The Bicycle Plan Implementation Team (BPIT) meeting is a quarterly get together hosted by the Department of City Planning (Planning), with the Department of Transportation (LADOT) and stakeholders. The latest meeting occurred Tuesday last week, and featured updates on LADOT Bikeway Projects, our BPIT survey, bicycle parking, the LA/2B project, and discussion of various bicycle engineering issues. To view the agenda for the meeting, click here, and continue reading after the fold if you wish to hear our summary!
Engineering Projects
The first order of business was an update on bikeway projects. The LADOT is moving forward with bike lanes on Imperial, Foothill, Aviation, and Vermont in the New Year. LADOT and Planning are also in the initial stages of putting together an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for a first package of 40 miles of bike lanes that will require an approval process to implement (largely due to various traffic impacts). The complete EIR will take around 6 months; we are currently compiling data to hand over to our consultant.
BPIT Survey Results
We have soft closed voting for the BPIT Survey and are interpreting the results we’ve received. The top 25% were listed in the meeting, and will be posted in a separate post in the near future. Some comments that were made centered around outreach; some BPIT members felt that only bike advocates heard about the survey and that lower income constituencies most likely didn’t participate due to lack of time, access to the internet, etc. Another suggested improvement was to further split up the Central L.A. section; the results were a tad skewed due to the Central section’s large size.
Bicycle Parking Program Update
Senior Bicycle Coordinator Michelle Mowery gave us an update on the bicycle parking program, including a discussion on bike corrals. Taking what we’ve learned from the York Blvd. Bike Corral Pilot Project, we will soon be expanding the program to other parts of the City. LADOT is looking for more locations to expand the project, if you know of any locations that come to mind please let us know! Any potential corral would likely replace one or two metered spaces. Additionally, a majority of businesses in the area must be on board with the corral, and one of these businesses has to “adopt” the corral via a maintenance agreement. More information on the coming expansion is available here!
We also outlined our Sidewalk Parking Program during the BPIT meeting. We currently have around 4,000 U-Racks and are aiming to install 400 per year. If you wish to have a bike rack installed, please refer to this rack request webform!
Bikeway Engineering in Conflict Zones
Tim Fremaux fielded questions on the topic of conflict zones and merging areas. We have experimented with ways to mitigate the uncomfortableness some bicyclists feel in such areas, via the treatments seen on Spring and 1st Street. Our approach has been to dash the green lane in such locations. Bike boxes were also discussed as a way to make the such zones more comfortable for bicyclists. All of these treatments will be considered in future projects as the LADOT expands Los Angeles’ bikeway network.
Protected Bike Lanes
Many members of the BPIT team wanted to know why there haven’t been more efforts to install “Protected Bike Lanes”, also known as “Cycle Tracks.” A cycle track is essentially a separated treatment which places a barrier between bicyclists and automobiles, maximizing comfort and safety. This form of infrastructure is extremely prevalent in bike capitals like Copenhagen and Amsterdam, and is often attributed to their high bicycle ridership. If you wish to learn more about Protected Bike Lanes, check out our coverage here.
Often viewed as the holy grail of bicycling infrastructure, many members wondered why Los Angeles hasn’t seen more cycle track treatments. The biggest hurdle currently is that the Highway Design Manual currently forbids placing bike lanes between parked cars and the sidewalk. Long Beach has done an end run around this by deeming their new separated facility a path. While this may seem purely semantic, we do need some revised policies in place at the State level to see these facilities more frequently in California. The California Bicycle Advisory Committee (CBAC) is attempting to add an experimental process to the Highway Design Manual, but this is an ongoing battle! If you support Protected Bike Lanes, let your elected officials know and urge support for measures which would allow for more experimentation.
Bicycle Plan Law Enforcement
Officer Jeff Kievit came to speak with us about the Police Department’s involvement in enforcement and education issues. The LAPD is doing its best to educate its own officers, as well as citizens, about laws surrounding sidewalk riding, and is exploring various multi-media outlets to convey their message. Other enforcement issues like vehicles blocking bike lanes were discussed. The LAPD is considering creating “citizen citations” which will allow concerned cyclists to give advisory citations to motorists who break such laws. While these citations will have no legal bearing, they will allow bicyclists to give a friendly reminder to automobile users to not double park in bike lanes.
Update on the Mobility Element
The Planning Department gave an update on process underway to update the City’s Mobility Element via the LA/2B project. If you aren’t familiar with the LA/2B project, it is essentially an online town hall where 405 participants (so far!) have come up with 217 ideas for the future of Los Angeles transportation and street network! This is an extremely exciting project, if you frequent this blog I hope you’re already participating! If not, head over to http://la2b.org/!
Here are some ideas that the online community has come up with:
- Eliminating parking requirements
- Adding bike corrals
- More urban green space
- More pedestrian and cycling events
- Close down streets for public events
Community workshops are occurring on February 25th and March 3rd, check out the link above for more information!
Questions and Comments?
If you have any questions or comments feel free to chime in on our comment section! We’re more than happy to field your questions. 2012 is going to be a great year for bikeability in Los Angeles!
Something I wanted to say, but didn’t quite get to was some thoughts on intersection treatment. All I really got around to saying was that people are afraid to cycle partially because intersections are intimidating. People who feel unsafe cycling (the vast majority) do not want to cross motor vehicle traffic to make a left turn. They also don’t want their facility to disappear at an intersection. How do I know this? Well I was a beginning cyclist in 2009 – I often cycled on the sidewalk. I also hear from my mom, and my sister, and my grandfather that they would love to cycle more (or at all as is the case with my grandfather) but intersections, and the fact that the few facilities we do have don’t connect or guide cyclists. In response to my anecdotal rambling Tim Fremaux said, essentially, “People like that tend to cross like a pedestrian”. From there I made a last plea (though poorly delivered as I am a nervous public speaker) of something along the lines of “We can’t expect people to have to build up a year of experience to feel confident enough to cross traffic and turn like a car. I know there’s bike boxes but I don’t know if there’s anything else….” (then I trailed off). What I would have liked to have said, or rather asked, is– bike boxes are okay if you arrive at a red light but don’t make left turns any easier when you arrive at an intersection with a green light. Can we try experimenting with two-stage lefts, as is common in Copenhagen? Or perhaps more ambitiously try implementing a Dutch style intersection treatment? These intersection treatments are similar to crossing pedestrian style but give cyclists a designated space. Many LA cyclists already do this, sometimes inconveniencing pedestrians, so if we can show support for the style that the majority of people want to cross ‘like a pedestrian’ and do so that they do not inconvenience pedestrians it would make conditions more predictable, and pleasant for the people we want to attract and have start cycling (the young, the old, women) and encourage and permit the style left turns people are making.
Also, I am not entirely convinced that ” [intersection] treatments will be considered in future projects as the LADOT expands Los Angeles’ bikeway network.” None of the designs presented for bike lanes at the BPIT meetings so far show any consideration at intersection. The designs show a bike lane that disappears or is ‘dashed’ up to the intersection but then disappears completely through the intersection like 100% of bike lanes currently in LA. However, intersections, and leading up to them is where the majority of new bicyclists and potential cyclists feel the most scared, yet we provide them zero guidance or make accommodations to those who opt for a 2 stage left. Sometimes motor vehicle lanes have their own dashes through the intersection and bike lanes have none. I feel one of the most important things we need to do is make accommodations to cyclists at intersections. Bicycle boulevards are popular with newbies and partially because of intersection treatment. I find it so baffling that our engineers think “okay not only will we give cyclists a 5′ lane when we have enough space to make a 7′ or 8′ bike lane, but we will also give no intersection treatment”.
Additionally, the 2-stage left I keep advocating as being beneficial in attracting new cyclists is allowed under the national MUTCD “Accommodating two-stage ‘delayed’ left turns at signalized intersections via pavement markings and signal detection can be implemented at present time if signs and pavement markings that are compliant with the MUTCD are used”. A 2-stage left can be used in conjunction with “Right-turn-on-red motor vehicle restrictions” so that the 2-stage left is more safe and comfortable to cyclists. Also permitted is “Use of green pavement markings for bike lanes and cycle tracks within intersections. Interim approval has been granted. Requests to use green colored pavement need to comply with the provisions of Paragraphs 14 through 22 of Section 1A.10″
It would be great to see designs that actually include consideration for cyclists at intersections rather than the typical “we will have the bike lane be dashed so that motorists can merge to make a right and that cyclists can cross traffic to make a left”. We never even hear “we will extend the green light signal phase so that a cyclist can make it through before light turns red”. Often I turn left off York onto Eagle Rock Boulevard (like a car) and the light turns red before I complete my turn. And I’m an experienced cyclist!
I use the two-stage left when I bicycle, but then I am a subscriber of the Slow Bicycle Movement. There’s no law against it now, and while it may add some time to my travels, it makes my turning left a huge amount safer and saner.
As for right-turn-on-red, maybe someday Los Angeles will follow the lead of Montreal and New York and ban RTOR from the city limits? Did you know that the only other country to willingly craft RTOR into law was East Germany?
[...] County Supervisor and presumed L.A. mayoral candidate Zev Yaroslovsky. LADOT offers an update on the latest BPIT meeting, while Street Services take a patchwork approach to preserving sharrows. Better Bike offers advice [...]
So, Severin and Walkeaglerock are the same person, because a nervous Severin was sitting next to me at the BPIT meeting saying pretty much the same things that Walkeaglerock is now stating in this post. I realize this is somewhat like Jimmy Olson discovering that Clark Kent is Superman.
There needs to be a reduction in potential conflict points for cyclists. The MUTCD states that bicycles are either vehicles on the street or pedestrians off of the street. So, make bicyclists pedestrians by morphing a bike lane into a path at the right of bus stops, which will create a short path to get past the much larger mass bus that can potentially be lethal to a cyclist, even at a walking pace speed. Repeat this vehicle to pedestrian trick for cycling at the intersections. Change the bike lane into a protected path, or waiting area for cyclists, with a curb at the intersection in a advanced position like they do in the Netherlands for increased awareness of their existance from motorized operators.
It’s really pissing me off that pedestrians are given protected separation from motorized transportation and right or left turning motorized vehicles are treated with separation from through traffic, but a vulnerable bicyclist is expected to change lanes in front of motorized vehicles that have much great mass and speed with the expectations that they can be placed inbetween two fast moving lanes, or cyclists are left vunerable to potentially deadly right hooks from large mass buses or trucks at the intersection.
The CAMUTCD does not state that you cannot reclassify cyclists from a on street vehicle to a off-street pedestrian at the corner of a intersection. It does state that you move the bike lane to the left of a right only lane, but it does not say that the bike lane cannot just disappear with the bicycles moved behind a protected curb at the intersection by virtue of reclassification as pedestrians. This would reduce the number of potential conflict points for bicyclists by not having to move in front of a much larger mass vehicle that is moving at a greater speed. That gives homogeneity of mass, speed and direction which is a goal of the Netherlands and they have some of the lowest accidents rates in the world. The cyclists would also not have to contend with potentially deadly right hooks from trucks or buses with this protected separation.
For the umpteenth time of me mentioning it on this website trying to communicate to the bikeway engineers, how does this work? Here’s an explanation from Mark Wagenbuur in the Netherlands which has a video illustration and a photo of a bike lane that is keep to the right of a right turn only lane by morphing into a advanced placed protected path stop at the intersection.
http://hembrow.blogspot.com/2011/04/state-of-art-bikeway-design-or-is-it.html
Simple stuff. I don’t understand why engineers here keep repeating the same poorly thought out examples from the MUTCD which unnecessarily exposes vunerable bicyclists to potentially serious injury or death from vehicles that are much greater mass traveling at a higher rate of speed.
Here’s another piece written by Mark Wagenbuur that starts just below the video in the article entitled: Campaign for sustainable safety, not strict liability.
http://www.hembrow.blogspot.com/2012/01/campaign-for-sustainable-safety-not.html
At the end of the article there is a link to a rather in-depth report by several Northeastern University students about the transportation safety standards of the Netherlands and the reasoning behind them.
http://wiki.coe.neu.edu/groups/sustsafety/wiki/24c46/Overview.html
“Often viewed as the holy grail of bicycling infrastructure, many members wondered why Los Angeles hasn’t seen more cycle track treatments. The biggest hurdle currently is that the Highway Design Manual currently forbids placing bike lanes between parked cars and the sidewalk. Long Beach has done an end run around this by deeming their new separated facility a path. While this may seem purely semantic, we do need some revised policies in place at the State level to see these facilities more frequently in California. The California Bicycle Advisory Committee (CBAC) is attempting to add an experimental process to the Highway Design Manual, but this is an ongoing battle!”
Sorry, but why can’t LA deem a cycle track like Long Beach’s a path as well? Political will behind such a move?
Cycle tracks basically are paths anyway so I see no reason why it wouldn’t be possible. Long Beach is proving there aren’t so many hurdles when there’s political will. That is, unless there is some reason we are unaware of as to why LA can’t do what LB does.