A bicyclist travels towards City Hall and the Civic Center on the recently installed Main St. bike lane
Today, we have a special guest post from LADOT General Manager Jaime de la Vega:
The Los Angeles Department of Transportation is pleased to report that fiscal year 2011-2012 (ending June 30, 2012) was our best year ever for bicycles in the City of Los Angeles.
Can the former department of automobiles really help the city of Angels evolve into the type of metropolis that embraces cyclists, pedestrians, and transit?
We think the answer is an unequivocal “yes”.
LADOT is committed to making Los Angeles a place where cyclists are safe and city streets make room for bicycles.
The city’s adopted bicycle plan and five year implementation strategy (PDF link) call for the implementation of “at least 200 miles of bikeways every five years” (emphasis added), which is an average of 40 miles per year.
The bike plan defines a bikeway as “[a] generic term for any road, street, path or way that in some manner is specifically designed for bicycle travel, regardless of whether such facilities are designated for the exclusive use of bicycles or are to be shared with other transportation modes.”
For FY 2012, LADOT successfully delivered 76 miles of new bikeways. This consisted of 51 miles of on-street bike lanes, 21 miles of sharrow-ed routes (bike routes with shared lane markings), and a 4-mile bike path as part of the Metro Orange Line extension.
This puts us well ahead of schedule (+90%) vis-a-vis the five-year plan.
The slide show below illustrates the progress LADOT has made since 2005, especially during the last year.
Bikeways by Year of Installation (PDF link)
We are now beginning to see different bikeways connect together to form an emerging bicycle network.
LADOT also advanced other bike-friendly initiatives:
- We partnered with CicLAvia on two awesome events that opened the city’s streets to cyclists and pedestrians (and we want to do more!)
- We installed new bike corrals in place of on-street parking
- We installed 601 new bicycle racks
- We experimented with two different types of green bike lane markings in downtown Los Angeles and Boyle Heights, and
- We specified 3-bike racks on all LADOT Commuter Express buses, which are now in service
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the City Council continue to be strong advocates for the city’s bicycle program, providing the support and funding necessary for implementation.
Finally, I want to acknowledge the LADOT leaders (noted below) and their staff who made it all happen: Selwyn Hollins, Executive Officer, Operations; Zaki Mustafa, Executive Officer, Project Delivery; the Bicycle Program (Kang Hu, Paul Meshkin, & Michelle Mowery); the Design Division (Verej Janoyan & Tim Conger); and the Field Operations Division (Scott Morrill & Willie Navarro).
We hope that the change at LADOT has been noted positively in the bicycling community and we are committed to continuing this progress in fiscal year 2012-2013.
The city has done an order of magnitude more new bikeway mileage than ever before – which is wonderful, great, commendable, praiseworthy. Kudos to officials and staff who’ve accomplished so much this year.
One falsehood claimed in this article: LADOT states “76 miles of new bikeways” including “21 miles of sharrow-ed routes.” The majority of the sharrow projects can’t truly be counted as “new bikeways.” Adding sharrows to existing bike routes (already counted toward city totals) does not add “new” miles. Of the ~20 miles of sharrows, only ~8 miles can be honestly counted as “new bikeways.” (See http://la.streetsblog.org/2012/01/19/l-a-city-adding-new-bikeways-will-they-reach-pledged-40-miles-by-june-30/ )
Here’s a breakdown of the sharrows miles:
~9 miles of the new sharrowed routes will eventually become Bicycle Friendly Streets, once funding is found and designated to add wayfinding, signage, and traffic calming measures
~10 miles of the new sharrowed streets connect key gaps in our planned bike lane network that won’t become bike lanes in the near term (they are not prioritized in the 5 yr. plan, but are important enough to implement into the network now, in the meantime); 5.77 miles of these were previously marked just by green signs; they are safer and more visible now
~1 mile of the new sharrowed routes provide key gap connections in our existing bikeway network
All 21 miles are a new type of facility.
Are you suggesting that a mile of street that was and currently still is a bike route should be counted as a new bike lane or a new “Bike Friendly Street” – just because the city is promising to do this at some future date? With that kind of math, perhaps you count hundreds of new miles this year! I think it would be more honest and accurate to count your accomplishment chickens when they’ve actually hatched.
To me, your math sounds like a recipe for triple-dipping. LADOT counted these bikes routes as a mile when they existed last year, then counted them again as bike routes this year, then will count them again when they “eventually become” BFS, etc.
I don’t mean this to disrespect LADOT’s great accomplishments this year. The city did ~62.5 new miles of bikeways this past fiscal year. That’s huge and wonderful!
[...] General Manager Jaime de la Vega reports on what he calls L.A.’s best year ever for [...]
[...] Click to view slideshow. [...]
[...] today, the LADOT website posted this article where LADOT General Manager Jaime de la Vega is claiming “76 miles of new bikeways”: [...]
[...] According to LADOT General Manager Jaime de la Vega, his department delivered 76 new miles of bike…: “51 miles of on-street bike lanes, 21 miles of sharrow-ed routes (bike routes with shared lane markings), and a 4-mile bike path.” [...]
Just wanted to have it documented that I talked to Ron Holder, your V.P. Administration, & your painting crew about the dangerous situation they have created at Foothill & Summitrose. You are redoing all the lane markings, for bicycle lanes. They both stated that they are just doing the Job as stated by the City of L.A. For over 30 years I have had a business on this turn of the road. Many cars have driven off the road here. Many into my and my neighbor buildings. There have beesn many injuries, and deaths here due to the curve, and angle of the road. The city solution was to move all the lanes toward the south, to keep people off the slope, and to make the turn not so sharp. That did help some. Your company has erased those lines and extended them 6 feet toward the side at the worst part of the curve. Then back to the original line, causing a more sharp turn, which will cause more cars to drive off the road, probably injuring or killing anyone in there path. Please have a supervisor come and look at the new, and old line. Also where foothill and Summitrose intersect, is very dangerous under normal circumstances. When you are done for the day, you need to make sure it is marked clearly, for the drivers at night, or this will also cause an accident. I deal a lot with search and rescue, and know what I am talking about. Part of my job is to look for dangerous situations, and try to do something about it, before someone gets hurt. I can already see that the people I have already to are not taking me seriously, and passing the buck. If there is nothing you can do, please forward this e-mail up the ladder, to someone who can do something about this.