Los Angeles Tries to Put Cyclists in a Safe Lane

LOS ANGELES (Feb. 8) – It took some battered bodies as a catalyst, but the city of Los Angeles – where cars matter even more than celebrities – is looking to add protections for its growing numbers of urban cyclists.

The city is contemplating a "Cyclists' Bill of Rights" being pushed by the Bike Writers Collective of blogging bike enthusiasts. It is also working on defining networks of side streets to separate bicycle traffic from heavily traveled roads and exploring a bike-sharing program in parts of the city.

The moves come 18 months after a notorious case of cycling road rage. Dr. Christopher Thompson slammed on his car brakes in front of a line of fast-moving cyclists, severely injuring several of them. Thompson had argued with some of the cyclists moments before he hit the brakes on a curvy canyon road in the wealthy Brentwood neighborhood. He was sentenced last month to five years in prison after being convicted of assault with a deadly weapon.

A bicyclist sits at a light next to a tour bus in Los Angeles, CA.

Jewel Samad, AFP / Getty Images

City Council members in Los Angeles are looking into a range of bike-friendly laws following a road rage incident last year that injured several cyclists. Here, a cyclist waits at an intersection next to a tourist bus in Los Angeles in 2008.

The case galvanized Los Angeles' growing cycling community and prompted City Council members to look into a range of bike-friendly laws. The specifics are being worked out, but that the city is paying serious attention to the issue comes as welcome news to cycling enthusiasts in a place that is second only to Detroit in its love affair with cars. And the Thompson incident, they say, was an extreme example of the type of confrontations Los Angeles cyclists experience on a daily basis.

"The nature of that crash, and the TV coverage, brought the dangers the cyclists face to the forefront," said Damien Newton, a cycling activist and blogger who says he's been involved in three car-bike scrapes since moving here from New York 18 months ago. "There has been a shift in the way politicians view cycling since then."

One the leading proponents on the council is Bill Rosendahl, whose district includes the canyon in which the incident occurred.

"That was the straw that broke my back," Rosendahl said. "Then I heard other stories from other cyclists about other run-ins with drivers. It just became unbelievably absurd."

Opposition to expanding cyclists' access to the streets isn't open, but online many drivers complain that cyclists pick and choose which traffic laws they want to obey.

"Many of them ... can be quite arrogant at times," one poster wrote on the Los Angeles's KNBC-TV News web site last week. They "think they are entitled to ride outside of the designated areas on main thoroughfares, and that motorists are obliged to accommodate them. While that what that doctor did ... was not right, I do believe I understand the frustration."

But no one is certain that the city's moves will make a difference. And even among cyclists there are divisions over whether the city is serious about fostering a cycling culture – doubts fueled by disappointment in a proposed city bike plan.

"It's just a funding scheme," said Stephen Box, another cycling activist and blogger involved in the Bike Working Group, which has offered an alternative bike plan. City departments, he said, are more attuned to car culture than bike culture, and as a result are generating proposals that do little to protect the rights of cyclists.

Aurisha Smolarski, communications director for the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, said her group supports the Bill of Rights, but believes the bike plan under consideration is inadequate.

"It lacks vision, creativity and most of all dedicated bike lanes," she said, adding that the city "needs to start meeting the demand for more bike infrastructure and equal treatment on the roads."

Los Angeles adopted a "bike plan" 14 years ago, but many of the specifics were never implemented, Newton said. The new proposal doesn't include some of the uncompleted elements of the plan it would replace and also would not establish bike-only lanes or take other steps to protect bike riders.

"People are concerned that it doesn't go far enough," Newton said.

Rosendahl agrees and said the city would need to adopt some of the concerns of the cyclists before adopting a new bike plan.

"We have got to get rid of this car culture in Los Angeles and get into a culture that appreciates cycling as a form of transportation," Rosendahl said.

Los Angeles, legendary for its sprawl and road congestion, lags far behind its sibling rival to the north, San Francisco, in developing a cohesive cycling culture, or even northern cities like Chicago. Yet Southern California cyclists say they are developing a strong network of nonprofits, informal clubs and activists that are giving cycling a higher profile – particularly in an era of concerns over global warming.

"L.A. has the potential to be a great bike city – it has beautiful weather, it's relatively flat, you can take the bike on (public transit) so the groundwork is there," Smolarski said. "It's just a matter of the city prioritizing it and taking space away from cars and giving it back to cyclists."

But in a region defined by freeways and that has the highest rate of congestion in the nation, according to the Southern California Association of Governments, getting drivers to give up some road space won't be an easy political fight.

Either, for that matter, is getting the city to act. The proposal for a bike-sharing program cropped up in September 2008. The city council's response then? It referred it to the city's Transportation Department for recommendations. Which it did again last week.