To steal from Hamlet, something is rotten in the state of Los Angeles.
Or so it seems, anyway, as Mayor Karen Bass belatedly released her Capital Infrastructure Plan after more than three years in office. Something she should have done on Day One.
At first glance, it doesn’t seem to pass the smell test, to mix metaphors.
Not only because it reads like a plan to develop a plan, but because it has to be read in the context of an unpopular mayor running for re-election.
If you read the press release, you’ll see a handful of city council members falling all over themselves to praise Bass and the CIP; notably absent is Councilmember Nithya Raman, one of the mayor’s primary opponents.
And you have to wonder if this plan has only been released at this late date because Raman has developed her own plan.
According to the press release,
Mayor Bass’ Capital Infrastructure Program lays out a comprehensive roadmap for L.A. to reform and improve the way it maintains and builds new infrastructure, including 10 recommendations to achieve this vision by reforming City processes and the Charter. Greater transparency is also achieved by laying out a data-based foundation regarding how and where the City must address short and long-term infrastructure needs.
Included in the program are 29 Olympic and Paralympic legacy capital projects that will both prepare the City for 2028 and leave lasting investments for communities across L.A. 16 of these capital projects are currently funded in Mayor Bass’ proposed FY 26-27 budget. Working alongside the City Council, the Mayor’s Office will seek to advance the reforms in the Capital Infrastructure Program and begin the long-term funding and planning for the proposed capital projects.
For years, advocates have called for simplifying LA’s overly complicated infrastructure process by removing the silos separating LADOT, Streets Services and the Bureau of Engineering and combining them into a single department.
Instead, the mayor’s plan calls for greater cooperation between those silos, while creating an additional layer of bureaucracy by strengthening the Capital Planning Steering Committee, giving the Bureau of Engineering responsibility for creating the CIP, and establishing a new Director of Public Works.
It also calls for prioritizing projects for the ’28 Los Angeles Olympics, rather than, you know, resurfacing streets and filling potholes.
Never mind building bus and bike lanes for the people who already live here. And if there’s any mention of complying with Measure HLA, as mandated by the city’s voters, I didn’t find it.
I’m also not thrilled by this line, which places blame on the public, rather than the people we elect to actually do the hard things:
Angelenos do not have a clear understanding of what can realistically be funded and when, nor the city’s long-term priorities beyond those of a given year.
Never mind that Bass doesn’t seem to have any problem approving unfunded pay raises for cops and other city employees. But the public clearly seems to be expecting too damn much.
Although Bass and her staff at least seem to have a reasonable grasp of the problems.
The city’s current capital planning process is falling short:
- Fragmented systems and data silos
- No shared vision across city departments
- Growing maintenance deferrals
- Slow, inefficient capital planning
- No capital project intake standards
- Limited project scoring and prioritization
- Highly decentralized and uncoordinated grants
- Limited analytical capacity and predictive modeling
- Resource planning and staffing misalignment
- An opaque capital planning process
- A growing need to quantify infrastructure needs
Missing from this list is the city’s endless series of public meetings before anything ever gets built, which stretches a process that could, and should, take months into years.
Many, many years, in some cases.
So this may be a good start. And it may even be an improvement over our current failed system.
But it’s about three years too late.
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Speaking of Nithya Raman, her office announced the city is finally moving forward with the long-discussed Forest Lawn Drive Safety and Mobility Project, including what passes for protected bike lanes in the City of LA.
And yes, this should be seen in light of the mayor’s race, as well.
As should any pronouncements by anyone running for mayor for the next six months.
………
He gets it.
A writer for a Minnesota transportation advocacy site visits Orange County on a Costco packaged travel deal, and is suitably appalled by what he found.
Car dependency is a modern California birthright. It is very common to drive on avenues with 10 or more lanes and speed limits of 60 miles per hour. To be clear, that is an avenue with periodic traffic light intersections with five lanes in each direction and more turn lanes at intersections. The speed limits in Orange County were usually about 10 miles per hour higher than what would be expected in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area.
There were a small number of bicyclists. They typically were enthusiast athletes along Pacific Coast Highway and residents who cannot drive, like teenagers on a bike going to school. I felt sick for how dangerous the intersections were for these children. I also saw a family with a stroller crossing an unmarked intersection, and stopped my car to let them cross the street. Bike lanes are typically one line of paint and sometimes green paint at intersections. I did not see a single protected bike lane with any level of plastic bollard or curb protection. There were, however some multi-use paths in more recreational park areas. Practical cyclists — like the teenagers — typically rode on the sidewalk.
To be honest, it’s kind of pitiful and humbling, if not humiliating, the way people from other places see us.
Especially when they actually do.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
No bias here. A San Diego driver, writing for what may be the city’s least bike-friendly local publication, blames bicycling deaths on “high-risk biking practices, like running stop signs and stoplights,” complaining that she’s never seen a campaign for bicyclists that on focuses putting safety first — except, of course, for the bike safety courses she mentions in her penultimate paragraph, which do exactly that. Never mind all those studies showing that the Idaho stop improves safety. Or that drivers are at fault in many, if not most, bicycling deaths.
No bias here, either. The only Member of Parliament representing the extreme right Restore Britain party complains about “central planning lunacy” resulting in a “very rarely used” used bike lane, saying “I declare bicyclists a very rare breed here.” Although with attitudes like that, it’s no wonder.
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Local
Metro looks at what passes for Bike Month in Los Angeles these days, where no one really seems to give a damn anymore.
WeHo celebrates Bike Month, even if Los Angeles barely does.
Streetsblog’s Joe Linton offers a bike-friendly report card on Los Angeles-area roundabouts, giving high marks to Santa Monica, good to Long Beach, West Hollywood and Culver City, and passing — or C — to Beverly Hills and Los Angeles. Which seems too high for one of the latter two, and too low for the other. I’ll let you decide which I mean.
Pasadena will host a beginner-friendly, six-mile Bagel Ride aimed at building confidence and carbs for city this Saturday. You can tell it’s for beginners because most experienced bicyclists won’t get out of bed unless you promise them a long ride, or donuts.
Canyon News highlights Bike Month events on the gilded streets of Beverly Hills.
The Signal Tribune provides a non-paywalled look at Long Beach Bike Month events.
Despite all the city’s safety improvements, traffic deaths in Long Beach hit the highest level in a decade, with 53 people killed as a result of traffic violence.
State
Calbike invited advocates, community leaders, bike coalition staff, riders, parents and local organizers to meet with state legislators and staffers last month for the organization’s Lobby Day. Contrary to common assumptions, they don’t actually call it that because most legislators won’t let us past the lobby.
Speaking of Calbike, they announced a handful of endorsements in state legislative races in Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego Counties. Although I’d really like to see them weigh in on the confounding governor’s race.
San Diego can look forward to more ghost bikes and more pedestrian deaths, after the mayor’s new city budget eliminates the team of traffic engineers focused on improving safety.
Leaders of the century-old Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic Church in San Diego’s Little Italy neighborhood say newly installed bike lanes are limiting access to the church, while making it more dangerous for older parishioners, and forcing them to unload caskets in the middle of the street. Never mind that it’s on a corner, with a side street that dead-ends three blocks away when people could be dropped off, living or otherwise.
A kindhearted Fresno detective worked with police cadets to get a new bicycle for a local boy whose bike was stolen in a robbery, after seeing the brokenhearted look on the boy’s face when he learned that, even though an arrest had been made and his bike was recovered, he wouldn’t get it back because it was impounded as evidence.
As other bike industry events continue to shut down, Monterey’s Sea Otter Classic is rapidly becoming an international trade event.
Palo Alto will “experiment” with temporary, quick-build protected bike lanes. Because there are no studies showing whether protected bike lanes improve safety, apparently. Although I hear there’s a university in that town where they could look it up.
This is who we share the road with. Police in Oakland and San Francisco cooperated with the CHP to seize 77 dirt bikes and ATVs following a nearly hour-long street takeover in San Leandro, East Oakland, Berkeley and San Francisco, after trapping the riders on the Bay Bridge and cutting off any avenue for escape. Thanks to the cops for making clear the perps weren’t riding legal ped-assist ebikes.
The UC Davis student newspaper says students and community members are right to demand better bike safety.
National
Bike industry advocacy group PeopleForBikes considers what it will take to get kids riding to school again. Hint: Whatever it takes to make parents believe their kids will come back in one piece.
The Hawaii legislature approves plans for speed cams, while joining the parade of jurisdictions cracking down on ebikes.
A bike rider was badly injured in a collision yesterday next to Denver’s Washington Park, exactly where I used to ride on a near-daily basis when I lived in the city back in the Mesolithic period.
This is who we share the road with. A 56-year old woman in Waco, Texas — or maybe Wacko, in this case — faces DUI and attempted assault charges for driving on the sidewalk in a deliberate attempt to run down a young kid riding a dirt bike, then trying to break into a nearby house half an hour later.
A Detroit city worker crashed into a woman riding a bicycle while going the wrong way on a one-way street, waving her on when she stopped for him before lurching forward and running over her; a bystander was placed in handcuffs for trying to record the scene on his cellphone. For anyone unclear on the subject — including Detroit cops, evidently — you have a First Amendment right to record anything that happens in public, as long as you don’t actually interfere with the police. And no, standing several feet away and recording them is not interference.
Um, okay. A New York bike rider says he was intimidated by group rides until he developed “jalopy pace,” which is his way of describing a moderately paced ride with no one left behind. Don’t tell him those have been around for years. Just let him enjoy the moment.
The Pennsylvania teenager who killed a Swarthmore mathematics professor as he was riding in a bike lane last December, has been charged with “homicide by vehicle, driving without a license, DUI and related offenses” because he was high on cannabis and driving with just a learner’s permit. Something tells me he’s already failed his driver’s test.
Traffic deaths in Pennsylvania dropped to the lowest level since the state has been keeping records, although bicycling deaths were up nearly 50%.
Apparently, the animals are out to get us, too. A woman was injured while riding on a bike trail in Arlington, Virginia when a white-tailed deer crashed into her at full speed, knocking her off her bike and, appropriately, into a patch of deer-tongue grass.
How many times do we have to say it? If you’re riding your bike after dark while carrying meth and a pipe, put a damn light on it — something a Georgia man learned the hard way. And by the way, you don’t have to consent to a search of your body or belongings if you’re pulled over for a traffic stop.
That’s more like it. Prosecutors will recommend that a Florida woman has her license permanently revoked after pleading guilty to the hit-and-run death of a 67-year old man who was riding in a bike lane, as part of her sentencing next month.
A former Florida cop is on trial for the 2021 murder of a bike shop owner, who was fatally shot and set on fire, apparently for the crime of dating a woman the former cop had been involved with.
International
Momentum highlights the year’s best routes around the world for epic bikepacking trips, only one of which is in North America.
They get it. A Quebec coroner concluded that the lack of a bike lane on one of Montreal’s busiest streets contributed to the death of a woman who crashed her bike into a parked and fell into the traffic lane as she tried to avoid a truck coming up behind her, recommending that the city install one there.
The story of Tony Parsons, the man killed by a drunk driver during a Scottish charity ride, who then worked with his twin brother to hide his body for four years before confessing to his fiancee, is now being featured on Should I Marry a Muderer on Netflix.
A writer for the New York Times explores the lasting racial, social and economic legacy of apartheid on a short, ten-mile ride from Cape Town, South Africa to the fringes of the Langa township.
Competitive Cycling
NBC looks at plans for bicycling events at the ’28 Los Angeles Olympics.
The “only independent organization representing the views and interests of female professional riders” complains about UCI’s lack of progress in promoting women’s cycling, suggesting staging festivals around women’s races.
The Navajo Nation will host the annual Hashkéníinii Bike Road Race May 25th, with a course winding through the striking terrain surrounding Navajo Mountain in the Four Corners Region; the race commemorates the legendary Diné leader who guided the Naatsisaan, Paiute Mesa and Oljeto communities during the Long Walk period of the 1860s.
Finally…
Your next bicycle could be powered by hydraulics. Or maybe it could be a LEGO.
And your next bicycle built for two could be a banana.
On orange slices, no less.
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Oh, and fuck Putin.
