No doubt many of you have heard all the ruckus over the latest version of LA’s much-amended bike plan. The draft version of the update to the 1996 plan, which went through so much contention over the last year as damn near every bike advocate in the city weighed in, usually with astonishment at the original draft’s lameness, finally resulted in a document that may very well satisfy almost everyone–except terminally petrol-addled knuckledraggers who would really only be happy if you paved the whole planet anyway.

The bike plan, officially tentative though it is, now resides on its own website, where you can study the document itself and read up on its history. It has also passed through the dry digestive tract of the PLUM-T committee (that is, the combined Planning and Land Use Management and Transportation committees), and now needs only to be reviewed by the City Council, which has for the most part been favorable to any and every version of the plan, as far as I can tell. It may be a “Yes, dear, whatever you’re wearing looks great, now let’s go” moment.

But, it’s only a plan. An intention. An official wish, you might say. An outline of nice things the city might do…if it gets around to them. And, while things have been getting better–hey, the York & 50th bike corral is going in next week (even if it did take a full year after approval)–we do know that bike projects tend to get lost in the winding halls of power.

But there’s something you can do. And I mean you, personally. Because now the plan falls into the spectral hands of the Bike Plan Implementation Team, inevitably known as BPIT.

I say “spectral” because the official word is that this “team” has no members! Whoever shows up on meeting day is the team, and the meetings are, to quote the LADOT Bike Blog, “100% open to the public.”

The first meeting’s taken place already, with folks from the city and from various bike advocacy groups that have been working on the Mighty Draft Plan in attendance. But oddly enough, word of this “100% open to the public” meeting didn’t get out to the public. Which means that even the outsiders were insiders. However, even the best intentioned groups can get carried away by their own comradely momentum and forget the rest of us–so, though some truly fine groups have worked on this, from LACBC to Bikeside to the Bike Writers’ Collective, the rest of us need to be there too.

It was even more frustrating later, after the first meeting, to be told that the meetings were open–but not be told when or where they were held.

Well, a squeaky wheel of my acquaintance got greased, and now the info is public:

Next item on the agenda (yes, there’s already an agenda!): working out details for the implementation of the Top 10 Projects to be first in line for groundbreaking.

Want to be part of what happens in your neighborhood, your street, your bike commute? If you can get there, be there!

And if you can’t get there…well, another squeaky wheel has suggested opening satellite meetings in different parts of town, maybe through an Internet link, with council members’ deputies in attendance so that as many people as possible can be part of this process. But get there physically if you can, because who knows when or whether this will happen.

Because they’re only going to spend the money once. And if it doesn’t get done now….

Read more details on the LADOT Bike Blog.