Nice going on the motions, this is very good news.

So how to proceed on what will surely be met with either (1) apathy from city planners (=ing no action) or (2) wholesale opposition from LADOT and other agencies (also =ing no action)? I’ll leave that question of “well then, what agency?” to others with more intimate knowledge of city bureaucracy (but I know Josef has posted tantalizing ideas on reshuffling some of these issues).

While a big picture strategic plan is certainly in order, seems to me the first step must be to secure the extension of time for the comment period–because I see this and any real change as taking some time and the exercise of political muscle. Lord knows the City has taken their time on releasing the draft, but the City now seems to be fine with their larger business-as-usual structure of moving forward on implementing the plan–that is, they’ve released the draft plan, they’ve scheduled a paltry 5 public meetings, and set up a website to solicit comments. After that they’ll “consider” the comments, maybe make a few changes here and there, issue bologna reasons why some of the better and long-range, far-reaching comments cannot be implemented, and ultimately implement the “new” plan only to get back to their car-y business of “real transportation.” Think differently? I would love to be proved wrong on that.

The message must be delivered that we need more time–with understood subtext that mere comments to a castrati bike plan that only nibbles around the edges of real progress are insufficient to promote any real progress and ultimately under serve the people of the City. Portland hasn’t always been a bike friendly city, they had to make it that way. Probably took some fighting. Same for, say, Boulder and numerous other cities that have made slow but steady transportation shifts. Thanks for all your efforts moving that ball forward.