Supporters, Skeptics of Bike Lanes Heard at Public Forum
Department of Transportations experts explain the benefits of bike lanes along Colorado, but not everyone’s convinced.
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By Ajay Singh, March 29, 2013
Take Back the Boulevard steering committee member Jeff Jacobberger at
the Colorado bike lanes community meeting at Occidental College.
Northeast Democratic Club President Al C. Strange spoke passionately against bike lanes.
As many as 120 people attended a community meeting on proposed
bicycle lanes along Colorado Boulevard Wednesday, and about a third of
them voiced their support or opposition for the idea that is part of the
2010 City of Los Angeles Bicycle Master Plan encompassing 469 square
miles of L.A.’s roadways.
Held at the Norris Hall of Chemistry at
Occidental College, the community forum followed a
Feb. 13 public hearing at the Los Angeles River Center
to gauge community support and opposition to proposed bike lanes on
Colorado and Figueroa Street. (The Feb. 13 event became necessary after
last fall’s signing by Gov. Jerry Brown of AB2245, a bill that allows
city planners to substitute environmental impact reports with public
hearings in the case of bike lanes likely to cause significant traffic
delays.)
Wednesday’s forum lasted for more than two hours, ending well after 9
p.m. It included a question-and-answer session as well as a lengthy
public comments period during which several speakers accused city
planners of conducting insufficient outreach about the proposed bike
lanes on the Eagle Rock stretch of Colorado Boulevard.
A few speakers went so far as to say that the community meeting was a
charade and that city authorities would proceed with their plans to
transform Colorado into a bike-friendly thoroughfare regardless of the
compelling arguments of opponents.
Community members filled out comment forms before the meeting, which
were read out by Council District 14 representative Kevin Ocubillo. An
analysis of the sign-in sheet conducted by CD 14 staff showed that 48
percent of those who attended the forum were from the 90041 Eagle Rock
zip code, while 15 percent were from the 90042 zip code that largely
encompasses Highland Park. The 90065 zip code that applies
overwhelmingly to Glassell Park and Mount Washington (but also to parts
of Eagle Rock) was entered by 11 percent of attendees. (See attached pie
chart for details of other zip codes in the sign-in sheet.)
The meeting was hosted by the office of
Councilman José Huizar in partnership with the
Eagle Rock Neighborhood Council , the Eagle Rock Chamber of Commerce,
TERA (The Eagle Rock Association), and
Take Back the Boulevard, the homegrown initiative to make Colorado Boulevard more amenable to pedestrian and bicycle traffic.
‘Backbone Bikeway’
The event began with a
PowerPoint presentation by Nathain Baird, a bicycle outreach and planning coordinator for the Los Angeles Department of Transportation.
Baird pointed out that L.A.’s so-called Backbone Bikeway Network, a
connection of major boulevards that the city’s Bike Plan is committed to
making encouraging and safe for bikers, has more than doubled from 300
miles in 1977 to 719 miles in 2010. Meanwhile, the network of
neighborhood side streets targeted under the plan has swelled to 825
miles.
L.A.’s Bike Plan revolves around a Bicycle Plan Implementation Team
consisting of city staff, members of the existing Bicycle Advisory
Committee, and representatives from the city’s bicycling community,
Baird’s presentation noted. Besides supporting project implementation
and providing oversight for programs, BPIT members would also liaise,
when necessary, with the County of Los Angeles, Metro, LAUSD and other
municipalities to monitor project activities and provide technical
support for issues and projects that cross city and departmental
boundary lines.
Bicycling, said Baird, is on the rise in Los Angeles, and youth are
increasingly using bicycles more than cars for getting around in the
city. For the population as a whole, a lot of trips—as many as 41
percent in L.A. County—are less than three miles, making bikes a
preferred mode of transportation, Baird said.
Safety Issues
On the flip side, 6.3 percent of road collisions nationwide involve a
bicycle—and the figure for Colorado Boulevard is as high as 16 percent,
Baird said, adding that 6.3 percent is a “disproportionate share” of
bicycle-related collisions to begin with.
Asked by an audience member how many bicycles pass through Colorado
Boulevard on average daily, Baird admitted that “we don’t do a great job
of counting bike trips for specific street levels” and that there’s no
data on bicycle traffic for Colorado Boulevard.
Tim Fremaux, a DOT bikeways engineer, clarified, however, that “we’re
not necessarily building facilities in response to demand but trying to
induce demand.”
Traffic on York
One questioner commented that he has lived in Highland Park for 54
years and in all that time there he has never seen so much traffic on
York Boulevard as in recent years, with bicycles conspicuous only by
their relative absence. “Are city officials giving up their cars for
bicycles?” the questioner added to considerable applause.
Without a robust network of bike lanes, “an individual facility will
never realize the ridership it can,” Fremaux responded. “York is great
for now in terms of bicycle connectivity, but it’s not where it needs to
be, and adding all the other pieces will help increase ridership.”
While traffic does queue up somewhat along York, “it’s pretty
orderly—it flows pretty smoothly and if feels safer,” Fremaux added,
admitting that his was a view “from a motorist’s perspective.” In the
end, “we’re talking about a little inconvenience for motorists versus
safety increase, that’s the balance.”
Other Benefit of Biking
There are obvious public health benefits to biking, given the adult
obesity epidemic sweeping the city, Baird said, pointing out that
businesses along the Highland Park section of York Boulevard have
experienced economic benefits since bike lanes were installed in the
historic street in 2006. The effect of York’s “road diet,” Baird noted,
has been documented in a
Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition study led by UCLA student researcher Cullen McCormick.
“Businesses often underestimate the number of people who bike and
walk to their stores,” Baird said, prompting mock laughter from some
members of the audience evidently opposed to bike lanes. Sales tax data
analyses do not show any negative impact on businesses from the presence
of bike lanes, Baird added.
Although bike lanes encourage people to venture out and the extra
space gets people interested in biking, safety concerns are always a
priority for both bikers and planners. On balance, bike lanes not only
make streets safer but help decrease both vehicular collisions and
pedestrian fatalities by lowering traffic speed, Baird said.
Studies show that 40 percent of pedestrians hit by vehicles traveling
at 30 miles per hour succumbed to their injuries—in sharp contrast to
80-percent pedestrian fatalities at 40 mph and 100-precent fatalities at
50 mph, Baird said.
Colorado’s Proposed Diet
The L.A. Bike Plan proposes removing the third lane on Colorado
Boulevard as well as on Eagle Rock Boulevard, and replacing them with
buffered bike lanes, Baird said adding that it would take four to six
weeks for planners to come up with the final design for the project and
another four to six weeks to implement it.
If all goes well, Colorado Boulevard’s road diet would be in place by
June 2013, Baird said, adding that he and his colleagues would be in a
better position to return in a few years and share with the community
which aspects of the plan worked and which didn’t.
My view: I went to the Armstrong Garden Center on Glenarm St. in Pasadena last week and noticed the new bike lanes on that street. It was easier to see cars coming from the left when coming out of the parking lot now with a bike lane between the parked cars and the traffic lane but there was no one using the bike lanes on either side of the street. But I wonder how easy it will be to see bicyclists coming from the left. Will the bicyclists realize that car drivers may not have a good view of them coming down the street? So until an actual bike rider is using the bike lanes for me to make a judgment, I don't know if I am for the lanes or not but really would be for them if they would make it easier to come out of parking lots where the view of the traffic lanes are now blocked by parked cars. One really bad parking lot to come out of is of Trader Joe's on Colorado Blvd., the street discussed in the article above. It is quite difficult to see if cars are coming from the left before you make a turn into traffic.
