Come Ride with LACBC & the EPA

January 26, 2011 at 1:59 pm | Posted in LACBC Events | 7 Comments
Tags: bike rides, EPA, Los Angeles County Dept. of Public Health

Join LACBC on Tuesday, February 1st for the Playa to Downtown LA ride with West Coast Administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency, Jared Blumenfeld.

The goal of this ride is to draw attention to bicycling as a viable means of sustainable transportation. This ride will highlight the City of LA’s soon to be adopted bike plan and Culver City’s recently adopted bike plan as a first step cities can take toward creating more bike-able communities.

We’ll be joined on the ride by Mitch Katz, the new (pro-bike) Director of the County Department of Health Services, recently transplanted from San Francisco, Barbara Romero, LA City Planning Commissioner and Chief of Urban Projects and Watershed Division of the Mountains and Recreation Conservation Authority (MRCA) and many other folks along the way.

The ride will take us up Ballona Creek where the MRCA and Santa Monica Bay Restoration Commission have done and are doing improvements to enhance the path for both cyclists and pedestrians and to help clean storm water before it runs into Ballona Creek and the Santa Monica Bay. MRCA is also working on a Playa to Park trail network that will better connect Ballona Creek with Baldwin Hills and Kenneth Hahn Park.

Our first stop will be around 10:20 in Culver City at Linwood Howe Elementary School to meet with Principal Amy Anderson, kids, members of Linwood Howe Safe Routes to School Committee and the Culver City Bicycle Coalition, along with Culver City staff, and Gayle Haberman from the LA County Department of Public Health (DPH). Culver City recently passed their first bicycle and pedestrian plan, funded by a grant from DPH and Linwood Howe Elementary recently received state Safe Routes to School funding to improve the walking and biking environment around the school, develop encouragement programs, and increase the number of students and families that walk or bicycle to Linwood Howe.

We’ll ride up Venice Blvd and weave our way up and across the city using some of the proposed Neighborhood Network streets, including 4th Street to our second stop in MacArthur Park at 11:45am. We’ll meet with Councilmember Ed Reyes and LA City Planning Commissioner and Metro Executive Officer Diego Cardoso in MacArthur Park, who will be joined by volunteers from LACBC’s City of Lights program.

A little after noon we’ll stop by the new County Cycling Collaborative Bike Wrangler Space on 6th Street to meet with our Bike Wrangler Jonny Green and share this innovative program with Jared  before heading into downtown LA to meet with the staff from the Mayor’s office at City Hall.

This ride will be moving at a steady clip (12 to 18mph) but as you can see we’ll be making a lot of stops.

Just to recap, here’s a list of our stops and times and you can also view our map here:

Meet: 9:15am at the bike bridge over Ballona Creek in Playa del Rey

Ride Start Time: 9:45am

1st Stop: 10:20am Linwood Howe Elementary School

2nd Stop: 11:45am MacArthur Park – NW corner of 7th and Alvarado

3rd Stop: 12:05pm CCC Bike Wrangler Space – 1205 W 6th St at Lucas

Final Stop: 12:45pm LA City Hall

Please join us for the whole ride or just meet up with us at one of the many stops we’ll be making!