We are closing at 5:00 today cuz we all have hot dates planned.  Get some!

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.

Joined the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition’s second “Sunday Funday” ride today, which rolled a convoluted path all over the Westside today, giving participants a tour of bicycle infrastructure old, new, and future in Los Angeles, Santa Monica, Culver City, Beverly Hills, Brentwood, and Westwood.

Sharrows and bike lanes aplenty in some places, a whole bunch of nothing in others, and a couple of relics of half-assed bicycle planning of years past here and there. Pretty amusing all around, and often gratifying. I remember riding around LA as a younger man when the sum total of accommodations for cyclists comprised the beach path and the lanes on Venice Boulevard.

Though there’s a long way to go, it’s different now…at least in most cities we cruised.

While the sum total of bicycle infrastructure in Beverly Hills consists of ten or twelve fancy bike racks, the brand-new Better Bike BH is working hard, as we reported a while back on this blog, to bring that benighted burg into the 21st century in a big way, with hopes (I won’t say plans just yet) for bike lanes on Santa Monica Boulevard to connect the ones that currently grace that street in West Hollywood and Century City.

The Culver City Bike Coalition was present and recounting plans to increase the current bike lane network (total: four miles!) into something a little more comprehensive, making it easier for people to get to all those handy bike racks in that burg’s downtown.

Santa Monica Spoke spoke out too; there’s been a lot of bike love spread in the seaside village.

And even LA had a few new things to show off: the sharrows on Westholme, the high-speed bike lanes on Santa Monica west of Century City.

All of these things came about not because Santa Claus was bored one summer and gave out extra presents; they came about because people like you worked through the grassroots organizations I mentioned above to keep after the officials and bureaucrats who are in charge of all this stuff and who are, after all, supposed to give their constituents what they need.

For too long, the only people asking were drivers, whining for their endless asphalt handouts. The end result has been a culture that forces people to drive whether they want to or not, whether it’s destroying our culture, and our planet, or not.

But it’s not easy to change the habits of half a century. You can do it only by getting together, doing your officials’ thinking for them, and then making a big enough noise so they can hear you.

That’s why these groups need you to join up. One voice is lost; many voices will be heard. So I’m going to list them all below, with links; if you live in a part of LA County that they serve, join up and help out. As management guru Peter Drucker said, “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”

Because if we don’t do it, “they” sure as hell won’t do it for us.

• Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition
  Umbrella group for the entire county
  
• Better Bike Beverly Hills
  New group facing an uphill battle; if you live or work in BH or ride through there regularly, hook up now! Santa Monica Blvd. will be repaved in a year or two; if they don’t make room for bikes there now, it might be decades before we have another chance!
  
• Culver City Bicycle Coalition
  Culver City is growing up; it has a busy downtown now, great food, a nightlife scene, and the Venice and Ballona Creek bike routes pass right through it. But there’s still nothing much beyond a few bike racks in the city itself.
  
• Santa Monica Spoke
  A new group that’s been helping SM become one of the best places in the county to ride a bike!
  
• Bikeside LA
  Want something more radical? Bikeside might be your choice. Old-school hardcore activism shaking up the staid Westside!
  

Okay, that’s it for today–I’m keeping it on the Westside, since that’s where I rode this morning.

Click a link; join a group; change a city. This is what “Yes, we can!” really meant!

We have to take some time off this Saturday to wish our friends at Echo Park Cycles Good Luck And Goodbye. They are closing up shop and there is a going away party with music and mayhem. We will be closing the shop at 6:00. Sorry for the inconvenience but we owe it to our friends.