One quick note before we start.
I’m going with a shorter format today, after running out of time to keep working as the clock leaves 4 am in the rearview mirror.
The problem stems from my attempt to set our apartment on fire with an overheated wok last night, said attempt failing only after I remembered the $28 fire blanket I bought last year and stashed next to the stove, thinking I might need it someday.
That someday was yesterday.
So we’ll go with the day’s main stories for now, and catch up on the rest tomorrow. And if it seems like my heart’s not in it today, I can assure you it’s on the saddle and in the bike lane, where it always is.
My head, on the other hand, is another matter.
Today’s photo of 3rd Street Toronto barriers shamelessly stolen respectfully borrowed courtesy of Streetsblog’s Joe Linton
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Sort of good news today, as the LA City Council Transportation Committee voted to install new concrete Toronto barriers on the city’s protected bike lanes.
Just kidding.
The committee actually voted unanimously to request a report from LADOT on what it would take to install the barriers internally, rather than rely on the Bureau of Street Services to install them.
Which should raise the question of why LA city departments continue to be siloed, with one agency tasked with planning city streets, another with engineering them, and a third with actually building them.
But this being LA, no one bothered to ask that.
Instead, assuming the motion passes the full council, the department will be tasked with compiling yet another report to report back to the council on, reporting why they should or shouldn’t install the barriers themselves, or if they even can.
So I will report on the report, if and when they actually report on it.
And people wonder why nothing reportedly gets done around here.
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Seriously, would you like some cheese with that whine?
A WeHo Online op-ed complains that West Hollywood City Councilmember Lauren Meister was treated unfairly in her attempt to undo what the council had already done in voting to approve the planned protected bike lanes on Fountain Ave.
Meister, said the mister who wrote it, “demonstrated something increasingly rare on the West Hollywood City Council: a willingness to listen, reconsider, and think beyond the confines of a predetermined political position.”
According to the op-ed,
Her proposal was neither radical nor unreasonable. It simply asked whether there might be a better way to achieve safety for ALL users of Fountain Avenue.
Which is what the council had already done, in approving a plan that considered the needs off all road users, rather than just the ones who want to keep parking on it.
Apparently, all the councilmembers who supported the plan were unreasonable, if not downright rude, in their refusal to reconsider the votes they had cast mere months before, while those who didn’t were perfectly reasonable in requesting that they do.
Then there were the several dozen written comments originating from ZIP codes well beyond West Hollywood. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but the voices of outside advocacy networks should not be confused with those of residents who will live with the consequences of these decisions every day. Their interests deserve particular consideration, not dismissal as obstacles to someone else’s ideological vision.
Which would make perfect sense, if this was a matter that only affected residents of the city. But Fountain Ave has long been used more by people attempting to drive — or bike — through WeHo to some other destination, than as a quiet side street for those who live along the busy corridor.
If memory serves, Blake Ackerman, whose ghost bike sits at Fountain and Gardner, was riding home from work in DTLA to an apartment in Beverly Hills when he was killed by a hit-and-run driver just last year.
Countless studies show that improving safety on Fountain will benefit everyone who drives, bikes or walks along the corridor, while improving the quality of life for those who live nearby.
So it is not unreasonable for councilmembers to stick to a previous decision that was made after years of street studies and public meetings. It is, however, unreasonable to demand that it be reconsidered every few months.
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Apparently, the Central Valley Young Republicans are opposed to a proposed sales tax measure on next month’s ballot.
No, really opposed.
According to a letter to the editor in the GV Wire,
The Fresno County Transportation Sales Tax, otherwise known as Measure S, is a scam. The measure will extend the already high sales tax throughout Fresno County. And, while its creators promise “better roads” and “safer streets,” it will not improve either.
Instead, it pads the pockets of the nonprofit CEOs who wrote it and prioritizes the fundamental transformation of our beautiful, family-friendly Central Valley into a dump, similar to what the once beautiful city of San Francisco has become today.
This measure’s main objective is to create a more urban, public transit-dependent, cluttered way of life, similar to the disasters of Los Angeles and San Francisco, with unending bike and bus lanes driving cars off the road, funded and supported by the same elites and politicians who destroyed California and now want to destroy Fresno County.
Okay, but how do they really feel?
Because, evidently, clogging local streets with more and more cars, trucks and SUVs will somehow maintain their high quality of life, while providing alternatives to driving will destroy it.
Never mind the non sequitur of nonprofits padding their pockets.
There is a valid argument to be made about resisting higher taxes, or at least considering them very carefully. There can also be a discussion as to where and when to build bus and bike lanes.
But this ain’t it.
I only wish LA had “unending bike and bus lanes driving cars off the road.” Because what’s really driving cars off the road are all those other drivers in other cars, with increasingly less space to maneuver because of all the other drivers driving them off the road.
And they wonder why Republicans are an endangered species in California.
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Finally, we’ll end on the sad saga of ICE agents crashing into, detaining and breaking the arm of an American citizen in Long Beach on Saturday.
According to My News LA, four California lawmakers — US Representatives Nanette Barragán, D-San Pedro, and Robert Garcia, D-Long Beach, as well as Senators Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, both D-California — sent a strongly worded letter to Department of Homeland Security Inspector General Joseph V. Cuffari demanding an investigation into the ICE attack on Ricardo Gonzalez.
But what’s missing from the letter — aside from the likelihood that it will be taken seriously under current DHS leadership — is the presence of any lawmakers with an R following their names.
Maybe I’m dating myself, but I remember when government agents in black SUVs detaining — let alone attacking — an American citizen would have drawn howls of protest from the GOP, as well Democrats.
Maybe someday, our Republican leaders will find their missing integrity. But today is clearly not that day.
