Talk about mixed messages

"Do you have a story to share about Santa Monica, California?" asks an ad promoting tourism to Santa Monica. "Perhaps it’s about your first visit or something memorable you experienced. Submit it for a chance to win an electric bike."

Motorized vehicles are prohibited on the municipal bike path, but

let's make one a prize for happy stories about the city. anyway

Here's what the City's code says:

"3.12.550 Bike-path and beach promenade. "(a) It shall be unlawful to ride a bicycle or to coast in any vehicle upon the Beach Promenade; bicycle riding shall be permitted along the beach bike-path, within the City limits and in those areas where the Promenade constitutes a portion of the bikeway and are otherwise permitted by sign. All persons riding bicycles on the bike-path shall comply with all lawful signs and directional markings, including, but not limited to, painted, directional arrows, bike-path route boundaries, and signs designating permissible travel lanes. "(b) It shall be unlawful to operate a pedicab upon the beach bike-path.

"3.12.560 Prohibited vehicles. "In the area where bicycle riding is permitted by Section 3.12.550, no vehicle of any type shall be permitted except unicycles, bicycles, bicycles with training wheels, wheelchairs, and single-person tricycles operated by a person eighteen years of age or older."

The City, despite its recent move against Bird scooters and their ilk, is seriously deficient in its maintenance of the bike path. Segways, Vespas, etc., are routine. Signage is confusing when it isn't wrong, misleading or absent. No effort whatsoever is made to control pedestrians and dogs. And pedicabs routinely troll for customers along the bike path, blocking traffic when people get on and off.

It's a tribute to the City's pr flacks that it has a reputation as pro-bicycle and pro-pedestrian.

From the "Sure. Why Not?" Desk:

The Norfolk, Va., city council is due to decide on granting easements for a natural gas pipeline that would run under the city's drinking water reservoir, the Virginian-Pilot reports. No room for Murphy's Law there.

Urban progress and reaction

“You desire the end but close your eyes to the means. You want the garden to be beautiful, provided that the smell of manure is kept well away from your fastidious nose.” ― P.D. James, The Children of Men

Nimbyism is a reactionary impulse that ignores the history of urbanism and strikes at the city's reason for being. Nimbys seek to impose a romantic fantasy of an orderly and edenic past on an urban history that in fact is a tangled tale of struggle, ambition, imagination, innovation and criminality. Indeed, it is the chaotic nature of the city

that gives it its magnetic pull, that makes it such fertile ground for creativity.

To bind a city to imaginary specifications is to strangle its spirit, to rob it of its dreams, to steal its soul. Were you to abandon a city, eventually nature would return it to the jungle or desert, the forest or prairie hidden beneath its tar and concrete; but nowhere has an urbanized locale merely devolved to an earlier stage of development. It has to be murdered, deliberately killed by greed, selfishness and myopia.

A flourishing city is an antidote to mediocrity, monotony, intolerance, rigidity, stasis, just as it is the engine of invention, adaptability, resourcefulness, enterprise, growth. We forget that the modern city developed originally as a refuge from the impliability and oppressiveness of feudalism, that within its communal

walls, and fueled by commerce, artists, rebels, scholars, free thinkers and tradesmen of every stripe were free to prosper.

It is from the concentration of talents and energies, born of the city's wealth, that the qualities of life we value most, that we count among the benefits of civilization, are afforded; cut off the city's ability to change and grow, and you condemn it, and ultimately urban culture, to death.

The city springs from hope, from the desire for a different and better future; thus, though it can be done badly or to excess, development is, at its heart, progressive.

quote unquote: Woody Allen

"More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly." -- Woody Allen

Bike Way or the Highway

The only proposal I've seen for the Lincoln Blvd redesign (I hope there are others) has no bike lane, isolated or not.

One mainstay of anti-bike arguments holds that converting general road space into a bike lane is bad for traffic. But location after location proves this isn't true.

A better plan

New York City recently installed bike lanes on Columbus and Eighth avenues that, by reducing the width of car lanes from 12 to 10 feet -- a well-documented safer width anyway -- and adding protected left turns, not only preserved vehicle volume, but actually reduced travel times by 35 and 14 percent, respectively.

They're baaaaack!

Having failed to inflict sufficient damage on Santa Monica's planning process last year with its ill-conceived but successful referendum to hogtie the development of the admirable Hines project (you can see the not-unexpectedly mediocre aftermath of that effort here), nimby-oid Residocracy is back with a

26th Street as it might have been

non-binding digital petition designed to short circuit the reasonable, common-sense updating of the city's zoning ordinance, recently advanced by the planning commission after many months of study and debate.

According to the Santa Monica Daily Press, "Residocracy is asking for a 25 percent reduction of all proposed heights and densities under the first and second tier development standards. They want an amendment to another planning document (The Land Use and Circulation Element or LUCE) that eliminates third tier developments. They’d like a second amendment to the LUCE that would eliminate all activity centers, which would allow larger scale development. And finally, they want an ordinance requiring that all development agreements be approved by Santa Monica voters."

This is not how representative democracy works. In fact, representative government was established precisely to prevent the highjacking of the political system by highly motivated minorities. Even the heart of Residocracy's complaint -- that the proposed ordinance and LUCE are complex 500 page documents that took seven years to put together -- points to the inadvisability of deciding complex issues by referendum. The other complaint -- that, despite extensive public input in Santa Monica decision-making, the outcomes seem predetermined by city staff -- has some merit, but the solution is to give elected representatives more sway over city employees (council members need their own staffs, for example, or, shy of that, there should be a full-time independent auditor with his or her own staff).

Residocracy presents itself as the voice of Santa Monica residents. but in actuality it is a single-issue interest group with a very specific and very negative agenda. Using intimidation, sloganeering, over-simplification and scare tactics. it attempts to bully its way to its desired outcomes (go to a public meeting where its members have been turned out in numbers and you'll think you're at a cage fight not a civic event). During the lead up to the Hines ballot initiative, out off curiosity I took a walk around town randomly asking people what they thought of the project. Although it is anecdotal not scientific, what I found is nonetheless instructive: of the people I spoke to who'd heard of Hines. not a one was opposed to it as approved and a number expressed the hope that it would be built.

Maybe this time the city council -- charged with looking out for the general welfare,  after all, not the interests of one group, however clamorous -- will not let itself be bullied. And before you allow yourself to be bullied into endorsing Residocracy's abstinence appeal ("just say no" to all development it dislikes, whether useful, necessary, desirable or popular), consider this: what do you know about land use; tax law and revenue generation; infrastructure and utilities; zoning; federal and state regulations affecting development; the influence of local bylaws, ordinances and regulations on our environmental, economic and housing goals and whether such rules are prescriptive or proscriptive; the effects on traffic, air quality and other elements of urban life of concentrating development near transportation hubs; the mix and condition of the city's housing stock; public benefits that can be achieved from easements and development agreements; the possible differences, relationships and sound mix of residential, commercial and industrial uses; the need for public facilities; and how your concerns dovetail with others who have an equal claim on what happens here? That's what a city council is for.

By all means, participate! Go to community workshops, express yourself at planning commission and city council meetings, call and write your elected and appointed representatives. And when Residocracy turns up again, as they will, with a plebiscite on a complex development matter, don't play along. Just say no.

Follow: Santa Monica Mirror; Santa Monica Daily Press; City of Santa Monica.

Alternative and shared-use bridges

While we await the opportunity to cap the I-10 and reunite Santa Monica's neighborhoods, we can do a lot for the city's walking and biking populations by building three or four pedestrian/bike bridges. The I-10 overpasses at 4th St. and at Lincoln Blvd., also, are in especially desperate need of makeovers to make them safer and more attractive to walkers and cyclists.

(Credit: CityLab.com)

More:
The Bright Future of the Pedestrian Bridge: Top engineer Ted Zoli says the era of shared-use structures has arrived.
Can a Beehive-Inspired Overpass Unite a City?: New Britain, Connecticut, is split by a highway overpass—which is also the city's main street. Will a high-design walkway bridge deep divisions?

Little Libraries: Threat or Menace?

Nanny-state nags and freelance busybodies (of the sort who drove the kid-pleasing petting zoo from the Main Street Farmers' Market in Santa Monica) are now targeting Little Libraries as the latest peril to public order and property values: "Crime, homelessness and crumbling infrastructure are still a problem in almost every part of America, but two cities

have recently cracked down on one of the country's biggest problems: small-community libraries where residents can share books. Officials in Los Angeles and Shreveport, Louisiana, have told the owners of homemade lending libraries that they're in violation of city codes, and asked them to remove or relocate their small book collections."

The rest of the story: The Danger of Being Neighborly Without a Permit: All over America, people have put small "give one, take one" book exchanges in front of their homes. Then they were told to tear them down. (CityLab)

Planning tool

Santa Monica has introduced an online interactive tool to evaluate various options for the future of the Civic Auditorium. Anyone interested in the costs and benefits of public investment in amenities such as parks, theaters, restaurants, retail spaces, offices, hotels, parking, etc., can get a better understanding through playing with the options. Plus, it's possible that you will help influence the outcome of the Civic Auditorium development process. The tool will be available through February 14th.

Go to the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium website.

IP

It has always been common for retailers of a stripe to cluster together (think music instrument vendors and diamond merchants in midtown). There are several mega-projects in the development stage around the city. Why not hold one condition of project approval to be the inclusion of a street with, say, half the retail space reserved at affordable rents for booksellers? Rent control for bookstores.

L.A. Blues Again

What's the goal here?

I expect the planners convince themselves this is about safety: "The city of Los Angeles is cracking down on pedestrians who sneak across streets when the traffic signal says 'don’t walk.' But when you put a price on bad behavior, like being in a public street illegally, you see clearly what a city values. The cheapest parking ticket in Los Angeles is $58, and the one most commonly issued for parking in a prohibited zone is $73. Jaywalking—the term of art for a pedestrian crossing against the light—will cost you $197."

As long as the car is king, Los Angeles will never succeed as a walking and biking town.

In Los Angeles, Walking Illegally Is More Than Twice as Expensive as Parking Illegally by Tim Fernholz (Citylab)

It'll pass Congress in a New York minute

Just call it the, I dunno, Ronald Reagan National System of Interstate and Defense Highspeed Rail.

With a new plan for a high-speed system, Amtrak execs hope they can revive both American rail and American cities: Why High-Speed Rail Could Spur a Golden Age in the Northeast by Yoni Appelbaum (The Atlantic)

Transportation: The Dreams of the California High-Speed Rail Authority

A visual tour of the projected California High Speed Rail system:
"Updated business plan provides us with an opportunity to be even more competitive as we go after federal stimulus dollars." - Assemblymember Cathleen Galgiani at January 11 legislative hearing.

The Livable City: Parks & Rec

My second book, a collection of essays intended to deliver the insights generated by the social sciences to students and practitioners of the design professions, had on its cover a photograph of a popular Manhattan minipark, part of a program originally proposed in the mid-60s by Thomas Hoving when he was briefly New York City's parks commissioner. In the years since, with no small effort by neighborhood residents and community activists from coast to coast, miniparks, pocket parks and public gardens have helped to ameliorate the urban landscape.

Pocket parks — also known as miniparks and vest-pocket parks — are small patches of landscaped nature generally built on vacant building lots or scraps of city land that fall between the cracks of real estate interests.

Jacob Riis, the urban reformer, is credited with inventing the pocket-park concept in 1897, when he served as the secretary of a city committee on small parks. The committee issued a statement declaring that “any unused corner, triangle or vacant lot kept off the market by litigation or otherwise may serve this purpose well.” Though turn-of-the-last-century New York was filled with spaces that fit the bill, Riis’s idea went largely unrealized until after World War II, when bombed-out building sites in European cities provided opportunities to create small parks at less cost than reconstruction would have entailed.

Hoving may have seen parallels between New York’s crumbling urban landscape and Europe’s war-ravaged capitals when he started his micro-park effort in 1966. That year, he identified 378 vacant lots and 346 abandoned buildings in Bedford-Stuyvesant alone.

“Utopia would mean a park — some large, some small — every four or five blocks,” he declared. These micro-oases could spring up in the middle of dense, socially fractious neighborhoods where, he believed, they had the potential to “create wider ripples of reform.” One thousand new pocket parks would mean adding only 140 acres to the city’s park acreage. Two hundred could be acquired and developed for less than 10 percent of his department’s annual budget.

The rest of the story: City of Earthy Delights by George Prochnik (New York Times 2009-12-12)

See, also: Turn Yards Into Parks by John Gabree (Impractical Proposals 2004-06)
Urban Oases: New York's Great Pocket Parks & Secret Gardens by Jacquelin Carnegie (Frommer's 2009-06-18)
Shocking Video Shows Los Angeles City Bulldozing Community Gardens Into the Dirt by Mike Adams (Natural News 2009-02-15)
Showdown at South Central Farm by Robert Gottlieb (Next American City)

Resources: Pocket Parks - StreetWiki (LivableStreets Initiative)
Pocket Parks gallery (Project for Public Spaces)
Los Angeles Community Garden Council
Los Angeles County Common Ground Garden Program

Resource: Low -Tech Magazine

With a slogan like "Doubts on technology," it's not surprising that Low-Tech Magazine "refuses to assume that every problem has a high-tech solution." The topics give away the game: the history and future of industrial windmills, homes heated by burning tires, water-powered cable trains, the hidden costs of digital technology, "A world without trucks: underground freight networks" and "Life without airplanes : reintroducing ocean liners." Low-Tech Magazine offers fascinating, practical alternative thinking about technology and its uses.

Can we get more people to take the stairs by making it fun?

Planning: The McMansion - Threat or Menace

Planners Move to Close Window on US 'McMansions' in the Guardian is about city and county governments finally getting wise, a decade or so late, to the possibility that building houses of 10,000 square feet for two people might not be such a wise thing for maintaining scale, husbanding resources, and keeping communities connected other than by three-hour freeway commutes (although, when you think about it, the same logic applies to single-family homes of any size). The development may mean more trouble for those invested in the struggling housing market, but for the rest of us it's welcome news.

In Boulder County, Colorado, which has recently adopted measures to cap the size of new homes, houses have grown from an average of 3,900 square feet in 1990 to 6,300 square feet last year.

Last month in Los Angeles, the city's planning commission passed a motion to restrict the size of new homes. If the city council adopts the measure it could affect 300,000 properties in the city. Similar measures have been adopted in Minneapolis and in Florida.

"I think people are suspicious of development in the US right now," says John Chase, architecture critic and urban designer for the city of West Hollywood. "People have an unconscious cultural association with a place. Mansion-building takes away from a person's sense of the identity of a place."

Now if we can just pass the Stop Building Cheap, Crappy Condos Act, we'll really be getting somewhere.

The rest of the story: The Guardian.

Planning: Paris Aims to Cut Traffic With Bikes

In Santa Monica, we think it's a big deal to offer validated parking for bicycles.

Elsewhere in the country, in such places as Austin, Boulder, San Francisco, Madison, Minneapolis, Oakland, Boston, Seattle, Athens (Georgia) and Lawrence (Kansas), the city governments are devoted to expanding the use of bicycles to mitigate traffic and air pollution, providing hundreds of miles of bike trails and dedicated traffic lanes to thousands of commuters.

But nowhere has an American city gone as far as Paris (France, not Texas) where, according to a story today in the New York Times, city hall launched a new municipal service that has placed 10,600 bikes at 750 stations all over town.

Any user can rent and return a bike from any station anywhere in the city. A yearlong pass for the service costs $39.50, a one-day pass goes for $1.36, and a seven-day ticket is $6.80. But the project is designed for short rides (the first half hour is free) and is priced on a sliding scale to keep the bikes in rotation.

The program, called Velib' from the words for bike (velo) and liberty (liberte), is being pushed by Socialist mayor Bertrand Delanoe who, like his counterparts in London and New York, has made fighting traffic and pollution his No. 1 goal.

For Parisians, the bicycle service means another public transport option, in addition to the subway, buses and trams, Delanoe said.

"In the morning, you can go to work in the tram and come home by bike; it depends on the weather, it depends on your mood and on your friends," Delanoe said at the launch.

Business was brisk the first day, according to the Times. The service is accessible to tourists as well as residents; it's offered in eight languages, and its machines accept foreign credit cards.

Paris is following the example of other European cities with inexpensive bicycle services, including Stockholm, Vienna, Brussels, Barcelona and Copenhagen. The City of Light now has 230 miles of bike lanes.

Full disclosure: I suggested a similar idea for Santa Monica a couple of years ago. General hilarity ensued. He who laughs last, though. I'm just sayin'.

The rest of the story: The New York Times

Update: French Ideal of Bicycle-Sharing Meets Reality by Steven Erlanger and Maia de la Baume (New York Times 2009-10-30)

Bike to Work Week 2007 Event Calendar!

Here's a list of some events happening during Bike to Work Week 2007 (see next post).

Monday May 14, 2007

Downtown LA Bike Rally and Concert
City of Los Angeles City Hall, South Lawn
11:30 am to 1:30 pm
Festivities ­ include Ed Begley, Jr. and other speakers, health and bike fair, custom bike show, and a live concert by the Ditty Bops!

Bike Week Pasadena
C.I.C.L.E. and the City of Pasadena along with Patagonia and Metro are hosting more than 15 events all week! Highlights include:
Mayor's Bike to Work Brigade led by Bill Bogaard, bicycling aficionado and Mayor of Pasadena.
Themed bike tours like the Sunset Sonata Ride: cycle to an enchanting overlook on the Arroyo Seco, complete with hors d'oeuvres and a live violin and cello duet.
Free bicycle-related films and documentaries screened outdoors nightly in the One Colorado Courtyard.
An Urban Bicycle Commuter Expo featuring folding and electric bicycles, accessories, cargo bikes and trailers that handle everything from shopping trips to hauling lumber. More info www.cicle.org/cicle_content/pivot/entry.php?id=1373

Tuesday May 15, 2007

4th Annual Blessing of the Bicycles
Good Samaritan Hospital, 616 S. Witmer Avenue, Los Angeles CA 90017
8:00 am to 9:30 am
More info www.goodsam.org

El Segundo Bike Challenge
El Segundo and surrounding areas
For more information call Devon Deming at 310 646-7775

Thursday May 17, 2007 — Bike to Work Day

IlluminateLA Bike to Work Day Pitstop and Bike Ride
Hollywood and Western Metro Station
7:00 am ­ 10:00 am.
More info www.illuminatela.com/Calendar/Community.html

Free rides for bicyclists on transit www.metro.net/biketowork/free_rides.htm

Free countywide pit stops www.metro.net/biketowork/pit_stops.htm

Saturday May 19, 2007

4th Annual Bike Tour and Festival at Jesse Owens Park
More info http://www.richesbiz.com/cityweb/cityweb.htm

C.I.C.L.E. Urban Bicycle Commuter Expo
One Colorado Courtyard, Old Town Pasadena
10:00 am to 5:00 pm
More info www.cicle.org/cicle_content/pivot/entry.php?id=1373

Transportation: L.A. County Bike to Work Week May 14 - 18

(From the Metro website)

For the 13th straight year a record number of cyclists are expected to give bicycle commuting a try and leave their cars at home. Bike to Work Week is May 14 – 18, 2007.

Be part of the solution and PLEDGE not only to bike to work but pledge for a better you and for a better LA. Bicycling reduces traffic, improves the environment, improves your health and even saves you money on gas.

Pledge online today! Get a free bicycle patch kit (while supplies last) just for pledging. And, be automatically entered to win prizes. Visit our Riders page for more on planning your ride to work.

Free Rides on Thursday, May 17 from participating transit agencies. Just board with your bike or helmet.

Stop by at Metro’s co-sponsored Pit Stops on Thursday, May 17! Metro is teaming up with a number of Los Angeles County organizations, employers and merchants to host local pit stops for all Bike to Work participants. Pit stops are locations for bicyclists to stop, relax, get energized, have snacks, receive give-aways (all for free), and obtain informational materials on bicycling to work. Check back for LA County Pit Stop locations.

Employers take action! Thank your employees for bicycling to work by setting-up food and refreshments for them or by going all out and having a fair. Whatever you decide on, REGISTER with Metro to receive free give-away items to support your event. See our Employers page to register and for more information.

Be part of the solution and use your pedal power on Bike to Work Day Thursday,
May 17!