Failing Moves From Caltrans to Metro

From SoapBoxLA:

Photo by Mr. Roullier

It’s a sad day for Caltrans, a really sad day for the cyclists of the Caltrans Bicycle Advisory Committee!

Caltrans District 7 Director Doug Failing announced his resignation from Caltrans today, informing the Caltrans staff of his move to the Metro where he will serve as the Executive Director of the Highway Program.

Doug Failing is an uncommon man, open and honest and forthright and direct and so completely driven by integrity that he inspires those around him to reach for greatness.

He began working for Caltrans many years ago as a brand new Engineer and one of his first assignments was to stand on the freeway on-ramps with flyers that explained how the Diamond lanes worked. He has come a long way since those early days.

Somewhere along the way he earned a reputation for his commitment to “on time and under budget” performance which complemented his pursuit of innovations in management, funding, communications and technology.

More specific to my endeavors, Doug Failing is the man responsible for bringing together cyclists from Ventura and Los Angeles Counties to form the Caltrans Bicycle Advisory Committee, a group that he leads and that meets bi-monthly to advise him on cycling issues in the District 7 region. His commitment to making “routine accommodations” come to life and actually mean something for the cyclists on the road set a standard against which all others will be compared.

I am truly sad to see Doug Failing leave his post at Caltrans, I think it is a tremendous loss for the Caltrans team and for the community as a whole. At the same time, I know that the Metro’s new CEO, Art Leahy, is making a smart move by positioning Doug Failing in a power position.

Ultimately, this move is based on what’s best for Doug and his family and I trust that he finds his new position rewarding both professionally and financially.

We all owe Doug Failing a big round of thanks for his contributions at Caltrans.

Stephen Box

Now I’m listening to Darkthrone, and they are also way too real for me.

Westside BikeSIDE versus green LA girl

When two westside PhD bloggers and a Bike Girl collide and what a measly DTLA B.A. blogger has to say about it.

I’m listening to entry level black metal right now on Pandora.  Dissection, Gorgoroth, Behemoth, etc.

Here are there main arguments.

Alex of Westside BikeSIDE:

- The LA Bike Master plan was released 6 months behind schedule.

- The plan may prevent Neighborhood Councils participation because the appropriate committee meeting for Mar Vista’s NC to pass a motion to be discussed in front of the general body before the November 6 plan deadline has already passed.

From Westside BikeSIDE:

. . . there is almost no chance that Neighborhood Councils can react.  For instance for the Mar Vista Community Council in my neighborhood to comment is almost impossible.  It meets on the 2nd Tuesday of the month.  Therefore their November meeting occurs after the comment deadline.  Any motion commenting on the plan will have to be voted on at the October 13th meeting.  However, to bring a motion to the general body you must either pass it through a committee, or the Chair must place it on the agenda.  The appropriate committee meetings – the Planning and Land Use Management Committee and the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee meeting – already took place.  The only way through is to exercise the Chair’s power – an unlikely and undesireable option.  Now multiply that by 89 NCs citywide.

Alex, you spelled undesirable wrong.  There is nothing you can do to take that back.  Whatevs, I confuse there and their, but not they’re, I think it is the apostrophe.

Bike Girl:

Bike Girl could also submit comments online, but oh! only until November 6th. Bike Girl has a very busy schedule of bike riding, bike racing, bike wrenching, bike blogging, oh, and working. How could she possibly get through 212 pages, with 351 pages of appendices by then?

Siel of green LA girl:

- Alex didn’t read the plan before complaining about it.

-It is hypocritical to complain that the city took too much time to release the plan and complain that cyclists need more time to read the plan to comment.

From green LA girl:

There’s a part of me that thinks it’s odd to complain that the city took too long to draft things up — yet complain that cyclists need a lot more time to read said draft.

. . . my point’s that the “I’m a busy cyclist and need more time to read 212 pages!” complaint seems a rather selfish one when combined with the “they take too damn long just to write 212 pages!” complaint.

Siel offers advice to Alex and Bike Girl:

You and your bike buddies can each take a chapter and summarize the rest for each other, thereby helping move the plan along while lightening the reading load.

As I used to tell my students, simply commencing reading will take you a much shorter time than . . . blogging . . .

My pointsish:

Selfish bike buddies?  Please master Siel, let me be your student.  Where can I get some used entry level Pradas to increase my personal brand?  You praise Westside BikeSIDE and Bike Girl and then you diss them?  jk, lol, seriously I need some crispy looking shoes at my price point.  I like hipster shoes like Keep, and Toms, and Vans, can you help me?  How about those new Adidas fixie sambas I saw on every single fucking traxie blog.

Anyone who has worked to improve cycling conditions in Los Angeles knows that the city does not care.  Maybe I’m too radical, but where is the ban on automobiles (I’m not completely kidding)?  There is little to no bicycle or public transit infrastructure in LA and it is not asking too much in times of ecological crises to create radical change.  The red light ticket I got this weekend going to work is almost a months rent for me.  The city wasn’t there for the Bike Kitchen, Bike Oven, or BikeroWave.  Lately, the city denies the simplest requests to install desperately needed bicycle racks.  LA used to have light rail tracks covering the city.  LA is one of the worst cities in America to lock your bicycle unnattended.  My last bicycle was stolen from upstairs inside Kill Radio just weeks ago along with Jim C. from Orange 20’s wrong side drive side Brooklyn (wtf?).  The city doesn’t pay for the food that is regularly made and distributed via bicycle to people that have no homes across the city.  Out of desparation, after seeing our friends harassed, hurt, and killed on the streets, we paint our own sharrows and bike lanes and put up our own memorials just to get from point a to point b without dieing.  I ride my bicycle because I can’t afford a car.  As someone with 3 years everyday riding experience in Los Angeles (East LA to Venice, South LA to the Valley) and as someone who has been paid to ride bicycle across the country I don’t believe it is safe for the average person to ride a bicycle in Los Angeles and I recommend the non adrenaline addicted to do otherwise.  But, I’m always posi, so do what you can to help what you think needs to be helped, take a little control of your world, make it your own.  <3

The bananas and bees are going to extinct in 50 years.  There is a trash vortex in every ocean.  Some guy swam across the north pole, and I can’t wait for girls gone wild north pole addition.  BRING ON 2012!  “Mommy, what happened to the bees?”  Exactly.  Property is theft.

There’s my rant.  RANT RANT RANT.

What do you gaise think?  Is Alex being too hard on the Bike Plan?  Have you read the 212 page “master” plan, I haven’t ?  How should we split up the reading?  I call the pages with cute photos and illustrations only because I don’t read anymore.  Is the plan already defunct?  Who is going to the meetings?  What are you going to bring?  I’m bringing a turkey sandwhich.  Haven’t even seen me write this many words in one blog post before?  Me neither.

What’s the point of blogging anyway?  Have you seen these guys?

Los Angeles Meanest City in America?

The National Coalition for the Homeless and National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty put out a report on 14 July called Homes not Handcuffs documenting the criminalization of homeless people in America.

From NCH:

“Criminalizing homelessness is not only an inhumane way of approaching people who are poor and vulnerable, but is counterproductive in dealing with the problem of homelessness,” said Tulin Ozdeger, NLCHP Civil Rights Program Director. “It costs more to jail a person than it does to provide permanent supportive housing.”

The report also includes information about costs studies examining criminalization measures, constitutional challenges to measures that criminalize homelessness, how criminalization measures violate human rights law, as well as constructive alternatives to criminalization.

The report recommends that cities adopt constructive measures, such as developing innovative strategies to allocate more city funds for permanent housing, job training and services for homeless people. In addition, NLCHP and NCH recommend that the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, recently charged by Congress with developing such alternatives, urge cities to stop criminalizing homelessness and adopt such constructive measures instead.

Top Ten Meanest Cities:

1. Los Angeles , CA
2. St. Petersburg . FL
3. Orlando , FL
4. Atlanta , GA
5. Gainesville , FL
6. Kalamazoo
7. San Francisco
8. Honolulu
9. Bradenton
10. Berkeley

Thanks LAFNB for this info.  Read the entire report here.

LAPD Blames Cyclists for Hummer Incident

“. . . complete takeover of the streets, all lanes without movement.” 0:14

My favorite quotes:

“You’re lying, you’re fucking lying . . .” 0:49

“I would question three people looking out of a window versus people who were right there on the street who gave a very different oppinion.” 2:48

Thanks, ronkayela!

“I have a lightsaber, do you believe me?”

From Westside BikeSIDE!:

Friday I wrote about an incident downtown where a Hummer driver hit a cyclist, and the police let him drive away after pulling him over with a bicycle lodged beneath his car. Since then additional details have come forward in a witness statement by one of the cyclists:

I urged the police officer that this man was guilty of a crime and claimed to have had a gun, but the police officer told me ”Did you see a gun?” I told him that I believed the man and that I didnt need visual verification to be terrified. The officer then told me quote ”I have a lightsaber, do you believe me?” and walked away.

(artist Erock’s rendition of a new era of community policing foreshadowed by the officer above)

I’ve heard officers make pithy remarks like that before, and I usually take it in stride as the jawboning that occurs between officers and dissatisfied citizens. However, when it is a pithy remark dismissing the serious allegation that someone claimed to be armed, someone who is now leaving the scene unrestrained, I think it’s inappropriate. Keep in mind this is one of the passengers who later returned to the scene and threatened to beat the cyclists up, coming back “60 crips deep”, if they talked to police.

Of the witnesses I’ve spoken with, many of them have said that most of the officers handling the incident were decent and helpful. They isolated the commanding officer at the scene, Officer Cho, as the exception, saying that he mixed personal bias with his work. However, this witnesses report suggests that the other officers were not uniformly professional. Here’s a longer excerpt:

XXXXX was hit while traveling in the farthest right lane of traffic from behind by a black hummer h3. The hummer then came to a stop at the red light of 7th and Los angeles( twenty or so feet from where XXXXX was hit). They then rolled all of the windows down and told us to get away because ”they had a gun\guns” . . .

. . . Following this a large(6′2”+) Black man dressed in jeans and a long white t-shirt stepped out of the passenger side and put his arms out saying ”back the fuck away I have a gun”. His party urged him back into the vehicle, and when YYYYY (of our group) said ”GET THE VIN NUMBER!” the driver of the black hummer h3 put it in drive, and drove over three more bicycles, almost taking riders with him . . .

. . . Sometime between when the police stopped him and they ran over the bikes, the black man in the white long t shirt got out of the car and started to walk back towards 7th and los angeles. I urged the police officer that this man was guilty of a crime and claimed to have had a gun, but the police officer told me ”Did you see a gun?” I told him that I believed the man and that I didnt need visual verification to be terrified. The officer then told me quote ”I have a lightsaber, do you believe me?” and walked away.

What irks me about this is how cavalier people are being about weapons. Officer Cho intimated that he might have used his personal firearm were he the Hummer driver. This officer seems to dismiss the possibility of the passenger carrying a gun as trivial. Finally, LAPD let this motorist drive away from the scene after stopping him when there was a bicycle lodged underneath the car. The 2009 H3 has a curb weight of 4695 lbs, making it a pretty serious weapon (and it was reportedly used as such.) How can someone suspected of hit and run be allowed to drive away from the scene?

“Is This on Regular News?” -BrandTu

CBS 2 News Reports on Ghost Bike Memorial in Los Angeles | ubrayj02

Ghost Bike Memorial for Jesus Castillo TONIGHT

From Ridazz:

Ghost Bike Memorial for Fallen Cyclist Jesus Castillo in Echo Park Tonight

Glendale Blvd. just south of the Sunset Bridge

8pm

View Larger Map

Posted by brassknuckle

HUMMER vs. Cyclists in DTLA

From SoapBoxLA’s Twitter:

~ BOARD OF POLICE COMMISSIONERS – Cyclists ride to protest Hummer vs. Cyclists incident in DTLA last night. Tues the 28 @ 9am. Parker Center.

From Ridazz:

” 4 bike run over by a hummer tonight. new tallbike is totaled cops
let the driver go. M@ “

“‘mini_penny: Accident in dtla on killah cali ride. 1 rider to the
hospital for his ankle. 4 more bikes totalled. “

“Driver caught, released after reports taken. My bike is totalled. “

Any more info?

My Photos from Burrito Project’s 3rd Birthday at Bar 107

Lots to do This Weekend

General Manager of DOT and Chief of Police recommend City Council to Repeal LAMC 26.01

After the enactment of Los Angeles Municipal Code (LAMC) 26.01 all bicycles were required to have the proper state issued bicycle license physically attached to the bicycle.  It was developed to recover stolen bicycles.

According to the Chief of Police William J. Bratton the department’s “bicycle licensing efforts [are] all but defunct,” and that, “reviving the bicycle licensing program at this time is not prudent.”

And the General Manager of the Department of Transportation Gloria J. Jeff recommends that the City Council repeal LAMC 26.01.

You can read Bratton’s and Jeff’s recommendations to the City Council here.

SoapBoxLA on the Ridazz forums says,

The report will be discussed at the upcoming Transportation committee meeting on the Transportation Committee Wednesday, January 14th @ 2pm.

They will also be discussing the City’s ill-conceived speed limit increases throughout the valley. Lot’s of fun!

If you can’t attend the upcoming meeting but you want your words on the record send me an email and I’ll deliver them.

“. . . the worst kind of chair-warming rot.”

ubrayj02 writes about reforming the Los Angeles Bicycle Advisory Committee by “get[ting] rid of most of the LABAC!”

Bicycle Access Advocacy in Africa

My sister visited Malawi a few years back to share her skills as a doctor. She recently texted me a link to africycle.org, an organization dedicated to, “bringing people together to improve access to bicycles in Africa.“

Check them out. Donate bicycles.

SoapBoxLA Critisizes The LADOT Bikeways “Most Significant Successes”

I couldn’t get off work to attend this.

Here is what SoapBoxLA had to say about it:

The LADOT Bikeways staff reported to the City’s Transpo Committee that their three most significant bikeways “successes” are:

1) The LA River Bike Path. Apparently by success, the LADOT was referring to:

a) Successful litigation! The City of Los Angeles is flush with victory after fighting all the way to the State Supreme Court to avoid taking responsibility for the design and maintenance of the LA River Bike Path. The City of LA rejected the claims of an injured cyclist who was injured on the gate/chain link fence at the Victory end of the bike path. The City of LA fought the claim arguing that the City of LA is immune from any liability for the bike paths, that anyone who rides on a bike path does so at their own risk and that they are recreational facilities and not transportation facilities.

(No attempt was made to reconcile the fact that the LADOT apparently calls the LA Bike Path a transportation facility when seeking funding and then a recreational facility when looking for immunity.)

The bottom line is this; cyclists riding the LA River Bike Path do so at their own risk, (there’s a sign just N of the Los Feliz bridge informing cyclists of this limitation) and the LADOT has argued successfully that riding a bike is a recreational endeavor inherent with the risks that come with such dangerous pursuits. Hunting bear? Jumping out of a plane? Swimming with sharks? Wrestling Gators? Riding a bike on the LA Bike Path? You are a daredevil and you are on your own!

b) Successful communication! Cyclists on the LA River Bike Path often find themselves at odds with other user groups and mistakenly take the term “Bike Lane” to mean “Bike Lane.” That’s not the case. The LA River Bike Path is actually the LA River “Mixed Use” Path and is fair game for dog-walkers, roller-bladers, joggers, pogo-stickers, ballroom dancers, hop-scotching, jump-roping, shopping cart pushing, picnic basket carrying, non-motorized vehicular travelers of all flavors and speeds! Of course, that’s a mouthful to put on a sign so the LADOT continues to post “Bike Path” signs because it’s simpler that way.

c) Successful eradication of light pollution! Apparently the wildlife in the LA River were kept awake at night by the pesky Bike Path illumination. No Worries. Freelance wildlife fans liberated all of the copper from the bike path electical system (twice!) leaving the Bike Path in the dark and the wildlife free to do whatever they do when it’s dark.

2) The Orange Line Bike Path. Apparently by success, the LADOT is referring to:

a) The Metro’s successful Orange Line Bike Path. In a classic demonstration of “Success has many parents, failure is an orphan.” the LADOT is more than willing to glom onto the success of the Metro’s OL Bike Path when discussing success but when it comes to taking responsibility for the maintenance of the Bike Path, the LADOT fought for two years to avoid signing the paperwork, insisting that the Metro hasn’t completed the project.

b) The Chandler extension which consists of bike lanes (yea for magic paint and the BSS who actually did the work!) and the Chandler Bike Path which was in the news recently as the location of the collision between a roller blader and two League of American Bicyclist licensed instructors, resulting in broken bones for both cyclists and yet another confusing debate over the use of the term “Bike Path” vs. the use of the more appropriate term “Anybody-but-that-motorist-Path.” The LA section of the Chandler Bike Path is distinguishable from the Burbank City section in that the LA side features drought resistant (dirt) landscaping while the Burbank section uses reclaimed water and is actually landscaped and green and feels like a parkway.

3) The Expo Line Bike Lanes/Path. Apparently by success, the LADOT is referring to:

a) The future? Is the list of accomplishments so short that by #3 the LADOT has to start pulling out the list of hopes, dreams and good intentions? The report started off with “We’ve been doing a number of things…” and then shifted into the future of the Expo line, a facility that is a Metro project. Telling other agencies how to do their business seems to be the major “success” of the LADOT Bikeways Department.

b) The opportunity? Perhaps this time around, the cycling community will have the opportunity to forge a relationship with the Metro, developing and refining on the bikeways design standards and establishing safe and effective accessibility to the Expo line for cyclists. As for the role of the LADOT in the development of the Expo Line, one need only look to the streets surrounding the Orange Line and Van Nuys Blvd. for a demonstration on the LADOT’s commitment (or lack of commitment) to connectivity for cyclists and pedestrians. (Busted curb lanes, missing crosswalk, parking for 18 wheelers? Is this an industrial zone and traffic sewer or a transit hub?)

At the end of the day, it is excruciatingly apparent that the LADOT operates with little if any accountability or obligation to lay down real goals, actual accomplishments and any sense of accountability. This meeting, just like all the others, included an LADOT call for more staffing in order to continue with the Transportation malpractice that is inflicted on the people of Los Angeles.

All totaled, there are 11 people currently working on the secret projects that purportedly are the future of LA’s Network of Bikeways. As our City leadership is scrambling to find opportunities to cut the City budget, the Bikeways department brazenly steps up to the mic and acknowledges that they can’t think of three things they have done that would justify their existence. Bold, cavalier and utterly contemptible!

This would be a great time for the LADOT Bikeways Department to start preparing the “stuff-we-did-this-year” report for the upcoming Bicycle Advisory Committee meeting on Tuesday, December 2, 2008. As usual, we’ll be “Storming the Bastille” and asking for accountability in measurable terms.

“See you on the Streets!”

Damn, son! When will the LADOT be held accountable? Storm the Bastille Tuesday, December 2. After Party at Ridge Way?

IlluminateLA has a recording of the meeting here!