicycle Advisory Committee — though that last one has, unfortunately, fallen by the wayside lately.

More meetings than I have time for, actually. If you don’t believe me, just ask my wife.

Then there was my recent decision to join the board of the LACBC, not because I agree with everything they’ve done in the past, but because I like the direction they’ve been moving over the past few years. And they convinced me that they’re sincere in wanting to become a more politically active organization, and reclaim the lead role in making L.A. a more bike-friendly city — even if we have to drag it there kicking and screaming every inch of the way.

I can live with that, too.

It’s not just me, either. There are countless people, here in L.A., throughout this state and around the country who do as much, or more, than I do. Sometimes a lot more.

There are also those who do less. But they still often find themselves doing as much, or more, than they can legitimately justify to advance the cause of cycling. And they have as much to contribute as anyone else.

And that’s the point of all this.

Because it’s not what I do, or what Stephen does, or Alex, or Joe, or the LACBC, BAC or C.I.C.L.E. Or any other single person, group or organization.

It’s what all of us, working together or separately in a thousand different directions, can do to make the streets safer and more hospitable for cyclists everywhere. Even if all you do is ride a bike when you could have gone another way.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a racer, a recreational rider or a commuter, whether you ride a bakfiet, a mountain bike, a path racer, a singlespeed, beach cruiser or a carbon fiber miracle of modern science.

We all have a part to play, in our own way.

And the only way we’ll ever fail is if we start working against each other, instead of together.

Whatever you do may seem insignificant, but it is most important that you do it. — Mohandas K. Gandhi

………

The map of the day could save your life, or at least help make things a little safer around here. When a guy hoots at a girl on a bike, how exactly does he want her to react? (And yes, this a new blog I’ll be watching.) A visit to the new Long Beach bike co-op. A new bike builder rolls out in the City by the Bay. San Diego’s killer bike lane is scheduled for resurfacing. This ain’t no tour — four women will ride from Oceanside to Durango, CO. Trek sponsors their new C3 Project freeride and slopestyle team. Parking perpendicular on a bike lane, and the police don’t care. Great story about an 87-year old 21-speed riding Denver cyclist. New Jersey moves to protect pedestrians from drivers, now if they’ll just protect cyclists from deer. A Mississippi town considers a mandatory helmet law. In a bit of good news, the cycling professor critically injured in my home town is improving. Proposing a weekly bring a friend along on your bike commute day. A Colorado cyclist is injured by a hit-and-run Acord; not the car, the driver. Sixty days for killing a cyclist and fleeing the scene in Kansas. Drivers who look but don’t see; boy, do I know that story. Why don’t more women ride? Ontario children will benefit from the Toronto bike dealer who stocked his inventory by stealing bikes — and wants them back. A British woman apologizes after she’s hit by a cyclist on the sidewalk.

Finally, LAist talks with the Department of DIY, the group behind the city’s most effective bike signage campaign in, like, ever. And rumor has it there’s more to come.

Open Source bike mapping; ranking the top US and UK bike-friendly cities

Following up on last week’s post on mapping whether the L.A. areas bikeways actually exist in ridable condition, Tony writes in with a suggestion on how we could accomplish that on a DIY basis.

Have you thought of using the OpenStreetMap based OpenCycleMap and getting everyone to contribute their local data to build a map collectively as a community project? It looks like someone has already put in a few cycle paths and lanes for LA. (Ed. note: enter Los Angeles CA in the search window at lower left to get a usable map)

Scoot the map over to the UK to see what a cycling community working together can produce.

You can even make route planners from it such as this one from the Cambridge Cycling Campaign

I have to admit, that London map looks pretty damned impressive. And while I haven’t tried it yet, the route planner couldn’t work any worse than Google’s new bike route feature does right now.

………

Bicycling Magazine names its Top 50 Bike-Friendly Cities; the only SoCal city to make the list is Long Beach, at #23. Oddly, Portland is only #2, behind Minneapolis. The rest of the top 10 include Boulder CO at #3, followed by Seattle, Eugene OR, San Francisco, Madison WI, Janette Sadik-Khan’s New York, Tucson AZ, and Chicago.

Meanwhile, Bristol tops the UK’s list of top 20 bike-friendly cities, while Belfast lags behind at #12. London, which has recently seen a rash of biking deaths, lags even farther behind at #17, but at least they beat Glascow.

………

GOOD says well done whoever you are, for L.A.’s latest DIY bike signs. L.A. can’t seem to keep a dangerous pothole on the proposed 4th Street Bike Boulevard paved despite several crashes. LADOT says where you park your bike and what you lock it to matters. A Palm Desert driver says local cyclists area a danger to themselves; oddly, most cyclists tend to think that cars and trucks are the real danger.

Green LA Girl visits the newly bike and pedestrian – friendly plazas on New York’s Great White Way. A Washington city suggests a $25 per car fee to pay for sidewalks and bike lanes. A fire hydrant in the middle of a bike path seems like a problem. On a twist on bike sharing, low-income Minneapolis residents will soon be able to borrow a bike on long-term loan. A 17-year old Albany cyclist suffers minor injuries in an apparently intentional vehicular assault. This Wednesday marks the beginning of Circle Zydeco, a four-day tour through the Cajun food, music and bayous of Louisiana’s Acadiana region. Is the new belt-drive Trek District Carbon the ultimate road-going singlespeed?

Fabian Cancellara leaves Boonen — and Lance — in his wake to win the Tour of Flanders. Riding through parts of Cape Town is like driving through a war zone. Cardiff, Wales explains why they spent the equivalent of $3,000 to paint an 8 foot bike lane. A London newspaper catches a fourth Conservative politician breaking bike laws. In a rare attack of common sense following the death of a cyclist, a British county considers banning the large trucks that can kill people, rather than their potential victims bikes, who don’t. An Irish cyclist is killed by his own stalled car in a bizarre collision as he rode back to restart it. An Aussie cyclist rescues the driver of a sinking car from drowning. An Australian woman is seriously injured in an intentional assault after two men push her off her bike from a passing car, while a Chamber of Commerce group pushes for cyclist licensing and registration; frankly, it doesn’t sound like the riders are the problem.

Finally, a cyclist riding home from work through Boyle Heights witnesses the Crucifixion. Yes, that one.

Do L.A’s bikeways exist where they’re supposed to — and are they actually ridable?

Some of the most interesting ideas pop up in my inbox.

Those broken lines mean dodging traffic once the bike lane ends.

For instance, a rider named Noah emailed me last month asking about the stop and start nature of the city’s bike lanes — something virtually every rider in the city has complained at one time or another.

I wanted to raise a quick issue about bike lanes.  The city has a document online that purports to inventory Bike Plan Designated Class II bike lanes — I am not sure if this is the 1996 plan, if it is an inventory of proposed bike lanes or what it is .  . . but I used it to plot a route home on Monday and did not find bike lanes where I had hoped (based on the list) to find them.  For example, the document lists a lane on Devonshire from Topanga Canyon to Woodman — there was some bike lane in that area, but it was not continuous, and I was forced to ride in traffic (on a heavily traveled street) for part of the ride.  Same thing on Woodman itself, and on Laurel Canyon — a lane is listed from Roscoe to Moorpark . . .  Perhaps I am reading this wrong, perhaps these are planned lanes, but if these are supposed to be existing lanes (and if the claim is that we don’t need more lanes because we already have all these wonderful lanes) then someone (LACBC? volunteers through your blog?) should go an do an independent audit of the actual existing lanes in LA . . .

Part of the problem stems from turning to the wrong source for information. Which is actually easy to do, since searching for online biking information in Los Angeles can be a confusing process, leading to as many wrong turns and dead ends as the routes themselves.

A better source for planning a route is Metro’s L.A. bike map, which — unlike LADOT’s map, which seems to assume you do all your riding within the city of Los Angeles — crosses city limit lines to show a complete picture of local Class I, Class II and the generally useless and often dangerous Class III routes.

But don’t be surprised if your browser crashes; you’re better off downloading it to your desktop and using your pdf software to view it.

A quick look confirms that the route Noah used stops and starts without offering any alternative other than dumping the rider into often heavy traffic on busy Valley boulevards.

Someone who’s comfortable taking the lane in traffic might not think twice about it — though there’s no guarantee that the drivers you’re sharing the road with would understand the concept. And someone who knows the local area might use an alternative route to bypass the areas that lack the magical few inches of paint that are somehow supposed to create a virtually impermeable barrier to vehicular traffic.

Not that some drivers understand that, either.

But even if you map out your complete route using the best maps available — or try plotting your way with Google’s promising but buggy biking directions — it won’t tell you anything about traffic conditions, signalization or what hills you might face along your way. And if you knew those things, you wouldn’t need a map to begin with.

So you plot out the best route you can plan, only to end up dodging buses or riding jackhammer streets that jostle your internal organs to the point that you fear a kidney or bowel could pop loose any moment.

And those are the good streets.

Then there are others where the bike lanes and paths are so cracked and broken as to be virtually unridable on a skinny-tired bike. Or barely even exist anymore.

Of course, the obvious solution would be to require that LADOT and similar transportation departments in other cities ride these routes on a regular basis to monitor the conditions riders face. And report back for anything that needs repair or improvement.

But with the current budget issues, and the 40% cut in staffing that LADOT’s Bikeways department has reportedly suffered, that’s just not going to happen. Even if it did somehow manage to make their radar.

So as Noah suggested, it’s up to us.

We ride these streets everyday. No one has a better idea whether a line on a map actually translates to a ridable bikeway. Or if it actually exists in what passes for the real world around these parts.

I’ve suggested some sort of bikeway survey as a project the LACBC might want to take on, and I’ll bring it up again as time goes on — maybe in conjunction with the deep pockets at the newly bike-friendly Metro. Maybe it’s a project L.A.’s Bicycle Advisory Committee might want to consider. Or it could be something Bikeside might do as a natural outgrowth of their current efforts to map collisions, near misses and harassment — after all, those are places you might want to avoid, as well.

Or just email me — biking in la at hotmail dot com — and I’ll track things on my own until we have a better system for it.

And I’ll mention the worst areas on here, so you can plan a route to avoid them.

Because if we don’t do it, it’s pretty clear no one else will.

You can find links to most of the area’s bike maps on at the LADOT and LACBC (scroll down) websites. And thanks for the reminder from Timur that you find some fully vetted bike routes on his excellent, though recently neglected site; other local cyclist-designed routes are available at MapMyRide.

And after wishing everyone a happy Passover the other day, how could I have forgotten to wish the rest of you a happy Easter? Whatever you believe, best wishes this weekend. And for those of you with children, do not — repeat, do not — eat the ears off their chocolate bunnies.

That’s just so wrong.

………

Oddly, when I take a day off to attend to other matters — like earning a living, for instance — the stories still keep coming. So settle in for a long list o’links.

………

A San Francisco cop in an unmarked police car threatens a cyclist, saying “Shut your fucking mouth or I’ll knock you off your bike.” Meanwhile, a New York cyclist gets doored — which is against the law in New York, just like it is here — and police respond by ticketing the cyclist for not having a bell and wheel reflectors.

………

One of L.A.’s best biking routes reopens after repairs due to rain damage. Dr. Alex rips LADOT’s new bike blog, and suggest that Bikeways Coordinator Michelle Mowery fall on her sword. Will offers an exceptionally artistic photo of his bike, ad look who rolls through a stop into the path of his unblinking bike cam.  A Santa Monica writer and actor says the city could do a lot more to promote cycling. A Downtown street gets a mini-road diet, but oddly, no bike lanes. Gary argues that cyclists spend a lot of money in Santa Monica, so where is our bike parking? L.A.’s Anonymous Cyclist offers the story of a biking detention at LAX, and yes, one should bear yesterday’s date in mind. The 2.5 mile, LED-lit Elysian Valley Bike Path along the L.A. River Bike is coming soon, really. The Mt. Wilson Bicycling Association will hold its 21st annual Save the Trails pancake breakfast on Sunday, April 25th. Don’t forget Bike Night at the Hammer — featuring Pee Wee’s Big Adventure — April 8th. GOOD offers a video look at the Wolfpack Hustle’s roll through the L.A. Marathon course.

The California Bike Coalition pushes a vulnerable user law to protect all at risk road users. Mark Cavendish decides to break in his new dental work on the Tour of California, rather than the tougher Giro. NPR finds a grave problem with Google Bike Maps, literally. Is a bike a toy or a vehicle — or a device, as it’s defined here. Streetfilms looks at DC’s first Contraflow Cycle Track, while Portland releases a video explaining cycle tracks and buffered bike lanes. Consider the Better World Club sort of an auto club for bikes. Five cyclists win a $97,751 settlement in a 2007 New York Critical Mass excessive force and wrongful arrest case in which the arresting officer was caught lying under oath. Portland cyclists are asked to help get a road rage victim back on a bike. The New York Times asks what is bike culture? A Brooklyn cyclist cited for riding outside the bike lane in a police sting fought the law, and for once, the law didn’t win. A Holland, Michigan driver encounters a cyclist riding in the center of the lane on a multi-lane road “going about 5 mph” in a 45 mile zone, and despite honking several times, the bastard just wouldn’t get out of his way. Florida cyclists threaten legal action if bike lanes aren’t included in a major resurfacing project.

A team of Brit rowers teams up to compete in this year’s RAAM. A Royal Mail carrier says please don’t take my bike away. Constables charge a Leicestershire cyclist with murder following the death of a cyclist this week; British press restrictions mean no explanation for why he was charged. Get your bespoke Tweed Ride togs here. Finally, a bike lane even shorter than the one in Westwood.

Finally, take your pick:

1) A Team Sky cyclist lost the lead in the Tour of Oman due to a bizarre pre-planned pee experiment. 2) London’s biking mayor chases down a driver who threw something at his head; oddly, the press reports it as litter rather than an assault, while the driver responded, “Please Mr. Boris sir, this wasn’t meant to happen. We know you is the Mayor, man.” 3) Pearl Izumi tests their new chamois on Uranus.