Westside BikeSIDE!

I wrote Monday about an important Santa Monica City Council meeting on Tuesday where the council discussed the Land Use and Circulation Element draft (LUCE). When the LUCE is approved it will act as the guiding force for transportation planning in Santa Monica for decades, so it’s important that cyclists make their voice heard. This coming Tuesday there is another meeting, and again the LUCE process will be on the agenda. If you’re interested in cycling & urban planning in Santa Monica I urge you to attend. LUCE will be discussed as item 8-B, following the budget discussions on 8-A. Those begin at 6:45pm, so you can safely arrive at 7:45pm at City Hall (1685 Main St) and not miss any of the action.

After conversations with city staff and a warmer than usual reception at the meeting I’m convinced that there is a chance to make progress. The LUCE plans are still in the draft stages, but the council and staff appear amenable to implementing some improvements for cyclists early. So, I suggest that as a community, we ask for implementation of these two projects as soon as possible:

• (short term, inexpensive) One thing the staff looked at during the LUCE process were means to alert motorists to the presence of cyclists. Sharrows, and painted bike lanes, like this one:
  Mihai originally suggested that these might be something that the Council would be amenable to getting started. Some activists have debated the merits of painted bike lanes, but I think it would be both a good experiment, and a good way to raise the visibility of cycling. Let’s ask the council to paint one major bike lane, perhaps the Main St. bike lane, for it’s entire length and, add sharrows to the downtown streets.
• The best recommendation in the LUCE draft, which unfortunately does not address enforcement for motorists endangering cyclists, is the recommendation to complete the bikeways network. Santa Monica has a number of bike lanes, but they rarely connect to other bike lanes, so people not comfortable sharing lanes with traffic are limited in their ability to get places. I don’t mind mixing it up with cars, but if we want more people on bikes, we need to give them a sense of safety. Finishing the bikeways network will do that, and the best way to do that is to start connecting the loose ends together and close the gaps. Let’s ask the council to pick an unbuilt section of the bike network in the LUCE draft and build it now.

One last thing it might be good to mention when you speak. There are many places where it’s difficult to lock your bike in Santa Monica. Perhaps each of us could mention a place we have difficulty locking up to the council. That way the council will get a more tangible understanding of the poor bike parking situation in Santa Monica.

By the way, I was taking photos at the last meeting and a police officer asked me to stop. Even though I thought that was obnoxious of him, I did stop. However, when I later related this to Stephen Box, he explained that the officer violated the Brown Act when he asked me to stop - your right to record a public meeting, such as a city council meeting, is protected by the Brown Act. I fired off an email to the City Council and City Attourney, and received this apology:

Mr. Thompson: You are correct in that photographs are allowed provided the activity does not disrupt the Council meeting proceedings. My sense is that the police officer(s) present were not aware of the rule. We will communicate with the police department to assure that in the future, officers are aware of this information. Thank you for bringing it to our attention. Let us know if you have any other concerns. Thank you.

I asked to be CCed on any communication with the police department. You can bet I’ll have my camera with me on Tuesday. Here’s the very small Flickr set from the last meeting. Know your rights!

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