Bike Plan Clears City Council and BPIT Meeting Update!

March 1, 2011 at 6:39 pm | Posted in Bike News, Get Involved | 6 Comments
Tags: LA Bike Plan

Hooray! Cyclists round LA can cheer that the end (of the Bike Plan campaign) is near! Council overwhelmingly approved the Plan unanimously in the early afternoon after hearing from advocates that they supported the plan. Now it’s time to roll up our sleeves and really build the political infrastructure to make the bicycle infrastructure happen! To make sure the rubber hits the road! To…well, you get the point.

Political Will Can Make the Plan Happen, just like with CicLAvia and Give Me 3!

Once again, we want to invite folks to our Bike Plan approval rally and celebration with the Mayor tomorrow. Please feel free to show up with your LACBC t-shirts and jerseys, and most importantly, your good cheer! Watch for coverage on the blog and Facebook tomorrow if you can’t make it.

Next up, less than an hour after the plan being approved, LACBC and other advocates attended the second BPIT meeting, held in the Planning Department, 7th Fl. The agenda mostly revolved around questions and discussion around 7th St. updates, with community outreach emphasized and also a flow-chart (soon to be made public on this and LADOT’s Bike Blog) from Planning explaining the process of how BPIT will decide on working on projects, all the way to final design and implementation. Additionally, LADOT has suggested that they will create a 1 pager on the project that can be given out and translated. This sort of accessible, transparent documentation shows how collaborative a relationship Planning and DOT have striven to create with the advocate community–so LACBC thanks you!

More details on 7th St., for those of you who are curious:

The portion being studied would go from Catalina on the West to Figueroa on the East. Though the bike plan calls for further eastward expansion to Soto and BPIT participants voiced support, more engineering work and political engagement with Council offices will be needed. LADOT still needs to do a capacity analysis, which would allow them to see how well 7th St. will function when it’s taken from 2 to 1 lane (road diet), but they’re already optimistic that the street will be fine, as ADT (or traffic volume daily) is fairly low throughout the majority of the stretch of 7th, only getting worse around the 110 on-ramp. DOT and Councilman Ed Reyes (a big supporter of the project) have already walked the corridor and begun to speak with businesses about any logistical issues or concerns. Luckily, the vast majority of car parking will not have to be removed, eliminating a big battle for LACBC. More work will continue and 7th St., after more studies and outreach are conducted, will return to the BPIT agendas once more for review.

Keep posted for  future updates on outreach, as LACBC and City of Lights plan to partner with Acción Westlake and KIWA to do bilingual, people’s planning school style community engagement. The goal is to do community outreach until Juneish, incorporate all community feedback, have engineering designs done by July, and striping done in time for the next CicLAvia in late September, early October. BAC members and Acción Westlake members (in separate meetings) both brought up good points about really engaging the existing businesses to be able to easily request bike parking.

For those that are more interested in getting involved, please contact Allison (see email below). Friendly reminder: BPIT meetings are the first Tuesdays at 2pm in City Hall, City Planning Dept., 7th Fl. and we will be sure to keep updating folks who can’t come!

-allison (at) la-bike (dot) org

About these ads