The ‘Nissan Ride Before the Pros’, taking place in downtown Los Angeles
on Sunday May 20, 2012 from 8:00-9:30 AM, will allow cyclists of all
levels to ride on a 5-mile closed circuit course which will be part of
the 2012 Amgen Tour of California’s eighth and final stage taking place
that same day. FREE to participants of all experience levels, the Nissan
Ride Before the Pros will begin and end at the official finish line
where the professional riders competing in the 2012 Amgen Tour of
California will cross to complete the 42.6-mile stage they started in
Beverly Hills on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills earlier that day.

Riders taking part in the event, which begins at L.A. LIVE at the foot
of STAPLES Center, will head up Olive Street passing Pershing Square
before a “sprint” past the historic Biltmore Hotel, up a challenging
incline while heading towards Disney Hall and the Los Angeles County
Music Center. The riders will ultimately reach City Hall and City Hall
Park before making a loop back towards the iconic Jewelry District prior
to arriving back at the L.A. LIVE district.

Along the way, riders will also pass hundreds of iconic downtown
restaurants, businesses, museums and other landmarks with thousands of
residents and fans lining the streets cheering them on while waiting for
the best professional riders in the world to pass by shortly thereafter
along the eight and final stage of the 2012 Amgen Tour of California.

REGISTER HERE

As you may have heard, the first half of Metro’s new Expo Line opened yesterday, with free rides for all to celebrate the return of urban rail service to the Westside after a regrettable gap of nearly seventy years. Seventy years that did their best to make us slaves to the car here in LA. Fortunately, they failed, and the trains are back, better than they were before, with state-of-the-art equipment–and room for bicycles inside. For not much more than the old Pacific Electric used to charge, you can ride the rails from downtown to USC, Culver City, and soon Santa Monica (once Phase 2 is built out). Without having to sit in traffic, staring at the bumper in front of you!

Better yet: you can get there without paying a dime if you take the new bikeway laid out along the right-of-way. Metro has put bike lanes or bike paths along most of the route, and will continue them on to Santa Monica once that stretch is started.

Now, this is LA, so these aren’t Amsterdam-grade bikeways; as you can see in the photo, the lanes on Exposition itself are a bit narrow, and the couple of major transitions I’ve essayed–such as the one at Jefferson and La Cienega–are, not to put too fine a point upon it, just plain stupid. Reminiscent of the horrible diagonal crossing where the Valley’s Orange Line bikeway enters a vast vague asphalt plain with no signs letting you know where it resumes again….

Nevertheless, it is there! And we can ride it. And…we can ask for improvements.

(For an example of another ill-designed Expo crossing, see the LADOT Bike Blog, where you can add a comment if you wish.)

So, yeah, sometimes the bike portion feels like an afterthought–which it probably is, even though Metro has generally been pretty good about accommodating cyclists. LA in particular still hasn’t figured out that bicycles are in fact teh most energy-efficient way to move people around (three times more efficient than walking!), and the most spatially-efficient mode of transport outside of subways, which of course take up almost no surface space. Our “fuel” is nothing more than food we’d eat anyway, and we require little in the way of parking or lane space, leaving plenty of room for homes, businesses, landscaping, civic amenities, what not…all those thing that car culture steals from us.

But we do require some room. The lane stripe could be a little farther from the curb now, couldn’t it, Metro?
 

Santa Monica’s at it again, showing that even in LA County, a small city with a small-city budget can put in a comprehensive network of bicycle infrastructure and watch its residents and businesses profit from it each in their own way.

Yesterday I rode down to the Bay City’s Main Street to see how the new bike corrals were doing, now that all the hoopla’s faded away and they’re just part of the scenery.

And I found that they were doing quite well, even on a cold, gray Friday afternoon: a good number of bikes parked in them (not just the one in the photo, but the two a couple of blocks farther south), and plenty of cyclists riding past in the street’s bike lanes.

Santa Monica has been adding bike lanes or sharrows to cross streets as well, putting the net into “network,” and as I stood at Ocean Park and Main I was pleased to see Santa Monicans pedaling round the corner from one street to the other, wending their way to or from the maze of residential neighborhoods. A slow roll along the back streets let me encounter yet mroe cyclists, and a walk along Main showed me that plenty of the sidewalk racks were also occupied on a cold dull weekday.

From there I had to go through downtown SaMo to get to an appointment with a client, and so got to make use of the sharrows in the left-turn lanes on Colorado, as well as a number of other bike lanes or sharrowed streets on my way to Brentwood.

Busy bike lanes, busy bike racks, busy shops and restaurants. And lots of happy-looking people.

Coincidence? I don’t think so!
 

DTLA’s Finest are throwing an Alley Cat race tonight. 7 Checkpoints all in Downtown LA, about 13 miles long. Quick, Fun and Easy. The “675 Bridge Race” is dedicated to the memory of Melissa “Mouse” Carr.

$5 to register, all proceeds will go to the West Side Invite LA 2012.
Race meets at 4th and Flower
Registration opens at 8:30pm, race starts at 9:30pm SHARP!

For more information head over to the DTLA Messenger’s Blog.

Nathan from Torch Helmets came by the shop to ask us our opinion on his new project. We think it’s great for those who are tired of getting their blinky’s stolen or just wanna be more visible. Support him over at Kickstarter!