May 29, 2010

• Los Angeles gets sharrows in June!

  Los Angeles ought to be one of the most bike-friendly cities in the world. It is relatively flat, relatively laid-back, has wonderful weather and a strong health-and-fitness vibe. As a city, Los Angeles spreads out instead of towering up, so one rarely needs to hoist a bike up stairs or stand it on its tail in elevators or search for it in dank parking garages-- though one will end up riding a few more miles because of this sprawl, they are pretty easy miles.

  Except that for decades the City of Los Angeles has simply forgotten and ignored bicyclists, and the streets & traffic flows show it. City officials seem to think that there are only three kinds of bicyclists: college students who ought to stay near campus, inner city kids who ought to stay in their neighborhoods, and athletes who ought to stay on their training trails along the beach or in some imaginary place that must certainly exist for them somewhere. Anyone trying to get across town on a bicycle must be either a nutcase or a homeless nutcase, and the City certainly has no responsibility to make life easier for those folks, who really ought to get a car or pay bus fare or stay in their bike-ghetto (whether that is the 'hood or the campus or the parks & beaches).

  But there have been signs of progress in recent years, and next month (June 2010!), a step forward that will directly benefit me as a bike commuter: Sharrows!

  A "sharrow is a "share-the-lane arrow", kind of like a bike lane within an automobile lane, which does not need to be avoided by car traffic unless there is actually a bicycle riding there... but when there is a cyclist in that lane, it gives a visual mandate to drivers to give that cyclist some room-- and whether a cyclist is present or not, it lets motorists know to expect them. It reminds motorists that cyclists belong on the street, in the flow of traffic, not on the sidewalk.

  Beginning in June 2010, the City of Los Angeles will begin painting sharrows in several areas of the city where cyclists and motorists have had some trouble sharing lanes: East Hollywood, Koreatown, University Park/USC (my neighborhood!), Reseda, Holmby Hills, and Venice. Not the entire city, but a very good representative sampling, and I might personally benefit from the sharrows in University Park and in Koreatown, where I have two faithful clients.

  I hope to volunteer as a sharrow-calibration rider in the University Park neighborhood next week-- if I do, I'll let you know how it goes. And by September or October I'll let you know if sharrows have made any difference in my experience as a bike commuter in the City of Los Automobiles!

  • 9:55 pm
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