The City of West Hollywood is considering major changes to Fountain. Despite the city council asking staff to study PROTECTED bike lanes on Fountain, and the West Hollywood Transportation Commission also recommending protected bike lanes, WeHo staff has put out a survey with both protected and unprotected bike lanes as an option.
Please take the survey and select Option 1 – physically protected bike lanes – as your preference. The survey has been extended and is now open through November 13!
From Cal.Streetsblog.org
Advocates and would-be advocates from around the country tuned in yesterday to a webinar about how to build political power to get safe bicycling infrastructure in their neighborhoods.
“You already have the power,” said Carter Lavin, an advocate who developed the webinar. “You may just need to know how to apply it.” Lavin’s focus was on bike lanes and networks, but his outline of steps to build political power could apply to any problem.
“Bike lanes are an amazing piece of technology,” said Lavin. “They make biking safer and enticing to more people, and they increase accessibility of biking for more kinds of riders. From a global perspective, increasing bike riding can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and bike lanes are key to helping people go car-free.”
A main point to remember, said Lavin, is that local governments own and maintain streets and roads, and they are the ones who make decisions about them. They follow federal guidelines, but they also follow long-established habits that tell them to make sure cars don’t get jammed up and to worry less about the convenience of people walking and the safety of bike riders.
“The default is a dangerous society dominated by cars,” Lavin told Streetsblog in a conversation expanding on his ideas.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. Decision-makers can be pushed to make streets better designed and safer – but they have to see the value in it for them.
“Politicians, like anyone, want easy and smooth lives,” said Lavin. “If it’s easier to distract you, or over explain, or tell you to shut up – and it will work- they will do that. But if it’s easier to get you to be quiet by making you happy, they’ll do that.”
A common response from local officials to requests for bike lanes and similar safety improvements is “we can’t afford it.”
“Excuse my language, but this is a bullshit excuse,” said Lavin. “We can’t afford it” means “I don’t care about it.” “Either they don’t see its potential value for themselves, or they don’t feel the pain of its absence” in the way that people outside of cars do.
“Bike lanes are cheap; there is always money,” said Lavin. “We’re talking about slivers of slivers of a municipal budget. This is not about money; it’s not even about bike lanes. It’s about priorities.”
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
From LA.Streetsblog.org
The effort to get bike lanes placed on the North Spring Street Bridge in Downtown Los Angeles has been a long and tortured one. However, that road may be coming to an end, with the bike lanes finally added.
Streeetsblog reached out to the Los Angeles Bureau of Engineering after an alert reader noticed that the Spring Street Bridge project is no longer listed as active on the Bureau’s website. One of the bureau’s engineers responded that the city is still planning to add the lanes soon, and they may be added “early in the fiscal year” that begins on July 1.
“We are still intending to stripe the bike lanes on the Spring St Bridge even though the project contract itself is completed,” explains Kevin Minne with the Bureau’s Bridge Improvement Division.
“The striping work itself will be performed by city crews. The block between Avenue 18 and Avenue 19 is scheduled for resurfacing by the Bureau of Street Services (StreetsLA) this coming fiscal year (FY22/23) and the intention is to have the bike lanes installed when that resurfacing is completed. BOE and LADOT are working with StreetsLA to have this block done early in the fiscal year so we can finish up the striping. I hope to have a clearer idea on the schedule in the coming weeks.”
Photo by Pedro Marroquin on Unsplash
