Revolutions at 90 RPM, Part 1: Bicycle Commuting in Los Angeles

This is the second in a 4-part series on bicycle commuting in Los Angeles and elsewhere. The introduction is here.

With gas prices in the near $5/gallon range, Angelenos have suddenly seen the wisdom of alternate forms of transportation. We still love our cars, and if anyone's praying for the success of the Tesla, the VW One-Litre Concept Car, Zap cars, Zipcars, or any of the multiple ways to make cars greener, it's the people of Los Angeles.

However, in the meantime, bike sales in Los Angeles (and around the nation) are up.

"Bicycles for transportation has not been a big thing until very recently," he said. "April and particularly May, and now June, have been phenomenal months. This is across the board and across the country."

As the weather has improved -- and pump prices have continued to rise -- merchants have noticed an increase.

"This is the first time we've seen this much growth from the gas problem," said Jim Whitsett, owner of Cynergy Cycles in Santa Monica, where sales are up "a noticeable 20% just in the past 30 days."

Increasingly, people who used to view bicycles as playthings or exercise tools now see them as workhorses. So they're outfitting them with fenders, racks, bags -- anything that will make them more functional.

[Photo credit: the Cynematic in-laws.

Mr. Cynematic nurtures a future bicycle rider and commuter. Can you tell Kid Cynematic dressed himself and picked out his own bike and basket? Yes he did. You ROCK that pink, honey.]

Mr. Cynematic, the hardcore cyclist, reports seeing more people commuting long distances on his own lengthy 16-mile bike ride to work. People on fixies (or single-gear track bikes), beach cruisers, old Huffys or Schwinns, and exotic carbon-fiber bikes are flying down busy streets past cars stopped or creeping in traffic.

Because car culture is so dominant here, two-wheelers have to be a little more...assertive. The Santa Monica-based group-which-is-not-a-group, kissing cousin to San Francisco's Critical Mass (where bikes take over the streets, flash-mob style), is the Midnight Ridazz. (Critical Mass, controversial and definitely in-your-face, is now global.)

You'd never know otherwise that Los Angeles currently has two velodromes (canted indoor track for bicycle racing)--one in Carson, another in Encino. Though of recent construction, they're a holdover from the early twentieth century craze for six-day bicycle races on quickly cobbled-together tracks, which surely, in turn of the century LA, you could get to by light rail ("red cars")...

Los Angeles Pacific Electric Railway route map, circa 1910, courtesy USC Library Archives

...or perhaps the magical Los Angeles elevated cycleway of 1901:

The South California towns, Los Angeles and Pasadena, are now connected by the strangest and most interesting of links-a magnificent, elevated cycle-way, with a smooth surface of wood, running for nine miles through beautiful country, flanked by green hills, and affording views at every point of the snow-clad Sierras.  

On this splendid track cyclists may now enjoy the very poetry of wheeling. At Pasadena they may mount their cycles and sail down to Los Angeles without so much as touching the pedals, even though the gradient is extremely slight.The way lies for the most part along the east bank of the Arroyo Seco, giving a fine view of this wooded stream, and skirting the foot of the neighboring oak-covered hills.The surface is perfectly free from all dust and mud, and nervous cyclists find the track safer than the widest roads, for there are no horses to avoid, no trains or trolley-cars, no stray dogs or wandering children.

You could probably also smell orange blossoms from the citrus orchards as you cycled past.

Elevated cycleway? And then I woke up, and discovered I'd been asleep for a hundred years. Or woke up in Sydney, Australia in 2016.

All of which is to say, bicycles and light rail/commuter trains have historically been natural partners in integrating mass transit with personal commuting in an environmentally-sound way.

On June 27, 2008, Los Angeles City Council President Eric Garcetti introduced two resolutions to make our city more bike-friendly. Talk about tilting at windmills. From Cicle.org's press release:

Garcetti ...urge[d] the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) to repeal its ban on allowing cyclists to ride the Metro lines during rush hour.  Currently, bicycles are not allowed on the trains between the hours of 6:30 a.m. and 8:30 a.m. as well as 4:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. on weekdays.  Garcetti’s motion requests that Metro also consider removing seats on some Metro line cars to make the trains more comfortable for passengers traveling with or without bicycles.

He also introduced a motion that would implement a pilot program to mark streets with “sharrows” --Caltrans-approved shared lane markings on the pavement between the parking lane and traffic.  These are different from bike lanes in that they direct the cyclist to travel outside the car door zone to prevent accidents caused by parked cars.

Both resolutions, if passed, would make bicycling as a form of commuting both safer and easier. First of all, it's ridiculous and insane that you cannot currently take your bike on Metro LA trains during commute hours. If you look at the Metro map, you'll see it's like a speedo on a fat guy--it barely begins to cover LA's urban sprawlopolis. There's nowhere near the amount of coverage that would be decent. To make up for this unwieldy/unsightly gap, bicyclists have to be able to cover the last few miles to their final destination.

And 1a), no world-class urban rail system that means to pull its own weight in public transportation load would lack trains dedicated to bikes and their riders. Put them all in the same car for bicyclists only, and you get around the difficulty of so-and-so glaring at the bicyclist who, trying to exit the crowded rail car, accidentally rubbed his greasy chain against so-and-so's briefcase, leaving a black smear.

When the bikes-on-trains idea was floated in the LA Times' Bottleneck Blog, a reporter for that paper, Steve Hymon, summarized the gist: "The rush-hour ban on bikes is rarely enforced and people are bringing them on trains all the time anyway." Comments at Bottleneck seemed to favor permitting folding bikes at all times but continuing restrictions on regular bicycles.

A Montague foldie, courtesy Montagueco.com. Fits into a suitcase, supposedly.

However, should a person have to invest $500 or more into a special bike so they can ride the light rail around the city? This seems anti-democratic to me.

Now to Garcetti's second proposal: "sharrows" that help prevent "getting doored". In Los Angeles county, a bicyclist is supposed to follow the rules of the road and ride WITH traffic in the rightmost lane, unless s/he is turning left. The greatest danger the bicycle commuter faces is the door of a curbside-parked car slamming into them, and possible slamming them off the bike. Into traffic.

So car drivers, please look before you open the door of your parked car. Please don't open it onto a bicyclist.

But bicyclists can also ride in a zone that's a bit safer, just outside the swinging danger of a suddenly-opened door. Some bicyclists don't even know that they have the right to ride taking up the entire lane if road conditions (such as car doors opening) pose danger to them if they ride on the side of the road. Certainly many motorists don't know this either.

Sharrows help bicyclists and motorists alike avoid accidents and increase awareness of bicyclists on the road.

Streetsblog.LA reports that at the July 9 Transportation Committee meeting of the Los Angeles City Council,

the day was historic one for cycling in Los Angeles because there had never been this many bicycle items on a city agenda.  LA City Bicycle Coalition (LACBC) representative Dorothy Le commented that the time is now to make the city more bike friendly.

The two main points of debate were discussion of the city's Bike Master Plan [seeking public commentary and updates here] and a proposal by Eric Garcetti to increase bike markings on public streets.

While it was overwhelmingly agreed to clarify city bus policies with regard to carrying bikes on the cowcatchers on the bus' front end, and to paint sharrows on certain highly trafficked roads in the Hollywood/Historic Filipinotown area of Los Angeles in Garcetti's district, there was no mention of the earlier resolution to allow bikes on a designated car during peak train commute hours.

A query to LA City Council President Garcetti yielded no reply on making Los Angeles' Metro rail more bike-friendly. I'll update if/when I hear from him.

Angelenos have another outlet for advocacy--the Los Angeles Bicycle Master Plan is in the process of being updated after various town hall meetings were scheduled all over LA in February of this year. Plus we'll have the chance this November to vote on Measure R (for Relief)--whether we should tax ourselves to fund, among other things, construction of a "Subway to the Sea." LA County Bicycle Coalition activists are working to insert spending for bicycle commuting programs as part of the Subway to the Sea, which would connect current branches of the Metro light rail to beach communities like Santa Monica and Venice. That'd make it a reality for people like Mr. Cynematic, whose commute takes him from downtown to Santa Monica on a daily basis.

So, Los Angeles city-wide there are moves afoot to make mass transit a real option for those who live and work in this sprawling city.

County-wide, we'll have the Metro Transportation Authority vote, which Angelenos might just cotton to if gas continues to get more expensive. The LA Times breaks down costs to individuals:

If approved by a required two-thirds majority, Measure R -- for relief, as in traffic relief -- would boost Los Angeles County's sales tax rate to 8.75%, tying it with Alameda County's for the highest in California.

Currently, one cent of the county's existing sales tax of 8.25 cents on the dollar goes for transportation projects in perpetuity. Voters approved a half-cent transportation tax in 1980 and another in 1990. The money has helped pay for bus purchases, construction of the Red Line subway and some light rail lines.

The Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. estimates that the new tax would cost each county resident an average of about $25 a year. The half-cent increase would, for example, translate into an extra $125 in sales taxes on the purchase of a $25,000 car for residents of the county.

Statewide, Measure R is up for approval for listing on the November ballot by the California State Assembly. A package of state transportation bills is grinding its way slowly through various committees, no doubt held up by our state's current lack of a budget.

And on the federal level, next year appropriations for the 2009 Transportation Bill will be debated and signed into law, hopefully by a bicycle-friendly President Obama. So have your say NOW--whether it's building in funding for bicycling as part of the mass transit solution, rebuilding America's road and bridge infrastructure as part of an effort to keep jobs at home for Americans, or retrofitting those same roads and highways as part of a crucially-needed safety overhaul (need I say Hurricane Katrina?). Obama has presciently called for infrastructure investment and rebuilding in his Blueprint for Change, and as recently as June 26, 2008, he gave a speech on this topic.

Because while we're retooling those roads and bridges, why not add some bicycle lanes and maybe even an elevated cycleway? A road from yesterday might just be the way forward into the future.

Hey, we Californians dream big.

Cynematic blogs at P i l l o w b o o k, where recently she's talked about metaphors from geek culture as a way to freshen up identity politics, birth rates and child care and immigration, and randy old Galapagos turtles who might yet be fathers.

Comments

[Daisy]

Our city, small as it is, has a Rack and Roll program. Bicyclists can stash their bikes in a rack on the front of a bus, and then take it off and ride when they reach the end of the bus line. I see bikes on the front of our route's bus often. It's gaining popularity, just like the mopeds and scooters are.

[Karen]

Thanks for the update. If only I felt safe enough to ride a bike in the streets of LA...

As for the pink--my son's favorite color was pink when he was around that age, too. And why shouldn't it be? Pink is a gorgeous color!

[cynematic]

Daisy,
Yep, two-wheeled conveyances, whether people-powered or motorized, are much more popular. The true test will be what happens when would-be bicyclists are confronted with ice and snow.

Karen,
Great point about safety--that's coming up in the last section of this series. Without bicyclists adhering to widespread and consistent rules of the road that make their behavior predictable, and without educating motorists about the other vehicles with whom they share the road, it's a recipe for disaster. I talked about this, including my fears as my husband rides to work, in the introduction to the series here: http://momocrats.typepad.com/momocrats/2008/07/revolutions-a-1.html

And yeah, it takes an open-minded and strong dude to rock the pink.

;)