It’s a draft plan because the citizens of LA have a right and a duty to take part in an open and transparent revision process.  While the email below emphasizes that the drafting process has been inclusive, with one exception the public has not seen any updates to the draft proposed bike plan since December – seven months.  We have been assured by City Planning officials that the draft will undergo more revisions.  Good.  The public hasn’t had sufficient opportunity to take part in the drafting process thus far, so it will be nice to get a chance to get our hands dirty.

Second, it’s a proposal plan because the citizens of LA have no obligation to consent to replace the current plan with the draft proposed plan.  I’m not saying we should or should not adopt the draft proposed plan (I haven’t read it yet), but it is important to recognize that we have the power to refuse.  If the draft proposed plan is not a substantial improvement over the current plan it would be logical to refuse.  If the drafters of the plan revise in bad faith, a protest refusal is reasonable.  If the draft proposed plan is great, if it is revised in good faith, then I will be exhilarated to support its approval.

So in the spirit of good process, here is the original email, with a few words I added in bold:

To all Interested Parties:

The City of Los Angeles is pleased to release the draft proposed 2010 Los Angeles Bicycle Plan. The 2010 draft proposed Bicycle Plan is a comprehensive update of the current Bicycle Plan first adopted in 1996 and re-adopted by the City Council in 2002 and 2007. The 2010 draft proposed Bicycle Plan (2010 Plan), a component of the Transportation Element, (an element of the City*s General Plan), is part of the City*s commitment to transform Los Angeles from an auto-centric City to a City with a multi-modal transportation system. The 2010 draft proposed Plan designates 1,633 miles of bikeway facilities and proposes two new bicycle networks (Citywide and Neighborhood). Additionally, the 2010 draft proposed Bicycle Plan includes a Technical Design Handbook that will assist both City staff and residents in selecting and designing facilities for future bikeways that are safe and consistent with current standards and guidelines.

The 2010 draft proposed Los Angeles Bicycle Plan is a result of extensive fieldwork, numbers public workshops (only nine), and suggestions from thousands of public comments received from September 2009 draft proposed Bicycle Plan.  The draft proposed Bicycle Plan is a joint effort between the Department of City Planning an Department of Transportation.

The complete document and maps will be available on the project website [www.labikeplan.org] by end of the day June 18th with printed copies available for public review at the City*s Central Library and eight regional libraries and the Department of City Planning*s Downtown and Van Nuys Public Counters by June 30th, 2010.

A series of workshops/public hearing will be held between September 7-18, 2010 to take public testimony and comment.

Please see the attached flyer for additional facts on the 2010 Bicycle Plan and information regarding the public hearing process.

Jordann Turner
Los Angeles Department of City Planning
2010 Bicycle Plan-Project Manager
200 N. Spring Street, Rm 721
Los Angeles, CA 90012
Phone: 213.978.1379 | Fax: 213.978.4656

After the comment deadline on the Bike Plan passed without council attention, many called attention to the failure of Councilman Bill Rosendahl to pick up the issue.  I’m glad that Rosendahl has re-engaged on the Bike Plan.  After talking with him in December, Bill invited Stephen Box and I to submit a series of questions, which he would pose to LADOT & Planning staff responsible for the bike plan.  These questions are the questions we submitted, and staff received them a day ahead of time, so they would be prepared to answer them.

I appreciate Rosendahl’s willingness to ask some hard questions, particularly in a LA culture where city staff are often treated too gently.  By asking those questions, Rosendahl helped to expose a possible prejudice of Michelle Mowery’s, and put staff on the record on important issues.  Here’s the 12 questions:

1. From the “scope of work”, to the contract, to the selection of the consultants, to the supervision of the consultants, to the final development and presentation of the Draft Bike Plan, who is in charge and who is responsible for the Draft Bike Plan?

2. How was the drafting of the proposed plan funded? Who pays the consultants and the staff for the development of the Draft Bike Plan and where do the funds come from? What is the mandate for these funds and what is the accountability?

3. The proposed Bike Plan plans to add how many miles of Bike Lanes to the Streets of Los Angeles?

4. In what ways does this proposed plan propose improve safety conditions for cyclists as they travel to schools, employment centers, transit hubs, social and entertainment attractions? How does this Draft Bike Plan get cyclists where they need to go?

5. The current plan is good until the end of 2012 – what’s the motivation for replacing the current plan with the proposed plan?

6. How does the proposed plan differ from the plan that Alta delivered to the city?

7.  Regarding the current plan and the proposed plan – what metrics measure the difference between the two?  Will we use the Bikeway Quality Index (BQI) and the Cycle Zone Analysis (CZA) that our consultant, Alta Planning, uses in Portland?

8. Currently bikeways stop and start and don’t connect to one another.  What are the projected cost and timeline estimates for the development of a Bikeway Network that connects our city?

9. Alta Planning is reportedly one of the finest consulting groups in the world for bike planning. How is it that the City of Los Angeles kicked off the Draft Bike Plan process with Alta but did not incorporate the robust Bike Plan process that Portland used/is using to develop their own Bike Plan?  For example in Portland Alta maintained eleven working groups, and they used community bike rides to engage and survey.

10. The CA Supreme Court supported the City of Los Angeles will not assuming liability for cyclist injuries due to unsafe bike paths on the LA River and Ballona Creek.  Does the plan address this?  Why would the City of LA continue to build bike paths that shirk responsibility for protecting cyclists, resulting in a “ride at your own risk” bikeway that offers less legal protection than if the cyclist were on the street?

11. Chapter Three of the Draft Bike Plan addresses off-road cycling, currently prohibited/restricted in the City of Los Angeles. Given that the initial recommendation to study this topic appeared in the 1996 Bike Plan and that the topic was addressed by the Department of Rec and Parks in their assessment study last year, why would the LADOT and the Department of Planning continue to address a Rec & Parks issue in a Planning document? Is the Department of Rec & Parks involved in the development of Chapter Three?

12.  This plan is an element of the Transportation Plan, so what is the motivation for including off-road cycling, which is primarily recreational, within the plan?

The full audio of the meeting is available here.

That’s been a common refrain in backroom discussions about the proposed LA Bike Plan.  When the plan first came out there was outrage at the lateness, and frustration with the narrow comment period.  Then, as people began to dissect the plan, dismay at how short it fell in multiple categories.

I think it was when CICLE’s analysis of the proposed bike lane mileage came out that I first wondered why we should change plans.  If the proposed bike plan has less bike lane mileage by 100 miles than the current plan, why should we want it?  The old plan has richer policies, and the language is stronger.

The draft plan is the opus of Michelle Mowery, LA’s bicycle coordinator.  So is the 1996 plan, but that is the work of a younger, more ambitious Mowery.  Now Mowery treats the cycling community with open hostility.  I have to suggest then, consider the source.  Since she wrote the current plan, Mowery has overseen 15 years of bikeways and cycling safety failure in Los Angeles.  If the new, proposed plan is her baby – and all her allies in City Hall leap to defend it – do we really want more of her way of (not) getting things done.

I think it’s time to have a serious, public discussion about this.  If the final draft of the bike plan – to be released in February – doesn’t exceed the current plan, why adopt it?  The current plan is good till 2012 and, while it may seem harsh, what motivation do cyclists have to support a plan that is worse than the current?  Just because a thing is new, doesn’t necessarily mean it is better.

What do you think?

BILL ROSENDAHL: Alta Planning is reportedly one of the finest consulting groups in the world for bike planning. How is it that the City of Los Angeles kicked off the Draft Bike Plan process with Alta but did not incorporate the robust Bike Plan process that Portland used/is using to develop their own Bike Plan?  For example in Portland Alta maintained eleven working groups, and they used community bike rides to engage and survey.

MICHELLE MOWERY: With all due respect the City of Portland is 450,000 people.  It’s a homogeneous community that is very white, and very progressive with respect to transportation.  They have a trolley system that works very well, as well as their transit overall.  We are a very diverse, disjointed city of 4 million people.  They are 30 years ahead of us in the development of their, well, they’re not quite 30, they’re more like 20 years ahead of us in the development of their bikeway.  So we’re a step behind Portland in what we’re trying to do. Granted, several of us would like to see a lot of changes in the city happen very quickly, but again we have a very diverse city with a lot of needs.

Ok, let’s start from the beginning: Mowery doesn’t even answer the question.  The question, rephrased, is why did LA not get the same intensive process in revising the bike plan that Portland did, given that we used the same consultant? Mowery never answers that question, and instead makes throwaway remarks about why LA is behind Portland in bike friendliness.  Mowery does mention that Portland is far ahead of Los Angeles in terms of being bike friendly.  You might interpret that as an answer to the question, in that a less bike friendly place will have less to talk about, and less people to talk to. Mowery never makes that connection directly, and even if she did, it’s still not an answer.  Frankly, given that she saw these questions 2 days ahead of time, and that she has been working on this plan for 2 years now, she should have an answer.

The real answer is probably that we didn’t spend enough money.  Or, rather, we didn’t spend enough money on community outreach.  LA contracted with Alta to update our bike plan for $450,000 . . . but most of that money went into things other than community outreach.  For example, instead of having a quality community outreach process, we spent a ton of the money on a technical handbook which we could have easily got from San Francisco at a 5-finger discount

Instead of mentioning the 450,000 bucks LA spent on a terrible plan, she focused on the 450,000 people of Portland and how that compares to LA’s 4,000,000.  I don’t see how LA being larger than Portland should mean that Portland would have a larger outreach process than LA?  MTA believes that LA has a 2.5% mode share for bikes, and Portland has roughly 9%.  That means that, in absolute terms, there are more trips made by bicycle in Los Angeles, than in Portland, because LA exceeds Portland in population by a factor of 9, but lags in mode share by less than a factor of 4.

What possible connection can racial diversity have to it?  By saying that Portland is homogeneous and LA diverse, Mowery seems to be making an argument that diverse places are inherently slower to adopt bicycles, or inherently dysfunctional politically.  It’s not clear to me, but it smacks of a freshman political science major selling a bad theory.  I can think of two examples of racially diverse cities that are politically functional (at least as compares to LA), and are making huge strides toward bike friendliness.

New York.

Chicago.

Those are the 1st and 3nd largest cities in the US, with LA being the 2nd largest. They’re both world class cities with cultural and racial diversity up the wazoo.  They are, very much, LA’s peers.  Therefore, the argument that Portland is ahead of us because of it’s alleged homogeneity falls flat. And it still doesn’t explain why the outreach process for LA’s bike plan update was so lack luster.

It all comes back to, why highlight Portland’s WHITENESS?  The homogeneity argument isn’t convincing, but at least it’s color neutral.  I don’t really think it has anything to do with bikes at all.

You can hear the meeting audio here, with the Bike Plan report beginning around 20:20, the question and Very White answer at 40:28 (and you can also hear me briefly take Mowery to task at 58:01.)

(I  just read through my piece here looking for errors and I thought it came off a little bit Vulcan = detached, unemotional, logical.  So I just wanted to add a note here and say that I’m outraged at the way Mowery handled this question, and I think it’s a truly vile way to discuss an issue, and I’m mad about it.  So hopefully that informs the tone, adjusting it to an Angry Vulcan tone.)

The Best Bicycle Plan is a proactive vision that will offer success for the whole community; a reduction in crime and hospitalization, and a growth in economy. This Plan will provide new facilities as a fortified foundation for the next generation of cyclists. It’s development, implementation and maintenance will be guided by the voice of the cyclists and neighborhoods it serves. The Best Bicycle Plan’s policies establish safe and equal access to the streets, education for law enforcement and drivers, multi-modal integration, support facilities and programs to increase ridership. Above all, this Plan establishes and protects the right to ride in the City.

Visit Jeremy’s blog to read the full introduction; if you’re interested in cycling in LA his blog is a good one to subscribe to.

(Photo by G.E.T.)

• Bicyclists can, and will, ride on every city street; California law allows as much.
• Bicyclists, pedestrians, social vehicles and private vehicles will equally share the privileges and responsibilities of the public realm; these will be the ingredients of tomorrow’s healthy, lively Los Angeles.
• Bicyclists, as citizens, will work with neighborhood and city governments to implement backbone lanes, ciclovias and other elements of civitas; bicycle life is a big source of a vibrant urban life.
• Bicyclists, as citizens, are going to push and pull this government to see some direct goals accomplished, in two years.
• Bicyclists will open the doors to a transparent government; open data will lead to direct goals.
• Bicyclists will live in a city of educated, aware citizens. Drivers will know; police will know; youth will know. The global cycling movement is in its infancy but growing.
• Bicyclists will see that this gets done right, from EIRs to engineering.
• Bicyclists will do it better. And have fun doing it.

Great introduction David!  Who will take the challenge next?

We challenge anyone and everyone to write an introduction to LA’s Best Bike Plan, which begins with the sentence “Every street is a street that cyclists will ride.”  500 words or less!  Submit your composition to alexcthompson@gmail.com. I’ll post the submissions in batches as I receive them . . .

(photo from the Library of Congress photostream)

City staff will take comments on the draft Bicycle Plan (which can be read on line at labikeplan.org) until January 8th, 2010.

YEEEHAWWW!  Thank you Jane for doing the right thing by protecting the need of the public to work with the city to discuss our concerns.

When the Bike Plan was released, I read the release memo and saw that we were only given 42 days for public input.  Rather than opening the plan, and ripping through the plan in a panic to produce my comments, I immediately blogged about the unreasonable public comment deadline.  Bike Girl wrote a great post about it simultaneously.  Soon the whole Bike Writers Collective was enjoined in fighting for a lengthy and fair public comment period.

We did that because process counts.  Ultimately, negotiating content and commitment for the Bike Plan will determine how it impacts cyclists, and more broadly, citizens.  But the process determines how it is negotiated, and therefore sets the limit on changes.  With an extension of the public comment period, we now have the opportunity to give a more intelligent and solution oriented critique of the proposed plan.

Blumenfeld did more than extend the deadline.  In her email she outlined and explained the process for consideration of the proposed bike plan, something that no one has done till now:

After January 8th, staff will begin to prepare a revised Plan (including the maps) based on all of the input that has been received through the website, at workshops, in letters, e-mails, and on comment cards.  We anticipate releasing a staff report and a revised Draft Bicycle Plan in February 2010 and giving all interested parties two months to review the revised plan.  We will then hold 2 public hearings on behalf of the City Planning Commission (one in the Valley and one near downtown) to hear your comments on the revised Plan.

Following the 2 hearings, the City Planning Commission will hold a public meeting in the spring to act on the revised plan.  Staff will provide the Commission with information about the comments made at the two public hearings and any additional proposed modifications based on input received.

Following the City Planning Commission’s action, two City Council committees will act on the City Planning Commission’s recommendation for the Bicycle Plan:  the Planning and Land Use Management Committee (PLUM) and the Transportation Committee.  Their recommendations will then be considered by the full City Council.

To summarize:

1. Comments will be received until January 8th
2. Final draft released in February
3. Two months of review
4. Two public hearings at the City Planning Commission
5. PLUM Committee and Transportation Committee consider the plan

This summary by Blumenfeld is greatly appreciated.  Till now I hadn’t met anyone who had a clear idea of how the process would work once the final draft was finished.  Now we understand it.

How did the deadline get extended after it had passed?  Well, I don’t really know yet.  I do know that collectively the bike community brought a ton of heat on this issue, with a lot of help from our friends.  I blogged about it – [1],  [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7] – and Stephen wrote about it – [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], and just now, [7] – Bike Girl [CRUSH], BikingInLA [SWOOP] [BLAM], Josef Bray Ali [WiN], Mikey Wally [SMASH], Matt Ruscigno [BOOM], Jeremy Grant [!!!], and many others.  The Mar Vista CC, Bicycle Advisory Committee, Silver Lake NC, Mid City West NC, Valley Alliance of NCs, NC Action Summitt, CD11 Transportation Committee, Palm NC, East Hollywood NC weighed in demanding an extension, and the LACBC even threw in some emails.  Glenn Bailey, Joe Linton, and a few friends in City Hall, among others had tremendous impact behind the scenes.  (sorry if I missed anybody.)

Which is to say, a lot of heat was brought, and somewhere a crack was found, and the bike community was heard and respected.

We’ve got time to work on this now.  Let’s Make It HAPPEN!

(Photo by moi)

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)

The Planning Department has been misleading people, telling people that their comments will be considered in the LA Bike Plan after the public comment period has passed.  Even better, the Planning Department refused to extend the deadline, but the recipient of the comments, Jordann Turner, was out of town on the day of the deadline:

I will be out of the office until November 16.  For Bicycle Plan Update infomation, visit the project website at www.labikeplan.org.

That’s the email that I, and many others, received when we submitted our comments on the deadline.  Planning can’t extend the deadline, but they sure as hell can be out of town for 10 days afterward.  If Planning had any notion of realpolitik, they’d have extended the deadline 10 days (instead of the 50 we were asking for), from November 6th till November 16th, called it a “compromise”, and walked away.

How has Planning been misleading people?  Jane Blumenfeld, Deputy Director Citywide Planning Division, has been replying to requests for a deadline extension (or, now that the deadline has passed, a new public comment period) with the following:

Please be assured that the deadline has been extended.  We are finalizing the date of the public hearing in January and comments and input can be submitted up until (and following) the public hearing.  We welcome your comments.  Thank you for your participation and interest.

My understanding is that this is impossible, or rather, not lawful.  A final draft of the Bike Plan must be released before the public hearing . . . 30 days before the public hearing.  So, if you submit your comments after the final draft is released Planning simply cannot adjust the final draft to reflect them – the draft cannot be altered at that point.  Blumenthal is indicating that you can submit the comments even beyond the hearing, but people don’t submit comments just to be heard.  The idea is that the comments could change the draft.  By indicating that they will accept comments, Planning is implying, without saying it, that those comments could impact the draft, when in fact they can’t.  That might not be lying, but it’s misleading.

Moreover, it misses the point.  The public should have substantial and sufficient time to consider the draft plan before making a judgment, and submitting comments.  Those comments should be received and considered.  The formal public comment period is a sacred time during which the document can be considered.  Not only did Planning give insufficient time to the public comment period, but Joe Linton even recognized that the draft was being altered during that period.

Planning is not playing fair, and not doing a very good job of it.  I don’t fault them for doing a bad job of it – after all, it is Michelle Mowery’s game that they’re playing, and only Mowery plays her particular form of obstruction well.

(Photo by me, Alex Thompson!)

Last time we identified our 5 most important design principles:

• Genesis: Every street is a street cyclists will ride
• All City: Create a Backbone bikeway network that will get cyclists from any part of the city to any other
• Action: LA must commit to implement key measures within 2 years
• Transformation: Neighborhood pilots projects to create pockets of ultra bike friendliness, including bike boulevards.
• Equality: The Cyclists’ Bill of Rights is the foundation for the plan.

Last time we got started on identifying streets for the back bone network.  This time we’ll start with that, getting a solid discussion going on which streets and what should go on them.  Then we’ll spend some time identifying what programs the City of LA could implement as low hanging fruit in other categories, and what measures we want implemented within 2 years of adoption.

Come by, and lets work!

(Photo by Mr. Rollers)

What’s this all about?  Well, LA’s proposed bike plan isn’t all that great.  In fact, it’s so bad, it’s a step backward!  So instead of rejecting the new one and keeping the old one, Bikeside and the Bike Writers Collective are writing their own plan!  We’re calling it LA’s Best Bike Plan.

At Bike Working Group II the consensus was that the plan should begin with the assumption that “every street is a street cyclists will ride.”  This language comes from the Long Beach Bike Plan, in which the first policy, Policy 1.1, is “Consider every street in Long Beach as a street that bicyclists will use.”  We liked this principle so much, we chose it as one of our top three design criteria, and decided that LA’s Best Bike Plan should begin with that sentence.

Get writing!

(Photo by Olivia Kate Jaffe)