The draft Los Angeles Bicycle Plan‘s finally ready for Angelenos to review — and complaints are already pouring in, even before cyclists have had time to read the 212-page plan.
What’s the problem already? Alex Thompson at Westside Bikeside’s pissed that public comments on the plan must be turned in by Nov. 6 — which gives cyclists just 6 weeks to read and weigh in. That “ridiculous deadline” makes things difficult for slow readers and slow-acting neighborhood councils, according to Alex, who wants the comment deadline to be pushed back to January 4th, 2010.
Like Alex, Bike Girl calls the 6-week deadline “infeasible” — and adds on the usual complaint about pretty much every set of public meetings: The 4 planned meetings about the draft are at inconvenient places and times.
There’s a part of me that thinks it’s odd to complain that the city took too long to draft things up — yet complain that cyclists need a lot more time to read said draft. “Bike Girl has a very busy schedule of bike riding, bike racing, bike wrenching, bike blogging, oh, and working” — That may be, but I’d like to think some of the city officials also needed time for bike riding, racing, wrenching, and blogging — in addition to working. And drafting up a 212-page report — which according to the press release adds on “approximately 696 miles of new bikeways and new policies related to implementation, education, enforcement, engineering, parking, transit integration, maintenance and evaluation” — does take time….
That doesn’t mean I think it’s okay the city dragged out the draft for an extra 6 months — I guess my point’s that the “I’m a busy cyclist and need more time to read 212 pages!” complaint seems a rather selfish one when combined with the “they take too damn long just to write 212 pages!” complaint.
That said, Alex’s explanation of why neighborhood councils need more time to comment on the policy does seem more legitimate, considering how neighborhood council meetings happen just once a month. And the times of the public meetings — the latest meetings begins at 5 pm on weekdays, not an easy time for anyone with a regular 9-to-5 to bike over — seems like bad planning on the city’s part.
The city’s press release of the draft does mention, however, that neighborhood councils and other groups can ask for a presentation of the draft bicycle plan at meetings. This means that if YOU want a public presentation and discussion of the draft bike plan in YOUR ‘hood, you can simply ask for it, whether through your local bike org or through your neighborhood council.
So:
>> If you, like Bike Girl, are complaining that there’s no meeting in your ‘hood, spend that energy contacting your neighborhood council or local transit group and only commence complaining if your org’s request for a special presentation gets turned down by the city. Not willing to put in that effort? Then your other option’s to simply acknowledge the fact that YOU have chosen not to help make a meeting happen in your hood — then email your comments on the draft to Jordann Turner at jordann.turner@lacity.org and be done with it.
>> If you’re complaining that your neighborhood council won’t have time to comment, then follow Alex’s advice and call for an extension of the public comment deadline. (Conversely, if you’re complaining that the bike plan process is dragging out too long, Alex’s blog comment section’s wide open and you can register your complaint to him there)
>> And if you’re complaining the 212-page draft takes a long time to read, I can assure you that:
* Once you take out the 15 pages of front matter, 17 pages of maps, and 4 pages left intentionally blank — plus the many pages of diagrams and charts (like the one above) that seem to make up at least a quarter of the remaining pages, we’re really talking about 130 pages, many with cute photos and illustrations to push you along.
* As I used to tell my students, simply commencing reading will take you a much shorter time than complaining, blogging, Facebooking, and tweeting about how long it is before commencing reading.
* You and your bike buddies can each take a chapter and summarize the rest for each other, thereby helping move the plan along while lightening the reading load.
Happy reading!
Thanks for the excellent commentary… I tend to think that the overall process has been pretty flawed – and that it’s ok for cyclists to be critical of the process before we read the plan. There aren’t many meetings. The overall process isn’t transparent -ie: the public can’t see the actual products that the consultants turned in… only the 6-month later product… which, appears to me to have been de-fanged.
One response to what you state (or quote?) above “take out the … 17 pages of maps” … I actually think that the 17 pages of maps are the core of the plan – the part most worth reviewing.
So… I’ve read about half the plan, and will keep slogging through it as fast as I can… and I am planning on doing some commentary on it soon – over at LA Streetsblog – probably this Friday.
Comment by Joe Linton — September 28, 2009 @ 10:12 am
Well, I do agree that the overall process has been pretty flawed — and so perhaps my outlook’s a bit too optimistic :P That said, I do tend to be a “what can we do now?” kind of person — so I sometimes do get frustrated that a lot of energy seems to get spent complaining about past flaws in the process than in taking action now.
To me it seems essential to plan more public meetings in more neighborhoods — a mechanism for which seems to exist (at least according to the city’s press release), so I’m hoping more people will take action to make this happen instead of simply complaining that there aren’t enough meetings in enough places (and then not going).
To that end: I’ve been in touch with SM City Council Member Kevin McKeown about this — there are connection issues between LA / SM as seen in the all-important maps, as you point out :) — who says our best chance for a meeting (since the city of LA may not want to spend time / money making presentations in another city) may be to try to arrange a regional presentation through the Westside Cities Council of Governments. I’ll let you know what happens with that.
Comment by Siel — September 28, 2009 @ 10:21 am
Great analysis with feasible solutions. And thanks for the link to the plan, etc.
Comment by April — September 28, 2009 @ 10:21 am
Some more explanation could have been provided but the Bike Girl post I think was mostly a sarcastic one, and the reference to infeasible is a poke at the fact that many streets formerly planned for bike lanes are now labeled “infeasible”. When the map was apparently accidentally released early weeks ago there was lot of talk about the new “unfeasible” designation of streets in the plan, something that has not changed in this release.
I plan to go through the document and write a more detailed post about the bike plan soon, but the LADOT track record on bicycle issues does not inspire confidence as much as I would like to be optimistic about things. Some communities in the nowhere zone of meetings have lobbied for meetings and presentations and been denied. The LACBC started lobbying for sharrows in the absence of being able to secure bike lanes on many streets 3 or 4 years ago. It got pushed back, pushed back, promised for this year, pushed back some and maybe next year we will see paint on the ground. When it takes a department 4-5 years to put some stencils on the ground despite Long Beach going from concept to paint in half a year, it’s not hard to view anything the LADOT says concerning bikes with a load of suspicion that any action will follow. They seriously said the sharrows might be slippery as an excuse for delays, despite their wide spread application in Portland and Seattle, where it actually gets wet.
Things might not seem so bad riding around Santa Monica, but that isn’t what most people in Los Angeles have to deal with, it’s a different world in places like Hollywood, Downtown, and East and South LA. Maybe try riding in it and you’ll relate to the pessimism that creeps up on bicycle advocates from time to time. It’s a constant battle to try and be positive about things when you are periodically honked at, cut off, nearly clipped by mirrors and having trash thrown at you riding in some parts of LA. Then you come home and read on the forums someone you know or a friend of friend is in bandages and having to replace a bike after being hit by a hit and run driver to cap off the evening. Sometimes the only way for me to stay positive is to not read what is going on, because the more you know, the worse things are out there.
Comment by Gary K. — September 28, 2009 @ 10:40 am
Thanks for the “infeasible” explanation — That makes more sense :P
I don’t disagree with you at all about how bad things can be on the road, or how bad LA’s track record has been when it comes to bike infrastructure. Certainly there is room for skepticism — but I just think there’s still space for cautious optimism. The plan, albeit v. late, is finally here. And I’m hoping we’ll still all have enough cautious optimism and energy to stay involved with it and take action — via working to get more meetings set up, etc. — to make it as strong as it can be.
Comment by Siel — September 28, 2009 @ 10:50 am
I’m still optimistic or wouldn’t be so interested, but was trying to put some of the pessimism into context and I can relate when fellow LA cycling bloggers can get frustrated. Besides being very busy the past several months, getting too negative was one of the reasons I took a break from writing.
One bit of positive news I want to dig more into in the document is it looks like they actually have some good ideas for the “Bicycle Friendly” street designation. When I first saw the map I thought it was going to be PR fluff like Class III bicycle routes. If they actually do things like round abouts and other traffic calming and alternatives to constant stop signs which suck for bicycle travel, then there could be some good things coming, hopefully if the document goes into action this time around.
The infeasible designation really needs to go though, even if not labeled for bike lane, at least something less self defeating than infeasible. What an up hill battle it would be to fight for bicycle improvements on a corridor with an infeasible label hanging over it.
Comment by Gary K. — September 28, 2009 @ 11:04 am
I completely agree that right now the important questions to be asking are along the lines of “What can we do now” and “where can we squeeze some improved conditions for bikes onto our streets, etc.?”
A couple responses to items above:
- the maps weren’t released accidentally. They were released intentionally in advance of the text
- the “infeasible” designation (“PCI – Proposed but Currently Infeasible” which was on the initial draft maps released in May) has been replaced by “potential bicycle lane” … which is definitely a semantic improvement… but not the end of the discussion.
The plan now has “proposed lanes” and “potential lanes.” Proposed is apparently a sort of medium-strong-maybe and potential is sort of a weak-maybe.
I would suggest that many of the streets designated potential (formerly-known-as-infeasible) should actually go in the proposed category.
For example, Reseda Boulevard, (a portion of which was actually just painted with bike lanes last week – yay!) is still just listed as potential (in May, listed as “infeasible”)… all that to say that I think bicyclist might do well to push for a lot of the now “potential” lanes to be moved into the “proposed” category.
Comment by Joe Linton — September 28, 2009 @ 11:37 am
The proposed bikeway maps they have for download still read infeasible, so I was not aware they had changed the name of that designation.
Comment by Gary K. — September 28, 2009 @ 11:49 am
There are new maps – see chapter 4 of the plan. As far as I can tell, they’re more-or-less the same maps, but the “infeasible” wording is now “potential”
Comment by Joe Linton — September 28, 2009 @ 11:55 am
A much more constructive article than that which I just read at streetsblog (though Box’s analysis is informative). Nonetheless, all cyclists angry at the delay and at the expedited comment time frame are right to be so–we pay the people down at LADOT, and so when they pull saboteur like stunts at cyclists expense ON OUR DOLLAR, believe there will be anger.
Anyhow, I was upset to see no Bike Plan presentations scheduled for the East/NorthEast side, and so I’m thinking about going ahead and setting up one of these “requestable” workshops at the Bike Oven.
Comment by ramonchu — September 29, 2009 @ 2:53 pm
Siel, Any update on a meeting about the bicycle plan?
Comment by Darren Moore — October 16, 2009 @ 7:05 pm
I am not as cute as Siel, but I can answer… The city of LA is hosting 5 meetings on the plan – starting October 22nd (this Thursday.) See the meetings listed here:
http://www.labikeplan.org/
Comment by Joe Linton — October 19, 2009 @ 12:07 am
Wait — So it looks like a Northeast meeting got added! Who made that happen?
Comment by Siel — October 19, 2009 @ 5:41 pm
People always want to complaint about anything, including a bike plan that would no doubt help many other people so vehemently opposed to it. It just goes to show the entitlement issues we have in America today…
Comment by Hissing Kitty — February 6, 2011 @ 8:31 am