Streetsblog San Francisco

Bicycling superstar Lance Armstrong and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa have joined forces again.  Their target: Governor Jerry Brown.  Their message: sign S.B. 910, the state’s three foot passing law that would protect cyclists from drivers who pass too close and too fast.

“Gov. Brown can help make our roads safer for everyone by making Senate Bill 910 the law in California,” said Armstrong, seven-time winner of the Tour de France, and the most famous bicyclist in the world.

“I’m thrilled that we have Lance Armstrong’s support on this issue,” added Villaraigosa. “His success is a big reason so many more Californians are interested in bicycling. It’s so important to have experts like him advocating for making California a more bike-friendly place.”

The Senate and Assembly both passed S.B. 910, authored by Long Beach Senator Alan Lowenthal, which would require motorists passing bicyclists to give at least a three foot cushion if the car’s speed is 15 miles per hour. Many Republicans opposed the measure, in large part due to the opposition of speeding traffic advocates, AAA and the California Highway Patrol. Last week, Streetsblog San Francisco reported that those same two groups are lobbying the Governor to veto this traffic safety measure.

Read more…

Last week Streetsblog LA talked with UCLA Professor and parking guru Donald Shoup about ExpressPark, the new parking pricing system coming to downtown Los Angeles.

Damien Newton: Los Angeles is changing the way it does parking in its downtown. They’re calling it the ExpressPark system. Let’s start with the basics — what is the program and what are your thoughts?

Donald Shoup: For the first time they’re stating how they’re going to set parking prices. Instead of basing it on council decisions or emotions or people’s feelings, they stated a principal. Parking at a meter will be at the lowest price they can charge and still have one or two open spaces on every block.

If they get that price right, then those spaces will be well used because almost all the spaces will be full. Yet there will be spaces readily available because one or two spaces will be open.

Can it get any better than that as a goal for the parking system?

The key is, can you set the right price without looking at the results even though the results are what’s going to count when setting the price.

DN: This marks a shift in policy for the city that seemed to base parking decisions based on what brings in the most revenue.

DS: It hadn’t been about that even, until quite recently.

You may remember a few years ago they doubled the price of parking everywhere in the city with a minimum price of a dollar an hour. Since most meters were at a quarter an hour, that meant quadrupling the price at most meters. That was the first time meter prices had been changed in eighteen years.

There’s been a lot of neglect of parking meters. Inertia seemed to be the main factor in determining parking prices.

They’re changing that by saying, “Here’s the rule. If half the spaces on a block are empty, we’re going to lower prices. If all the spaces are full we’re going to raise prices.” Since the price change two years ago, I’ve seen entire blocks where there isn’t one car parked. The price is too high.

I think a lot of prices would go down if they extend express park to the whole city. They’re starting in downtown, but I suspect that some prices will go down.

DN: One of the tenets of “The High Cost of Free Parking” is that money collected from meters should be returned to the communities where it was collected. L.A.’s plan returns all metered funds to the general fund. Is that a mistake by the city? Does it give you any misgivings about the plan altogether?

DS: That’s what they’re planning in L.A., they’re not planning on funneling any of the money back to the neighborhood?

That’s a mistake. When you funnel back to the neighborhood you get local buy-in and you get wonderful results.

Pasadena returns all of the metered money back into the neighborhood for decades and they turned the local neighborhood that used to be a commercial skid row into one of the most popular shopping destinations in Southern California. The meters brought in an extra million dollars a year in public services in just that little shopping district. They replaced all the sidewalks, streetlights and street furniture. They cleaned up the allays. They put electric wires underground. This was all paid for by meters.

But that’s a political issue. I think that getting the price right is also very important.

Read more…

The numbers for yesterday’s CicLAvia are impressive. KABC News says that there were 50,000 people riding the streets of Los Angeles along a 7.5 mile stretch of streets that were open to public use, but closed to automobiles. The Los Angeles Times puts that number closer to 100,00 people.

Anecdotally, the Coke truck ran out of free servings after 50,000 drinks. CicLAvia organizers estimated that 60,000 to 100,000 people took part with the number “closer to 100,000.”

That’s a lot of people for a 7.5 mile stretch of the city. But here’s the thing. Their numbers are wrong. All of them.

Yesterday was about a lot more than just counting the bikes that rolled past. CicLAvia touched hundreds of thousands of people, even if measured by the laughter heard on their streets instead of cars honking their horns. How do you count the kids playing ball in the street that scurried out of the way when the bikes rolled past?

Zero. That’s the number of “major incidents” reported along the route. That number includes interactions between the different mode users: bicyclists, pedestrians, skateboarders, rollerbladers, that guy on the surfboard thing with wheels. That number includes the interactions between the attendees of the events and the LAPD. As for Los Angeles’ finest, it was hard to find a sour face amongst the hundreds of police on the streets. Even though they were working, they were as caught up in the wonder of the day as everyone else.

Read more…

On the fourth Sunday of every month, cyclists take over the streets of Los Angeles as part of the "Black Kids on Bikes" (BKoB) ride.  BKoB is part of a series of rides called the "Freedom Rides" aimed at getting more black Angelenos to enjoy the unique experience of a group cycle ride.  BKoB aims at providing a safe, fun venue for kids to ride the streets, but despite it's name - the ride is open to riders of all races and skill levels.

The ride is the brainchild of organizer James Spooner who wears many hats.  Some know him as a Bikerowave volunteer, others as a tattoo artist, and still others know him as the ground making film maker responsible for 2003's cult film "Afro-Punk."

Ivy writes:

Spooner, a recent transplant from the rainbow streets of New York City, walks and talks New York, but now calls Cali home.  James was cool enough to sit down with me despite of me, to tell me about how the ride came to be and what he personally gets out of the ride and cycling in general.

The L.A. StreetSummit kicked off last night with a rousing keynote address and slide show by the groundbreaking New York City DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Kahn. Three levels of an Occidental College auditorium were packed with students, bike advocates from around the county, and others interested in Livable Streets to hear Sadik-Kahn talk about the changes that have come to New York City's streets under her and Mayor Michael Bloomberg's leadership in the past three years.

Sadik-Khan's lecture was continually interrupted by cheers and even gasps of astonishment for the "before" and "after" pictures of the now car-free pedestrian plaza in Times Square and Herald Square.

One thing that you could palpably feel from the NYCDOT boss was the sense of pride in how her department has changed the way people think about transportation and even about city government: The speech was peppered with New York City promos, my favorite of which came when she pointed out that "New Yorkers have one-third of the carbon footprint of the average American. If you're really serious about saving the planet, you should move to New York City," she said.

Riding the 28-19th Avenue northbound towards the Richmond on a recent weekday afternoon, Pamela Moye has almost nothing but good things to say about Muni.

Aside from the occasional long wait for an M-Ocean View train, Moye, a schoolteacher, said her experience with Muni has been overwhelmingly positive.

"I love public transportation in San Francisco," said Moye. "It's super easy."

What accounts for Moye's sunny appraisal of Muni, a system that's subject to near-universal griping among San Franciscans? Moye, it turns out, benefits from the perspective of being a former San Francisco resident who now lives in Los Angeles, car-free.

"People think I'm crazy for riding the bus in LA," she said. Though she doesn't agree with that assessment, Moye said she knows far fewer people who ride transit in her new home than in San Francisco.

Moye left San Francisco in 2002 to pursue a teaching job after attending San Francisco State. She was back in town on the day we spoke to complete work on her degree seven years later, and was happy to reminisce about her days living on 5th Avenue and Geary.

"Living in San Francisco turned me into a non-car owner," she said. The cost and hassle of parking, insurance, and gas pushed her towards giving up her vehicle, and she hasn't looked back.

After growing up in Idaho, she found the bus her key to exploring San Francisco. "Riding the bus is a great way to learn a city," said Moye. When she arrived here, she said, if she had a free afternoon, "I would just get on a bus and ride."

Now, when friends and family ask for suggestions on what to do during visits to San Francisco, Moye tells them to take the 38-Geary from one end of the line to the other, from ocean to bay, one of the best ways to see a broad cross-section of the city. (Jane Jacobs wrote about taking a similar approach to learning New York City when she first arrived, randomly choosing subway lines to ride to new neighborhoods every week.)

Moye has continued this practice in Los Angeles, a city (and region) famed for its dependence on the automobile, though it has increasingly focused on expanding transit service.

Moye said she always felt secure riding buses here. "I never saw anything, I always felt completely safe," she said, noting that she often rode the bus late at night.

Read more...

Following
a highly-publicized, intensely-followed trial, Christopher Thompson,
the physician accused of using his car to seriously injure two cyclists
in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles, is behind bars.

Thompson was convicted yesterday of six felony counts: two counts each, according to VeloNews, of assault with a deadly weapon, battery with
serious bodily injury, and reckless driving causing specified
injury and mayhem.

On
July 4, 2008, Thompson passed cyclists Ron Peterson and Christian
Stoehr as the pair rode through the emergency room surgeon’s upscale
neighborhood. Angry after a verbal exchange with the men, Thompson slammed on the brakes
of his red Infiniti as Peterson and Stoehr rode behind. Stoehr ended up
in front of the car, wounded with a separated shoulder. Peterson hit
the rear window, suffering severe facial injuries. Thompson told police
on the scene that he was tired of cyclists in his neighborhood and
wanted to "teach them a lesson."

At trial, Thompson denied
making that statement, claiming that he had been attempting to get
photographs of the cyclists, who he said had frightened him. But the
jury didn’t buy it, possibly because of Thompson’s history of hostility
toward people on bikes. He was also convicted Monday of misdemeanor
reckless driving, a charge stemming from a prior encounter with two
other cyclists.

Read more…

When Oakland installed its first pay-and-display parking kiosks in early 2007, parking managers ordered employees to remove the heads of the approximately 5,000 single-space meters they were replacing. Just like other cities transitioning from using single-space parking meters to newer multi-space pay stations, the parking managers failed to realize the utility of those old meter poles for cyclists, who used them for locking up their bicycles. 

"This was the last breath of turning your back on cyclists. It was obscene," said East Bay Bicycle Coalition (EBBC) Executive Director Robert Raburn, who admitted that they weren't prepared for the change and the effect it would have on cyclists, so their advocacy was "reactionary." 

The EBBC lobbied the Oakland City Council to retain what meters they could after the process had started. "What we were asking for was to make sure there was some integration between the installation of parking kiosks and bike parking," said Raburn

Jason Patton, Oakland's Bicycle and Pedestrian Program Manager, said that the initial problem stemmed from the fact that two divisions of two separate agencies within the city weren't on the same page about bicycle parking and so the provisional solution was the best they could do.

"The plan for the new parking stations didn't address bicycle parking. Really the only option we had in working on their timeline was to leave meter heads," said Patton.

Over the complaints of the parking division, the EBBC worked with Oakland's bicycle program to develop an interim policy of preserving a minimum of two meter heads per block space in the areas where kiosks were installed. The bicycle division then spent a good deal of time and money surveying bicycle use on every street where the meters were being replaced to maximize the benefit to cyclists. Parking managers removed the "guts" of the meter heads so that drivers were less confused and affixed small yellow stickers that remind cyclists to park their bicycles parallel to the curb.

Read more...

I have to admit: The thought of filming a control room designed to move vehicles more efficiently didn't excite me at first. But once I met Senior Transportation Engineer Bill Shao and the friendly staff at Los Angeles' Automated Traffic Surveillance and Control (ATSAC), I was full of curiosity.

Developed to help direct traffic during the 1984 Olympics, ATSAC has grown to monitor and control over 3,000 of L.A.'s 4,100 signalized intersections, some of them incredibly complex. ATSAC is one of the only such systems in the country that is publicly owned, and the technology is so advanced that even on its busiest days the control room only requires a few people to run it.

I'm told there are regular group tours of the facility. Next time you visit LA I recommend checking it out.