BPIT Notes 4/5/11: 7th Street, Venice Blvd, Sunset Blvd, and More

This last Tuesday, folks from LADOT, City Planning, the Mayor’s Office, Council Offices, LACBC, Bikeside, and other concerned bicyclists all piled into City Hall Room 721 for the monthly meeting of the Bike Plan Implementation Team.  If you missed it, you can get the meeting notice and agenda here.

It’s becoming more apparent with each meeting that City Hall Room 721 may not fulfill the needs of the ever-growing BPIT: the 37 people who showed up this month were practically flowing out into the hallway.  It’s encouraging to see that so many members of the public and so many representatives from various parts of the City are committed to making the LA Bike Plan a reality.  Rick Risemberg weighed in with a very uplifting recap of the BPIT at the Flying Pigeon blog.  Dan Rodman, an excellent new writer for Bikeside, gave his own recap of the meeting.

Up on the docket for the BPIT were updates on current LADOT Bikeways projects, progress on 7th Street, the Wilshire Grand project, Sunset Boulevard, getting started on Venice Boulevard, and future program priorities for the City.

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Project Updates: Bike Lanes Moving Forward

The LADOT Bike Blog hasn’t done a full review of all the bike lane projects in the queue in quite a while. Sure, we covered the Woodman Avenue bike lanes and the latest on the Metro Orange Line extension bike path, but that hardly represents a comprehensive update.  At the April BPIT meeting, Planning and Bikeways engineering promised to provide a full update on all ongoing bike lane projects.

Well the wait is now over: LADOT Bike Blog is presenting a full update on all of our projects’ progress since our last update in January. As always, you can check out the full list of current projects on our Bike Lane Projects page, our Bike Path Projects page, our Projects map, and our BPIT map.  There’s also the matter of the remaining, and mysteriously named, “Year Zero” projects.  We’ll provide an explanation of what “Year Zero” is, and what projects are left, below the fold.  But first, the current projects update.

New Bike Lanes on Woodman Avenue

Project Updates

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“A Bike Love-in”: Villaraigosa Commemorates Adoption of New LA Bike Plan

It was a festival atmosphere at City Hall this morning as bicyclists from all over the City pedaled in to celebrate a new era for Los Angeles. As we’re sure you’ve heard, the Draft LA Bike Plan is “draft” no longer; the Bike Plan came before City Council yesterday and was unanimously adopted into the City’s General Plan.  Today was the celebration.  Check out all our photos from today on flickr or our facebook page.

The hoopla just getting started

When looking for reports on yesterday’s Council meeting, you can take your pick: the LADOT Bike Program Facebook Page, the BikeBlogChris Twitter feed, Streetsblog, Biking in LA, Good, LA Times, LA Now(twice), KPCC, Flying Pigeon, LACBC, CorbaMTB, the Daily Bruin, NBC4, ABC7, KCET, Venice Patch, Mar Vista Patch, LA Weekly, the Daily News, LAist, The Washington Post, The Contra Costa Times, and many, many others.

This morning, a gathering of City staff, elected officials, and the bike community came together to celebrate the new bike plan and reflect on what its adoption means for the City of Los Angeles.

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Bike Plan, BPIT, CicLAvia; Get Ready for March 1st

(Ed. Note: We’ve added another map to our Map Page – this one contains all of the BPIT “Top 10″ projects in one place!)

On March 1st 1936, the Hoover Dam was completed on the Colorado River, becoming one of the largest public works ever built.  On March 1st 2011, the LA City Council will be asked to adopt the draft LA Bike Plan into the Transportation Element of the City’s General Plan.  No less momentous an occasion! … kinda.

Hoover Dam prior to completion, early 1936

The City Council convenes at 9:30 in the morning and a number of other bike-related meetings are scheduled afterward throughout the day. If you so desire, you could keep yourself busy all day Tuesday with various bike meetings.  We’ve already got our scheduled fully blocked out.

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LA’s First Bike Corral Now Officially Open for Business

LADOT Bike Blog has spilled quite a bit of digital ink over the last week talking up LA’s first bike corral at Cafe de Leche in Highland Park. Today saw the grand opening of that bike corral, and LADOT Bike Blog was on hand to witness the joyous occasion.

CM Jose Huizar gets a little help with the ribbon cutting

But now that the big moment has come and gone, we find ourselves (almost) speechless.  Funny, how that can happen.

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Progress, thy name is “Bike Corral”

Just a quick update that construction has begun in earnest on LA’s first bike corral! Though the grand opening is on Friday (and may be postponed due to inclement weather), crews started working on installation of the racks this morning. Braving the chilly, rainy conditions, work crews installed the 5 racks of the bike corral into the street asphalt this morning. Photos were taken by new LADOT Bike Coordinator Nate Baird, who subsequently tweeted the good news.

Construction crews hard at work

You can check out more photos of the bike corral on our flickr account or our facebook page.

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Busy Week: Bike Shops and Bike Corral Grand Openings

If you happen to be bicycle-inclined (and if you read this blog, we bet you are) there are quite a few things to celebrate this week in Los Angeles. A brand new, incredibly large, bike shop in downtown is having their grand opening on Wednesday. Two days later a brand new, incredibly awesome, bike corral is having its grand opening in Highland Park on Friday. Follow us below the fold for all the details.

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