February 19, 2012
The city of Los Angeles has one practice in particular that frustrates me…. (Only one? you say?)
Well, this particular one is its long-standing refusal to learn from the experiences of other cities, even other cities in the US–and even other cities in California! I have heard this refusal articulated quite openly in bike planning meetings. I guess the disease of “American Exceptionalism” has infected our town, because our administrations have tended to believe that Los Angeles is utterly and entirely different from all other cities everywhere, and therefore must constantly re-invent the square wheel…thus often failing where others succeed.
Though this is beginning slowly to change–we may actually put up Oakland-style wayfinding signage soon(ish), now that the State of California has condescended to make that part of the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices. Though, to be sure, Sacramento did so pretty much because Oakland–poor and struggling Oakland!–had the sense and iinitiative to put such signs up first, and show us that they work.
Well, of course they work! They’ve been in Portland for years and years! They’ve been in cities overseas for decades! And those cities are not populated by giant bugs from Mars! Regular old homo sapiens live, work, and ride there, very happily, thank you–and live longer while they’re at it.
Closer to home, we know that Long Beach has installed separated bike lanes along two major streets, and is configuring its second bicycle boulevard–much to the joy of its merchants as well as its residents (and visitors!).
And even closer to downtown, there is Santa Monica….
Bless ‘em, if Santa Monica keeps it up they will make Portland look like Poughkeepsie!
That’s why I made that photo up there so big, so you can see a tiny sliver of SaMo’s bike infra….
That’s the corner of Colorado and Second; besides the signs you see in the photo (don’t miss the smaller one on the left, that requires drivers to “Yield to bikes”), both streets have bike lanes, and both have sharrows in the car lanes next to the bike lanes, and Colorado has sharrows in the left turn lanes, and…kittycorner from the signs is the Bikecenter, where a handful of car parking slots in the big public garage have been converted into over a hundred bike parking spaces, showers for commuters, a repair station, and more.
Clearly, there are lessons to be learned here–just a few miles away. LA had better start doing its homework.
Tags: bicycles, bike lanes, bikecenter, Los Angeles, Santa Monica, share the road, sharrows, signs, wayfinding
[...] shouldn’t surprise anyone that L.A. has lessons to learn from cities near and far. Work has started on the new Sunset Triangle Plaza at the former [...]
Pingback by A jerk driver nearly takes off a cyclist’s arm, and shows the need to change the law « BikingInLA — February 21, 2012 @ 12:45 am
Indeed it is curious. I might guess that a city the size of Los Angeles (2nd largest by pop, 3rd by area I think) has its hands full with metaphorically putting out fires. That said, the city does send folks to conferences, to panel discussions, and on fact-finding field trips, so we should expect greater cross-pollination.
From my experience with my own city of Beverly Hills (pop 35k), though, it’s lack of curiosity and imagination. We don’t have too many fires. We send our folks to conferences. Our electeds go to conventions. I see no excuse not to learn.
Instead, as we saw with a simple bike rack program, our transportation officials not only go it alone, reinventing the wheel that already rolls on in other cities (as you mention), but they go it blind. Their total ignorance of the most basic precepts (how to choose a rack, how to locate it, and where they’re needed) is laughable.
Recently I had a means of comparison. I called my neighboring city, West Hollywood, to ask about rack standards that they use. I was called back by an intern (as BH also uses), but this guy was informed. He spoke intelligently. So I’m left wondering why our city leaders say we hire the best, and indeed we pay for the best, but too often wind up with uninformed, incurious less-than-ambitious staffers. And I’m not talking about the interns.
Comment by Mark Elliot — March 2, 2012 @ 11:31 pm