Oct 27 '09 - 706 W, 2 I - Vote Good + 4 :: Bad - 6 How About Multiple Bike Coordinators for Los Angeles?
Published October 27, 2009 by C.I.C.L.E.
By Joe Linton :: Photo Credit: BicyclesandDinosaurs.com
Last week, C.I.C.L.E. attended the L.A. Bike Working Group meeting, hosted by Bike Writers Collective, to bring bicyclists together to review, discuss, and critique the draft L.A. City Bike Master Plan.
At the meeting, during a small-group break-out session, Colin Bogart, the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition's PLACE Grant Coordinator, put forth an excellent idea: the city of Los Angeles should have multiple bicycle coordinators. Colin mentioned that New York and San Francisco both have multiple coordinators.. so why is it that Los Angeles – a city of 4 million people and 500 square miles – has only one bicycle coordinator? The suggestion was passed along to the whole group, and subsequently appeared in the Bike Coalition's email newsletter.
I think it's a great idea. And I want to explore and it a bit here.
First a bit of background on what's out there now.
The city of Los Angeles has one bike coordinator. Her name is Michelle Mowery. She's the most visible face of L.A. city staff working on bike issues, and, as such, she takes a lot of criticism for the city's lack of support for bikes. She has a lot of ground to cover. She's not an engineer; she works with a group of less than a dozen engineers in the city transportation department (LADOT) Bikeways Division.
LADOT currently has five Operations Divisions that cover the entire city: West Valley, East Valley, Western Area, Hollywood-Wilshire and “Central and Southern” (which sounds like two, but it's one.) The Bikeways Division works citywide with these Operations Divisions to implement bikeways in various parts of the city. Sometimes, such as was with the Reseda Boulevard bike lanes, there are discrepancies between what various parts of LADOT are doing.
So... wouldn't it be great if the city would hire a bicycle coordinator for each of its five Operations Divisions? I think that this would be great, in an ideal world, in a city that's not facing a budget deficit and a hiring freeze... in a city that's not 2009 Los Angeles. It's probably a good thing for bicyclists to push for these additional coordinators in the city bike plan... but it's pretty unlikely to happen this year or next year.
So... an alternate version of this idea might be for each Operations Division to designate a bicycle coordinator. Maybe call it a division bike coordinator or a designated division bike point person or something along those lines. There have been some commentaries suggesting that doing a bike plan for a city the size of Los Angeles is such a huge undertaking that it's difficult for the public to participate in a meaningful way – and that planning might be better at local scale. Distributing some the bike coordination down to district levels might make for a more localized, more responsive, more human-scaled implementation of bicycle facilities.
What would that person's responsibilities include? Perhaps she or he could be responsible for knowing that division's part of the citywide bicycle plan, and for making sure that bike projects are moving forward in that area. The person could interface with local bicyclists in each area. Perhaps LADOT could arrange for additional training and/or conferences for that person. Perhaps annually each division bike coordinator could give a report on what bike facilities had been completed in her/his area, and post that report on-line and present it to the city council and/or the city's Bicycle Advisory Committee.
Let us know what you think? Should the city have more bike coordinators? How should it work? What might their responsibilities entail?
(Thanks to the Bicycle Working Group and the Bicycle Coalition for bringing up this suggestion.)
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Gah! I can’t think of a worse idea!
What is needed is a Bikeways Coordinator at a correct POLITICAL and LEGAL position to affect the changes bicyclists need. Additionally, we need legal standards and policies (not vague prose) that will guide engineers in how to best serve cyclists interests.
The mayor’s office in L.A. has political and legal authority over most ordinance created departments, and a good share of authority over those departments that have full-time commissions running them. That office, the mayor’s, is a perfect bully pulpit to coordinate citywide bike improvement programs.
Further, our roadway standards need to be changed to foster bicycle use on surface streets – the surest way to increase the number and safety of cycling in the city.
None of these initiatives can be gotten at through the “Staff” level position within the LADOT. We need a half-public affairs/half-internal politics bicycle coordinator – not a full-time bunch of “yes men” worried about rocking the boat to please go-along-to-get-along paper pushers in a big LA department.
Cripes! LACBC, we already hire more bikeways staff than any large city I’ve heard of! What are we up to now, 10 bikeways employees and you want more? They’re starving us of facilities with all this money wasted on “staff”.
Lester Lute (Email) - October 28 '09 - 08:28
These two concepts are not mutually exclusive. I’ve felt for some time that L.A. is far too large and complicated a city for a single bicycle coordinator. At the same time, Lester is right that Bikeways needs to be elevated to a department level, answering directly to the mayor, rather than buried deeply within LADOT. The simple solution is to create a department level position, with a number of subordinates in charge of specific territories.bikinginla (Email) (URL) - October 28 '09 - 08:49
@Lester – “we already hire more bikeways staff than any large city I’ve heard of” – can you tell me which cities you have in mind? From what I recall, LADOT has fewer bikeways staff than NYC, San Francisco or Chicago.I agree with you, Lester, that there are other big issues that will still need to be tackled, but as bikinginla states, we can work on staff and on other demands. We should definitely work on roadway standards, too.
If the city half-heartedly assigns some uninterested staff, it definitely won’t solve our problems… but LADOT has a staff of over 2000… I think it would be a step in the right direction for a few more of them to spend more of their time on bikeways.
Joe Linton (Email) (URL) - October 28 '09 - 10:15
Of course the regional issue goes beyond the city of LA! There is still too much transportation planning unaware of the complete streets legislation (DD 64) and the rights of cyclists. The education of planners should be very high on the agenda, and LADOT and other cities should make sure their engineering staff attend the classes offered by Caltrans and other agencies. Not: “Could arrange for training”, but “Makes training obligatory”. LACBC is currently negotiating with the Institute of Transportation Studies (UC Berkeley) to offer their bike facilities course in the LA region for that specific reason.About the number of districts: Don’t trust that Rita, and her interdepartmental correspondence: http://www.lacity.org/ladot/dist_souther.. and http://www.lacity.org/ladot/dist_central.. seem to have separate identities still.
Michael Cahn (Email) - October 28 '09 - 12:07
@Lester: Can you attend the next L.A. Bike Working Group meeting on the 31st? We would welcome your input. http://labikeplan.com/index.htmlangle (Email) (URL) - October 28 '09 - 12:15
The idea of assigning or creating multiple bikeways coordinators is just one of many ways to improve a system that currently does not give bicyclists proper consideration. The fact that LADOT only has one coordinator for the whole city demonstrates a lack of commitment to bikes. Assigning or hiring a coordinator for each region is one way of asking DOT to commit more fully to bikes as a viable transportation mode. Yes, it will still require more commitment from the top. Cities like Chicago and New York have mayors and transportation department leaders that have made the moves necessary to improve their cities for cyclists (this is not to diminish the role of advocacy groups in those cities). Mayor Villaraigosa and Rita Robinson clearly need to step up, but a lot of the work still has to be done at the staff level and our city falls far short of committing the resources necessary for a viable bikeways department. The City of San Francisco has a population and land mass that’s much smaller than that of Los Angeles. A quick check of SFMTA’s website shows eleven staff members in its Bike Program. LADOT’s Bicycle Services website shows nine staff members. We can and should expect better and more facilities and programs as well as more staffing to make it all happen.Colin Bogart (Email) - October 28 '09 - 15:08
@Colin – thanks for bring up this idea in the first place! I think it will be a step forward.Joe Linton (Email) (URL) - October 28 '09 - 18:21
NYC has 21 bike and ped coordinators – yeah baby!Jessica - October 29 '09 - 11:09
Why this is a bad idea, part II:\n\n(1) One unnaccountable-to-the-cycling public Bike Coordinator is bad enough, imagine a cadre of these people!\n\n(2) Who would be in charge of the various bike coordinators? Who would we talk to when something went wrong, or we want to improve a bike facility? The LADOT having a large, and varied, management structure is very difficult to manage from within the LADOT – how is an outsider interest group (an un-monied! outside interest group at that) going to have a chance at making LA’s Car Dept responsive to our needs?\n\n(3) Where would the money come from to pay for these positions? The staff we already have bleed a good chunk of the bikeays facilities money the city gets already. This is money that cannot go into the City’s general expenses, and must go to “clean air” programs, bicycle projects, and the like. The city has spent $65 million in the past 12 years on “bike projects” – the capital cost to build out hte 1996 plan is $100 million. How close are we to that?\n\nThe reality is that we need someone in a central position of power to go to with our complaints, ideas, and suggestions that has the authority, or proxy authority, to affect change on our behalf. The current mayor will be gone in 2012. I think our chances for this mayor doing anything to detract from high-speed automobile transportation planning in our city is unlikely.\n\nWe need a position in LA that will take the political and P.R. lead on bicycle projects. Yes, there must of course be a stable of bicycle project managers to make things get done (grant proposals, plans, public meeting reports, public meetings, outreach, etc.), however let’s not put the cart before the horse. The most judicious use of our efforts, at this juncture, would be to push for the structural change that will pay off in the 3 to 5 year time span, when we have a new mayor in office and (hopefully) a political mandate to push his (or her) newly appointed bike-funds-paid-for bike program coordinator to get cracking with deal making and grant applications.\n\nThe structure of city government in LA is compicated – maybe the mayors ofice is not the right place. Maybe it is planning? I don’t know for sure. I do know that scattering LADOT bikeways staff around that department is a poor idea. No offense personally, but I think this one should stay on the drawing board.lesterlute (Email) - November 01 '09 - 23:53
Joes says: “If the city half-heartedly assigns some uninterested staff, it definitely won’t solve our problems… but LADOT has a staff of over 2000… I think it would be a step in the right direction for a few more of them to spend more of their time on bikeways.”LA Draft Bike Plan says: “Make the City of Los Angeles the most bicyclist friendly large city in the United States by 2020 so that at least 5% of all daily trips and 5% of home-to-work trips are by bicycle.” (thats a 5% mode share)
My simple math: 5% mode share X 2000 LADOT employees = 100 bicycle mode employees?
Cory - November 02 '09 - 14:38