Are you getting tired of all the Ted Talk posts? Well, this month, we’ll post some more light hearted videos that also have to do with New Urbanism.
First up this great video about bike lanes. After getting a ticket for not riding in the bike lane, Casey demonstrates that the bike lane is not always the safest place to ride.
2012 marked the 20th anniversary of the Congress for the New Urbanism. Drawing on the research and discussion that has gone on over the past 20 years, they recently published a small booklet entitled Sustainable Street Network Principles in conjunction with the Institute for Transportation Engineers and the Federal Highway Administration. They offer 7 principles for laying out a transportation network that takes into account all of the modes of transportation someone might choose.
You can read more about the background of the project here.
You can download the PDF of the full booklet here.
A new study in NYC proved that road redesign creates a boom small businesses.
We wrote about this in our blog about road diets. “Our streets are fat and they’re making us fat”
Which also touted the health and safety benefits: When you walk to the store, the park, the cafe, you burn more calories and less oil.
But it also has a great economic impact on small businesses!
For too long we have assumed that our stores need more traffic so we catered to easing traffic congestion. But cars don’t spend money, people spend money. We need to build to the human scale. It’s humans who spend money. Cars cost money. It costs a lot to fill up the tank, get an oil change, insure, clean, and register your vehicle. All of those expenses take away from the money your customer base has to spend on your goods and services.
If you are a business owner in LA, you can ask the DOT to put a bike rack in front of your business! Click here to read our blog: Get a Rack!
Here’s a short video chronicling a road diet project in Portland. The before and after footage is stunning.
Tom LaBonge on the outcome of the NBCUniversal Expansion:
I have long supported a bike path along the Los Angeles River from
Canoga Park on south through the City of Los Angeles, and I have asked
NBC Universal to fund the design of a bike path along the county
portion of the river. This bike path must become a reality. Yesterday,
NBC Universal heard us loud and clear, announcing it would contribute
nearly $4 million for bike path improvements.
I was also able to obtain funding for neighborhood protection,
specifically for Hollywood Knolls, Toluca Lake, Cahuenga Pass, and
adjacent neighborhoods, funding for Campo de Cahuenga, the Los Angeles
Zoo, and Travel Town, and funding support for the completion of
Community Design Overlay Districts for Toluca Lake, Campo de Cahuenga,
and Lankershim.
Yay! A bike lane!
Here’s a brief piece by Lizzie Widdicombe that appeared in the Sept 3, 2012 edition of the New Yorker about a morning in the life of a New York City bicycle messenger. It has some great descriptions of the dangers involved in riding a bike around the largest city in the country. While the profession of bike messenger has been on the wane, the rising cost of oil over the next few decades will most likely make it more common, cost-effective and respectable again.
Article (PDF) – Unfortunately the New Yorker doesn’t keep stuff on their site unless you’re a subscriber.
I recently started riding my bike a lot more. Mainly due to the fact that I recently bought my bike.
It is weird when a car-person sees me unlocking my ride to pedal off into the sunset. They try to relate: they would ride a bicycle, but it is so unsafe.
UNSAFE! Not that it is too hard, unpleasant, too sweaty, takes too long. Etc. etc. The primary obstacle for car-people to become people-people is safety. We need to build a better town that makes us feel okay about riding our bikes.
For far too long we have designed roads for cars. (As opposed to designing them for people.) When people WANT to walk, jog, or pedal about, they cannot …For fear for their very lives! We’ve built eight lane streets that are impossible to cross as a pedestrian. We prize high speed traffic which make it unfriendly to bicyclists and pedestrians and even other cars, really. For example, “anti-grid lock” zones even discriminate amongst cars, favoring cars that aren’t even going to or coming from our neighborhood. The whole traffic system is fat. And it’s making us fat. Our infrastructure has gotten fat. It’s time for us to go on a diet, a road diet.
Here’s a visual of a road diet petitioned for in Glendale:
Road diets make driving, walking and bicycling more pleasant. And what’s more pleasing than safety?
This benefits cars so much. In fact, I came up with the idea while driving my car. Heading west on 3rd street it looks like the above photo. Two lanes. Should be more efficient, right? Wrong. Very frequently both lanes jam up because a driver in the left lane want to make a left turn but has to wait for auto-traffic or pedestrians and another driver in the right lane wants to make a right turn but has to wait for pedestrians.
With a dedicated turn lane for cars going both ways, left turners get the advantage and can wait patiently for a natural break in traffic. And with a consistent parking lane, ending 15 feet to the corner, cars turning right can slow, merge across bicycle lane and wait patiently in the parking lane before making a right hand turn.
Here is a report on an investigation by the federal DOT to see if road diets actually reduce the number of crashes on the road.
Spoiler Alert: Yes. (But you can still read it if you want to.)
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/research/safety/humanfac/04082/index.cfm
Not only is it safer, aesthetically pleasing, and more efficient for all involved, it is also good for business.
Despite all these checks in the pros column, national funding for bike lanes has been lumped in with Safe Routes to Schools and funding for recreation. Not only have they been combined, but drastically reduced.
Which makes me want to talk politics for a quick second even though I know you’re annoyed by all your friends posting about politics during the campaign season. But this is the kind of politics I WISH we could talk about instead of the “politics” of what is going on with a women’s lady parts.
Call me a “doomer,” but in our future we might be riding bicycles out of necessity rather than just for enjoyment. If we make these changes now, we’ll be a lot safer regardless of the state of our national economy.
Wheew, politics got a hold of me for a bit. In the end riding a bike is not about politics, it’s about fun.
Mother, 2 Young Girls Killed In Hollywood Car Accident « CBS Los Angeles.
I’ve been riding my new bike around Los Angeles quite a bit. Almost every time I pedal away, my friends say “be safe” as if I am flying off into the atmosphere.
Bicycling is incredibly dangerous indeed, but just a reminder that what makes it dangerous are cars.
The road is a violent, hostile place to drivers, rider, and pedestrians. We need to build better streetscapes that can reign in dangerous behaviour. Mainly by making us all human again instead of a driver.
Really sad.
Bike Nation USA, the company administering the bike share program coming to LA at the end of this year (see this article), has added a section to their website where people can request locations for their bike rental kiosks.
Go on their website here to request a station: http://www.bikenationusa.com/suggest/
Suggest one near your home, your work, your school, your church, wherever you go or wherever you want to go.
Recently food trucks have gone from being the scurge of the food industry to the chic new fad to now an everyday occurrence.
I am undecided on the issue, but leaning a little toward the negative, so let me know what you think.
I have to admit I am biased. Everyday there is a lineup of food trucks parked along the street I walk home from the gym. At my tiredest and hungriest I am forced to pass by all these trucks with delicacies from who knows where (one of the points to be addressed later) but it is delicious. It’s like my own personal temptation island.
PRO: right off, I admit, they serve delicious food. These are not your papa’s roach coach.
CON: do we really need more oversized vehicles rumbling around the city, wrecking more taffic havoc? Do we really need food that convenient? Is it all that appetizing to be downing a curry wurst hotdog while sucking in exhaust from the truck its made and delivered in?
PRO: They are taking back the public space. By making sidewalks impomptu dining areas, the trucks have a purpose. The public can dwell, meet and eat on the sidewalk. Will window shopping increase? Will the street front become more important part of society? Shoddy sidewalks fixed faster? landscaping tended for more caringly?
CON: But don’t the trucks destroy our sense of place? In a city where life is constantly in transition changing jobs, moving from apartment to apartment, friends and social circles have moved from the neighborhood to the internet. Restaurants were the last consistent place. Will everything be mobile eventually? No reason to build anything anymore? Never stopping as we drive place to place calling in to business meetings on our mobile phones while wolfing down a kimchi burrito handed off by a passing truck?
PRO: Food trucks offer a viable entre into the restaurant business. It is an easier medium for entrepeneaurs to establish a business than the traditional brick and mortar restaurant.
CON: There is no regulation of rating system as is in place for traditional restaurants. how long can a truck’s AC keep that mayo at the right temp?
PRO: Being mobile, they can add to any event. Such as the many outdoor cinema events that also take back public space.
CON: Food trucks block parking spots. Presumably taking parking away from patrons of the brick and mortar businesses along that street.
In the end the decision is personal, so for me it comes down to this:
CON: Food trucks block bike lanes.
The city of LA classifies this as a level 3 bike lane:
So when an oversized truck parks here, it blocks traffic. And I know other trucks are oversized and this is probably an entire other issuue. But it is relevant and tips the scales for me. It shows disregard for other traffic and thus makes null all the other arguments about how it redeems lost public space.
Food trucks are another gimmick, a fad which makes no sense except for the coolness factor deigned upon it by hipster groupthink. Just like fixed gear bicycles.
One day we’ll reflect on this trend of eating food from 8 trucks circled on an abandoned valero gas station and be happy that it’s over. Probably from our perch on a chair at a restaurant with walls and a ceiling and atmosphere that relaxes and induces such a state of pensiveness.
Click the link to request a bike rack to be installed in front of your business.
http://bicyclela.org/RackRequest.htm
Or request a bike on behalf of your favorite place to bike to. Or a place where you’ve been and you saw an attractive girl on a bike and you’d wished she would have stopped and said hello.
”
“I’d come in to talk to you and fall in love, but there’s no where to park my bike. Oh well.”
Noodles & New Urbanism 