Mon 4 Feb 2013
Los Angeles Left In The Bicycling Dust Again
Posted by Will under biking, milestones
[4] Comments
I just read that the city of Pasadena has opened up its first “bicycle boulevard,” which comes during the same weekend that the city of Glendale unveiled its brand new Trail Safety Patrol Program. The best LA could do is get its mayor to sign a bike parking ordinance — not insignificant, mind you. But still somewhat indicative of a gridlocked metropolis that has its head stuck up a collective tailpipe.
Speaking of Glendale, it was my pleasure this Super Bowl Sunday morning (before heading down with Susan to my friends Arnold and Martha’s place in Newport Coast and cheering on the Ravens to victory) to be one of the first to be of service in a volunteer capacity in the Verdugo Mountains as part of the freshly minted program.
For my first excursion (timelapsed above), I and my fellow volunteers Paul Rabinov and Mark Kobayashi rode up into the Verdugos on a purely magnificent high-definition visibility day via the Beaudry North Motorway from the trailhead to the benches at the intersection of the Brand and Verdugo motorways before coming back to visit Tongva Peak and then heading back down to the trailhead via the Beaudry South Motorway.
It was an absolutely amazing day to be on the trails, introducing ourselves and the patrol to practically everyone we met along the way.
If Los Angeles was even half as open-minded and forward thinking about its open space trails being rightfully accessible to all modes of user instead of patently and institutionally discriminatory against the type I happen to favor then I’d be devoting my time to a trail safety patrol program in that city. But it’s not and it’s a safe bet to say they never will be. So Glendale? I’m all and proudly and bright-yellowly yours.
Glendale Trail Safety Patrol volunteer Mark Kobayahsi. and my smugly satisfied, blindlingly yellow-fied self atop Tongva Peak on such an incredible clear day. Photo by fellow volunteer Paul Rabinov.
Well, I think finally having the Bike parking ordinance signed into law is a pretty big deal. In the end this will be a great thing for cycling in the Los Angeles region.
Building a larger bike community depends on a tripod of things: we need working bikes, one needs a place that’s reasonable to ride on, and you need a place to park it when you’re not on it. Bike parking is a third of what’s needed.
One more bike boulevard is nice, but it’s only one street. This law is for all developemnt in the largest city around – that’s a lot of bike parking. I know in future yerars I’ll be using it. And that’s the big deal.
As I said Eric, the bike parking ordinance is not insignificant. Yes, it will certainly pay city-wide dividends and it’s a great leg of that tripod you mention. Apologies for dismissing it while also failing to articulate why Pasadena’s “one more bike boulevard” and Glendale’s trail safety program specifically shame Los Angeles that will proudly continue to criminalize mountain biking on its open space trails in Griffith and Elysian parks — and will most surely chalk up yet another year remaining in denial and inactive on the long-available 4th Street Bike Boulevard concept.
Personally I’ll find a place to park my bike with or without the city’s help (hell, I’ll also ride without another drop of paint used for a sharrow or bike lane stripe), but I do recognize the importance of the parking ordinance (as well as lanes and sharrows), which itself took about a year-and-a-half by the city to unwind all the bureaucratic red tape to finally get it under the mayor’s pen.
What I also bitterly recognize is that mountain cyclists are the bastard stepchild of LA’s bike community, never more readily shunned and sacrificed than when efforts to include them were summarily excised from the LA Bicycle Masterplan when it was updated a couple/three years ago. I also am made only all to aware of the city’s blinders every single one of the hundreds upon hundreds of times I’ve ridden 4th street this last seven years wherein I’ve been wistfully disappointed at what it could be versus what the city continues to say it can’t be. So I guess you enjoy and champion your leg of the tripod that’s grown in LA and I’ll embrace and defend the ones that seem only to prosper outside its borders.
Uh, riding a bike in Glendale in the city as opposed to mountain biking is asking for death. Number one most dangerous city in America for pedestrians and cyclists. I’m not sure what dust were talking about, but most people use bikes as transportation vs mountain biking. So it’s great that you can ride the hills in Glendale but I can actually get somewhere in Los Angeles.
Yang, I’d rather have someone come into my blog interested in dialogue rather than dismissal, but I thank you anyway for sharing your thoughts because it’s always good to be reminded there are people like you out there ready to over-exaggerate (“asking for death,” really?) who then condescendingly dismiss mountain biking because it’s not as practical as road cycling. Perhaps recreational road cyclists should be excluded from your closed-minded equation as well since they’re not actually “getting somewhere” either? Me, I prefer to think it’s not about the destination but the journey, whether that’s across town or across a ridge. And not that you care, but I do exponentially more on-road riding than off-road riding — thousands of miles on the streets versus dozens of miles on the trails. As to the “dust” I refer to whose meaning you weren’t able to grasp; it’s the stuff that enlightened, forward-thinking municipalities like Glendale and Pasadena leave Los Angeles in. In Glendale’s case that city accepts and embraces trail access for mountain cyclists, rather than criminalize them as LA has and will continue to. But what am I doing wasting my time talking about inclusion with someone like you so ready to exclude?