Los Angeles Gets a Bike Master Plan

At the unveiling of Los Angeles’ first ever in Highland Park last month, Amir Sedadi, General Manager of the city's Department of Transportation, announced his goal to make L.A. the largest bicycle friendly city in the county.

On Wednesday morning, when Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa signed the Los Angeles Master Bicycle Plan into law, the city took a major step toward achieving that goal.

The plan, which the L.A. city council approved unanimously on Tuesday, lays out an ambitious goal of implementing numerous new bicycle friendly policies, increasing the number of bicycle parking facilities and, most importantly, installing 1,302 miles of new bicycle ways.

Those 1,302 new miles would be divided among a three different types of networks: backbone bikeways, neighborhood bikeways and green bikeways.

The 707 mile backbone bikeway network would run along major roadways where painted lanes could be installed. The 834 mile neighborhood network would comprise bicycle friendly streets where traffic calming measures and signage would be put in place to make it safer for cyclists and motorists to share the road. And the 139 mile green network woul improve access to bicycle and shared access paths as well as to the city’s green, open spaces and river channels.

In Echo Park, parts of the neighborhood network will run north up Echo Park Boulevard on to Lakeshore Drive.  Another loop will run along Bellevue Drive.  Two others will run south of the freeway along Union and Temple streets.  Busy Temple Street and Beverly Boulevard will be part of the backbone network.

“What this plan is is a guiding document for the next set of years that gives us the parameters and guidelines for what can be done to really improve bicycle infrastructure in Los Angeles,” said Jennifer Klausner, executive director of the Los Angeles Bicycle Coaltion.

According to Josef Bray-Ali, owner of the Flying Pigeon bicycle shop in Highland Park, the master plan was greatly influenced by community members in Los Angeles who were dissatisfied with city’s existing bicycle plan, passed in 1996--long before cycling took off as a mass phenomenon in the U.S.

Bray-Ali said even the first draft of the master plan, released in 2008, was not ambitious enough to create the kind of massive bicyle network L.A. really needs.

With the plan in place, the next step is implementation. According to Michelle Mowery, Los Angeles Department of Transportation Senior Bike Coordinator, a combination of Measure R Transportation and Los Angeles Transportation Development Act funds have been set aside to begin the work.

A bicycle plan implementation team has also been put in place in order to help establish priorities and determine was parts of the plan need to be put into place first.

Bicycle activist Matt Schodorf, who owns Café de Leche in Highland Park where the city's first bike corral is located," said he plans to continue advocating for improved bicycle ways in Los Angeles.

“I guess I’ve been one of the squeaky wheels,” he said. “Before I die I would love to see bike lanes running all across Los Angeles. I want to be able to ride my bike from Highland Park to Santa Monica. The best thing would be to start it locally and watch it expand.”