If you can’t make the Bike Working Group today, here are twelve principles we’ll be presenting. These principles were distilled out of the 8 solid pages of ideas that came out of the first Bike Working Group. Bikeside and the Bike Writers Collective will be presenting these 12 principles as the proposed backbone of LA’s Best Bike Plan – the plan created by cyclists, for cyclists:
- Genesis: Every street is a street that cyclists will ride.
- Action: LA must commit to the implementation of key measures within 2 years.
- All City: A Backbone Bikeway network will be the engineering focus in the immediate future.
- Transformation: Neighborhood pilots projects to create pockets of ultra bike friendliness, including bike boulevards.
- Strength: Any new plan should go through a full programmatic EIR.
- Intelligence: Evaluate success by measuring progress against goals, timelines, bike counts, and collision data.
- A Generation: Get em’ young – building a car-free army from LA’s youngest generation – beginning at the school level.
- Justice: LAPD will under go mandatory 8 hour training in cyclists’ rights, laws concerning cyclists, and practical bike training.
- Execution: Move Bikeways out of LADOT.
- Democracy: The plan must be approved by cyclists, or the NCs.
- Total: The six Es – Equality, Engineering, Education, Encouragement, Enforcement, Evaluation – give the structure of the plan.
- Equality: The Cyclists’ Bill of Rights is the foundation for the plan.
There was so much good material that it was very difficult to narrow the list down to these 12. Here’s 11 great principles that didn’t make the cut:
- The whole plan must be usable, not bits
- Education must be comprehensive, motorist focused, and specific
- Sharrows on every street (educate about what it means), beginning with those streets with proposed bike lanes
- City will advocate for legal reform (3 foot law, Idaho stops) and assume liability for hazards
- Regional Divisions for Bicycle Coordinators
- Public reports by agencies on bike Issues
- Give NCs control over the local elements of the plan
- Strengthen language by removing equivocation, changing proposed to designated, and potential to proposed.
- Establish new street performance measure, doing away with LOS
- Kill the plan, live with the old plan, or replace with our plan
- Not that bad is not good enough
BOOM!
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