Tag Archive for LA Metro

Talk bikes with Metro, and bike plan outreach with the County BAC

February 9, 2010 / / 3 comments

This is starting to get ridiculous.

After all these years of being ignored, suddenly everyone wants to talk bikes. From the Council and police, to the L.A. Times, which just can’t seem to get enough of us.

I feel like the latest Hollywood starlet du jour. Last year, we couldn’t get arrested in this town; although some of us came close. Now we’re having scripts thrust in our face, chased by paparazzi and rumored to be dating every up-and-comer and semi-has-been this side of the ‘Bu.

Latest in line is Metro, the friendly people who specialize in getting you from here to there by bus or rail.

As part of a planned series of Bicycle Roundtables, they’re inviting cyclists and other interested parties to sit down with them on Friday the 19th to “initiate a dialogue and identify issues of importance to cyclists.”

Not getting run off the road by buses would be a good start. Followed by allowing a few more bikes per train car than Noah did. Or would, anyway.

And how about not leaving cyclists on the side of the road at 4 in the morning?

This is your chance to voice your own opinion. But you have to RSVP by this Friday:

Metro is convening a series of Bicycle Roundtable meetings in 2010, and we welcome your participation! Doug Failing, Metro’s Executive Director of Highway Programs and Interim Chief Planning Officer, was active in the Caltrans Bicycle Advisory Committee. He will kick-off the first Metro Bicycle Roundtable meeting.

The purpose of the first meeting is to initiate a dialogue and identify issues of importance to cyclists in Los Angeles County. This will lead to a vision for enhancing Metro’s current program. The outcome of the first meeting will determine the frequency, next steps, and agendas of future meetings.

The first Metro Bicycle Roundtable meeting is scheduled for:

Friday, February 19, 2010

2:00 pm – 4:00 pm

Metro

One Gateway Plaza

Los Angeles, CA 90012

Windsor Conference Room, 15th Floor

Light refreshments will be served.

Sign-in and receive a visitor badge at the 3rd Floor security desk.

Please be on time. This meeting will start promptly at 2:00 pm.

Please RSVP by Friday, February 12, 2010 to Jennifer Gill at (213) 922-4224 or gillj@metro.net.

I’ve already made my reservation. Then again, I’m a sucker for free food.

And I promise I won’t be late.

Unless maybe my bus is.

Meanwhile, you’re also invited to the second meeting of the County Bicycle Advisory Committee on Wednesday the 17th to discuss preparations for the public meetings and outreach for the upcoming L.A. County bike plan:

This is to inform you that the next Bicycle Advisory Committee (BAC) meeting for the County’s Bikeway Master Plan (Plan) has been scheduled for Wednesday, February 17th.  The meeting details are as follows:

Time & Date: 02/17/2010;  7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

Location: Board Overflow Room (across from Cafeteria)

3rd Floor, Metro Headquarters

1 Gateway Plaza Los Angeles, CA 90012-2952

Contact: Abu Yusuf, ayusuf@dpw.lacounty.gov, (626) 458-3940

Directions: Click here for directions to the Metro Headquarters Building.

Purpose: The materials to be presented at the first round of community meetings and suggestions for improving the public outreach strategy for the Plan.  Please visit lacountybikeplan.org for more information on the Plan.  The final meeting agenda will be sent out by February 12th.  A draft agenda is included for your reference.  Please let us know if you have any recommendation for topics to discuss at the meeting by February 10th.

DRAFT Agenda

Bicycle Advisory Committee Meeting #2

County of Los Angeles Bicycle Master Plan

Board Overflow Room; 3rd Floor, Metro Headquarters;

1 Gateway Plaza Los Angeles, CA 90012-2952

February 17, 2010

7:00PM – 8:30pm

Introductions (5 min)

Minutes from January Meeting (15 min)

Public Workshop Schedule and Locations (20 minutes)

Workshop Format and Presentation Materials (20 minutes)

Outreach and Promotion of Workshops (20 minutes)

Next Steps (10 minutes)

And to top things off, the County also invites you to join them to discuss the Arroyo Seco Bike Trail:

Thank you for your continued support for the Arroyo Seco Bike Trail project.  This is to inform you that the first Arroyo Seco Bike Trail working group meeting has been scheduled for Thursday, February 18th.  The meeting details are as follows:

Time: 6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.

Location:  Los Angeles River Center and Gardens

Los Feliz Room

(323) 221-9939

570 West Avenue 26, Los Angeles, CA 90065

For a map click here

Purpose:  Discuss the progress to date and review the attached project concept report, including the project costs and trail alignment.

Maybe this really is the year of the bike.

………

Damien Newton continues his usual excellent work with an in-depth examination of the proposed Backbone Network, while the Times offers a summary of the comments. Stephen Box suggests L.A. should learn from Long Beach’s example. Will Campbell’s 8 Presidents Ride this weekend just happens to end near the first L.A. Street Food Fest, complete with bike valet. Coincidence? Meanwhile, Green LA Girl calls your attention to a beginner’s Mountain Bike Ride for happily single people on Valentines Day, and reminds us about the LACBC’s L.A. River Ride. Cynergy offers their latest lecture on cycling for health and performance Wednesday at 7p. A San Diego cyclist was killed trying to pass a city-owned dump truck on the right; seldom a good idea. Riverside considers an update to that city’s Bicycle Master Plan at tonight’s City Council meeting. Eight ways to stop killing cyclists in America. Does true democracy demand lower speed limits? A Wichita councilman says he doesn’t know anyone who bikes to work; a local blogger suggests he look out his City Hall window. An Austin physician pushing for a mandatory helmet law is undone by his own study, which shows helmets don’t make a difference — but drinking does. A London rider files a formal complaint against an abusive cabbie, and just hopes he doesn’t have a dog. Summer’s here and the time is right for riding in the streets — in New Zealand, anyway. Team New Zealand’s GM says bike racing is now as aerodynamic as Formula 1. Finally, it has nothing to do with bikes, but a group Oak Park high school students held a bake sale yesterday to raise money to help Boeing clean up the nuclear-contaminated Santa Susana Field Laboratory. They raised $99.31; Boeing reportedly declined to accept the donation.

Category: General / Tags: , , ,

The Dept. of Currently Infeasible vs. the Dept. of Just Get It Done.

July 16, 2009 / / One comment

The difficult, I’ll do right now; the impossible may take a little while.

— Crazy He Calls Me, by Carl Sigman and Sidney Keith Russell

A few years back, I was hired as advertising director for a company that made electronic musical and recording equipment.

Years of mismanagement had put the company in serious financial trouble. And I was given less than five months to hire and train an in-house creative team, develop a new marketing strategy to completely reposition the company, and create an ad campaign good enough to pull them from the brink of bankruptcy.

It wasn’t possible.

I knew it. They knew it. And I agreed to do it anyway.

After countless long hours, including working both Christmas and New Years Day, we got it to the printer just minutes before our final drop-dead deadline, and broke the new campaign on the eve of the most important trade show in the company’s history. Three days later, they left with over $6 million in new sales — nearly 75% of the total sales for the entire year before.

It wasn’t enough. Within a few weeks, the bank cut off funding, and the company’s assets were liquidated in bankruptcy court.

It may not have been my best work, but I am more proud of that than anything else I’ve ever done in my career. Because I refused to accept that it couldn’t be done. And got it done anyway.

Now compare that with the sad state of our local transportation authorities. At a time when this city desperately needs bold leadership to solve its transportation problems, we get excuses and endless delays.

Consider our nascent rail system.

Metro has methodically focused on building just one or two lines at a time, making painfully slow progress on a railway that is decades away from touching the lives of most Angelenos, unless their starting and ending points just happens to be near one of the lines. And they don’t mind going through Downtown to make their connections.

The planned routes that might, someday, turn it into a viable transit system won’t break ground for years — and many, such as the long-promised Subway to the Sea — aren’t even scheduled to be completed in my lifetime. Unless I happen to live a very long damn time.

Contrast that with Denver, where city leaders had talked about the need for light rail for decades, yet it was constantly derailed by one seemingly insurmountable obstacle or another. Until local voters finally elected an administration determined to cut through the red tape and just get it done.

Instead of following L.A.’s example, they committed to building the entire system at once. The result is an integrated regional system that has been fully functional — and successful — virtually from day one. And yes, they actually encourage cyclists to take the trains.

Meanwhile, our own leaders are pushing, with no promise of success, for just three of the 14 scheduled L.A.-area projects to be moved forward a little.

Or take the pitiful, disjointed system of L.A. bikeways that don’t connect, don’t actually lead anywhere and are frequently in virtually unridable condition.

The problem, we’re told, is that the city’s built-out street system is already over-stressed. As LADOT Senior Bike Coordinator Michele Mowery was recently quoted in Bicycling Magazine, “What I need is roadway. Right now, all I can do is try to find places to squeeze bikes in.”

Yet New York City, home to one of the most congested, built-out road systems in the country, recently completed a 200 mile expansion of their bike lane system — increasing the system by nearly 50% in just three years.

The result has been equally impressive, with bike commuting up 45% since the project began — a nearly a 50% increase in ridership in just three years. And it will undoubtedly rise further now that the system is complete, reducing stress on the local traffic and transit systems while helping to improve the health of those new commuters.

The difference is civic leaders — from the mayor’s office down — who recognize the value of bicycles as a legitimate part of the overall transit system, and have the political will to overcome objections and just it done.

The same leadership that had the courage to convert one of the city’s busiest boulevards into a pedestrian walkway.

Yet even L.A.’s proposed Bike Master Plan fails to “squeeze bikes in,” since most bikeways that might actually make a difference are listed as “currently infeasible.” And the people charged with leading the change continue to offer implausible excuses, like telling council members that they can’t move forward with a sharrow test project because they’re worried about cyclists slipping on rain-soaked paint.

And yes, I actually heard them say that. Which makes me wonder just how many riders have been killed or crippled on Long Beach’s new sharrow green lane. Or maybe it just hasn’t rained there yet.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles has the most congested roadways in the nation. Yet we’re still waiting for our civic leaders to recognize that the city’s decades-long focus on increasing traffic capacity has failed miserably. And that maybe, just maybe, the real solution is offering people viable alternatives to getting behind the wheel.

Like biking, for instance. Or taking a train system than can actually get you where you want to go.

And for someone — anyone — with the courage to just step up and get it done.

………

Streetsblog interviews the LACBC. Will defuses a potentially violent situation, and proves he who honks last honks best. Today could be the day you get a ticket for riding through a crosswalk in Santa Monica. An Eastside writer asks if the Class 1 bike path in South Gate could be used to improve the quality of life for local residents. Cycle Chic looks haute on a Batavus Fryslân. No Whip rides the high altitude Alta Alpina Double Century. Texas cyclists vent their wrath on their veto-wielding governor. An experienced bicycle safety instructor is killed after inexplicably turning directly in front of an oncoming car. A Virginia judge laments the lack of civility between cyclists and drivers. Vancouver discovers their new bike bridge could actually turn a profit. San Francisco’s Mission District is about to get new bike lanes, as is Dar-es-Salaam — maybe they just have more road space than we do. Town Mouse discovers the value of a good tailwind. Finally, the Guardian asks if bikes and beer really mix.

Category: General / Tags: , , , , , ,
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