Bikeside LA

Monday night, Santa Monica’s draft Bike Action Plan (BAP) was presented to the public for the first time at a Santa Monica Spoke meeting at 502 Colorado. Six city staff, one city council member and even one former mayor were in attendance. The atmosphere was jovial, and borderline celebratory.

“We’ve got seven kinds of Coke; five hundred kinds of cigarette. This freedom of choice in the USA drives everybody crazy.” –John Doe and Exene Cervenka, “See How we Are,” X Bicycles are wonderful tools. They magnify the limited physical abilities of the human body in a manner that is not completely at odds with [...]

(this post from a new blogger for Bikeside, the Subjective Bureaucrat.  The Subjective Bureaucrat chooses to remain nameless, but you can bet he or she knows what he or she is talking about ; ]   I’m happy to have him or her on board!  -AT) In the world of planning, or on a larger scale [...]

This past Saturday, the city of Long Beach took a ground breaking step towards making their downtown area safer for cyclists. While not perfect, their protected bike lane design is considerably safer than most options seen in Southern California thus far.

Two months ago, the Bike Plan Implementation Team met at City Hall and walked away with an informal top ten list of cycling infrastructure projects.  Since then, Planning and DOT have refused to put their time and energy toward any proposals that are not on the list.  When advocates complain to the authorities, they are [...]

Evolution calls for better bike lanes Call them what you want: Cycle Tracks, Protected Bike Lanes, Bike Paths. Bottom line is, most people won’t start riding until you take cars out of the equation. Why? Because even well-intentioned people do stupid or careless sh**, and when people do stupid or careless sh** while in a [...]

Ciclovia(s) CicLAvia was even more amazing than last year, with folks coming from all over to enjoy the freedom of exploring the city car-free.  Seems like even Sandy Banks of the LA Times had a blast.  Restaurants could barely keep up with demand, that’s about as busy as I’ve ever seen MacArthur park and Little [...]

I’m going to come right out and say it:  West LA commuters are about to get their shit fucked up for a year by CalTrans and Metro.  And I believe that while those commuters are covering the brakes, the transportation movement has an opportunity to accelerate. I’m referring, of course, to the planned ramp closures [...]

After 7 long years in Los Angeles, I can’t say that I have ever been fully satisfied with any neighborhood I’ve lived in.  A few neighborhood gems peppered in between strip malls and swaths of concrete amount to a frustrating experience when trying to get around.  People always bring up the ethnic diversity and plentiful [...]

A very spirited Charlie Gandy stepped up to the microphone on the evening of January 5th to speak about the process that Long Beach is undergoing on its way to becoming the most bike-friendly city in America.  A few writeups of this already exist, so I figured I’d focus on the attitude necessary to push [...]