LABP: Joe Linton does the math (13/100)

Joe Linton did the math and discovered that the proposed bike plan only proposes to add 28 miles of bike lane:

If you read the actual list of facilities and add up all the miles, then you’d be aware that the plan only calls for 28 new miles of bike lanes.

Only 28 miles. That’s all.

Thank you Joe for doing this incredible piece of work.  Linton builds on something we knew from Table 1-2 – this plan proposes less bike lanes than the current plan:

Suppose you took the 1996 plan (also the 2002 plan, and the current [2007] plan) and you built all the bike lanes in that plan.  At the end you’d have 325 miles of bike lane – the 88 miles existing in 1996 and the 237 proposed miles.  Now, if you took the proposed bike plan, and built all the bike lanes in it, you’d end up with only 268 miles of bike lane – the existing 143 miles and another 125.  That’s 57 miles less – and that’s what that “- 57″ which is underlined represents.  So, you begin to see how this plan is unambitious.

What Linton discovered is that the list of bike lane mileage adds up to 28 miles of proposed bike lanes.  That’s not the 125 which is underlined in red above.  So not only is the plan self contradictory, but it asks for 154 miles less of bike lane, not 57 less that it asserts.  In total, this plan envisions an LA with 171 miles of bike lane, as opposed to the current plan, which envisions one with 325 miles.

Here’s some more math for you – stick with me, it’s worth it.  The Bike Plan update contract was for $450,000.  The draft is 212 pages, and the appendix is 351 pages, making 563 pages.  So $450,000, divided across 563 pages is $799 per page.

Let’s go one step further.  Michelle Mowery, the LADOT bikeways coordinator who is responsible for this plan, has spent a good chunk of time on the plan I’m sure.  Jordann Turner, the Planning lead who was out of town when the deadline that couldn’t be extended passed, and his boss Helene Bibas, have also spent a lot of time on the plan.  I’ll bet some LADOT engineers probably have been involved too.  We know that Jane Blumenfeld has spent some time answering inquiries about the plan.

Guess who pays their salaries?  Taxpayers.  That means the cost of the plan easily tops $563,000 – or $1000 per page.

For $1000 per page the people of Los Angeles got a lousy listless plan filled with errant diagrams, more errors than paragraphs, and math that Sarah Palin and George Bush could better if they tried their hardest to screw up.

We could do better with an invisible slide rule, compost powered laptop and an upside down abacus.

You can quote me on that.

(photo by Mulling it Over)