Cyclists are biking over en masse to LA City Hall this Friday, because a meeting of the Transportation Committee of the LA City Council’s going to be taking up a number of bike-related topics, ranging from the Cyclists’ Bill of Rights to the possibility of a bike sharing program in L.A.

When: Friday, Nov. 21, from 1 pm - 4 pm
Where: LA City Hall, Room 1010, 200 N. Spring St., Los Angeles.
Cost: Free, of course.

To prep for the meeting, Damien Newton at Streetsblog LA’s been taking an in-depth look at each of the bike-related items on the agenda, which include:

>> Bike licenses: Few cyclists know licenses are required — and even fewer know where to get them — yet the LA Police have run out of licenses at times, showing that the licensing program’s ill-funded and badly run. The Friday meeting will discuss these issues.

>> Bike sharing: The Council will consider whether or not to ask LADOT to begin soliciting proposals to bring bike sharing to Los Angeles. But as LADOT has already pointed out, “the City still lacks a continuous network to accommodate bicycle use for the bike sharing program.” As much as I’d like a bike sharing program NOW, I think the first step has to be to get an infrastructure in place.

>> Cyclists’ Bill of Rights: The Council will consider an LA City Council resolution based on the Cyclists’ Bill of Rights, a list drafted up by LA Cyclists and approved at a few neighborhood councils. Bikers are afraid that the Bill will get amended by the Transportation Committee, however. Read the Bill here.

>> Bicycle Master Plan: LA held a bunch of meetings back in February about updating the city’s Bicycle Master Plan. The meeting should provide an update as to what’s happening.

>> Bike Sharrows: In July, a pilot program to see whether bike sharrows would work in LA got started. The Friday meeting should provide an update as to how that’s going.

Check out the full agenda here (PDF).

Relatedly, Colin Beavan, aka No Impact Man, in New York notes some of the odd conflicts that come up in the absence of an adequate bike infrastructure. Apparently, a neighbor threatened to call the police to remove one of Colin’s rickshaws: “She says it makes the street look untidy, and the implication is that it brings the neighborhood downmarket.”

Colin admits that, in the absence of adequate bike infrastructure, New Yorkers are forced to tie up their bikes to all manner of objects, which does make the street look somewhat untidy. That said, Colin also points out that cars really REALLY ugg up our ‘hoods — yet because we’ve become accustomed to the pollution, noise, and general uggifying nature of cars, people don’t complain about them in the same way they complain about, say, bicyclists riding on the sidewalk or taking up too much of the road.

“How do we get people past the limitations of the old ideas to see the possibility of the new?” asks Colin. Perhaps pushing for a better bicycle infrastructure is the best place to start. As it is now, we don’t have adequate network of bike lanes and routes, so bicyclists but up against both pedestrians on the sidewalks and drivers on the road, at times violently. We could argue about who has “rights” to the road and how people “should” share the road, but the simple fact is that we just don’t have streets that encourage cars, bicyclists, and pedestrians to peacefully coexist.

Planning to bike to Friday’s meeting? You can join up with cyclists from your neighborhood and ride together.

Photo by SeraphimC

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