Back in May, we announced the LADOT Bike Program’s intention to conduct the Great Bicycle Parking Survey of 2011. The survey will provide the LADOT Bike Program with the information necessary to begin work on a comprehensive map of bicycle parking facilities in the City. On top of checking rack locations for addresses and business names, the survey will also address the condition of bike racks, as well as the type of rack. More about the Great Bicycle Parking Survey of 2011 and how you can sign up to participate after the jump.
Help us find racks like these throughout the City
The Preview
The LADOT Bike Program recently went out to MacArthur Park to put our survey methodology to the test. Five interns set out on a quest to check bike racks along Pico, Wilshire, Westlake, Union, 6th, 7th, and 8th Streets. We broke up into teams and were each given an instruction sheet, a map with our responsible streets highlighted, and a chart with the names of businesses, grouped by street, that were thought to have existing racks.
First, we checked to make sure that the business name associated with the address was up to date. After updating the business name and/or address associated with the bike racks, we cataloged the rack type (U-1, U-2, U-3, Meter Hitch, Bicycle), wrote down the color, and checked to make sure racks were in good working order (Installed, Needs Repair, Needs to be Replaced, Missing, Siting Issue, etc). If warranted, we then replaced faded information stickers on the racks. We were also on the look out for racks not in our database.
An older U-2 bike rack (you can tell because of the rectangular base) in need of some TLC
We Want You!
The LADOT Bike Blog is looking for volunteers to help us continue our survey in the near future. We would like to encourage everyone to register for the survey today! We just need a little basic information like your name, contact information (phone number and email), if you will have a bike available for the survey, and the council district (CD) you would like to work in (feel free to check more than one or to select no preference if you are open to working in more than one CD).
After your information is in the system, we will contact you when surveying events are organized according to your preferred Council District (CD). For example, if we are conducting a surveying event in Northridge, we will contact people who listed CD 12 and no preference. We will also have a blog post announcing the event, but ask that you register prior to the event so that we can get a handle on the number of people who are going to participate. Stay tuned to the Bike Blog to learn exactly when and where you can volunteer to help us make L.A. a better place to ride and park a bike.
TLC in the form of a new information sticker
How can we plan such a survey where I live — in the Antelope Valley?
Im so excited to be part of the process!
great enthusiasm Jennifer!
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I don’t know how they are planning to conduct the survey, but there was a project at USC a few months ago to inventory billboards (surprise, surprise the City of Los Angeles doesn’t have an accurate one). You actually located a billboard, took a photo of it with your phone (which was automatically geo-tagged) and uploaded it to the master inventory.
Los Angeles needs to install more bike racks at busy bus stops such as on Wilshire Blvd and Vermont Blvd. For most people bicycling is limited to four miles or less in distance traveled per trip. To go further than this, the cyclist will frequently piggyback onto transit. The problem currently is that the front racks of buses are limited to 2-3 bikes. Therefore, the percent of bicyclists per bus will always be limited unless the cyclist either brings a folding bike or leaves the bike behind at a bike rack or bike box.
Look at the Orange Line setup to see how this works. I am quite confident that the Orange Line has much more bikes per bus trip than any other bus line in Metro’s system. That is partially due to triple racks on the bus and also the drivers tend to let the bikes inside at off peak hours, but also due to having bike racks and bike boxes at every stop.
If L.A. is serious about increasing bicycling there needs to be much more bike parking available and parking at major transit stops should be a major part of that.
When designing bike lanes for major streets, there needs to be more consideration of keeping the buses and bikes separated by time and space. That means the bikes and buses should be kept out of each others path if at all possible.
Here is how it is done in the Netherlands and notice the convenient bike parking at the bus stops.
http://hembrow.blogspot.com/2011/10/bus-stops-which-dont-cause-problems-for.html