Parts of Universal's backlot, including "Wisteria Lane," above, would be moved under home plan. Photo: AP/ABC

NBC/Universal should drop plans to build nearly 3,000 housing units on its backlot, Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said this week in a strongly-worded letter to studio chief Ron Meyer.

While Yaroslavsky has previously criticized the scale of the Evolution Plan, this is the first time he has pushed the studio to drop the housing component altogether. Doing so, he said, would better position Universal for a future in which it remains a strong entertainment industry contributor to the L.A. economy.

“Abandoning that portion of your plan would make long-term economic sense for this region by ensuring that Universal will remain a full-service motion picture and television production campus and a major contributor to our regional economy,” Yaroslavsky said in his letter.

Building some 2,900 condos, lofts, townhouses and apartments on 124 acres of Universal’s property would cut into the studio’s backlot and require relocation of its famed “Psycho” house.  It also would mean uprooting Wisteria Lane, the setting for “Desperate Housewives,” now in its final season, and Falls Lake, where movies including “Jaws” were shot.

Even without the housing element, the 20-year Evolution Plan remains a large-scale blueprint for how the studio proposes to grow on its 391-acre Universal City site.

The Entertainment Evolution portion of the plan calls for an improved studio tour, a 500-room hotel for CityWalk, upgraded movie theaters, restaurants and stores, and new theme park attractions. (Even as the Evolution Plan has been moving through the system, at least one big new attraction, the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, has been announced, although it is not expected to open for several years.)

Meanwhile, the Studio District Evolution component of the plan includes more than 308,000 square feet of new production space, 437,000 square feet devoted to new production support facilities and nearly 500,000 square feet of new office space.

In his letter, Yaroslavsky said that those new elements, along with current operations, would create more than 34,000 permanent new jobs, whereas just building homes would yield only 2,600. And construction and construction-related jobs, he said, would still number about 15,000 without the housing component.

“In short, the expansion of the studio’s production facilities and related entertainment uses will produce far more economic benefit to our region than the apartments and condominiums that are proposed to be built under the Evolution Plan,” Yaroslavsky said.

In fact, he said, establishing a large new residential neighborhood just feet from an active entertainment studio and theme park would only worsen complaints about noise, and, in time, could force the studio to cut back on production. That, in turn, could lead to a loss of entertainment industry jobs: “None of us could possibly want such a result,” Yaroslavsky said.

The company said in a statement it would consider Yaroslavsky’s comments, along with those of community members, as part of the ongoing environmental review process. A final environmental impact report is now being prepared. That report, along with other permits, must be approved at multiple levels of city and county government before the Evolution Plan can move into action.

Richard Bogy, executive vice president of Communities United for Smart Growth, a coalition of neighborhood and business groups affected by the Universal plan, said Yaroslavsky’s letter to Meyer “really says everything that we agree with.”

Using Universal’s land to grow its entertainment businesses makes more sense than allowing it to be used for housing, Bogy said: “It’s valuable land to the entertainment industry.”

While questions remain about the overall project’s impact on infrastructure, transportation and traffic, Bogy said, dropping the home-building plan would go a long way toward assuaging his group’s concerns.

“The one really big stumbling block in the plan,” he said, “has been the housing.”

Posted 2/1/12

Bus service changes are coming to Metro. Here's your chance to be heard.

Metro is updating its bus service, and anyone interested is invited to weigh in on the process.

The agency will hold five public hearings on proposed changes and improvements to bus service in February. The testimony from those meetings will be passed along to regional service councils for consideration before the proposals are enacted.

The San Fernando Valley service area hearing takes place at 6:30 p.m. on February 1 at 6262 Van Nuys Boulevard. One change would replace Limited Line 363 with a new Line 162 in order to serve more stops and reduce crowding. Metro will also explore four service concepts for Metro Orange Line and the upcoming Orange Line Extension to Chatsworth. The concept that’s chosen will affect the frequency of the express buses and the paths they will take to destinations.

The hearing for Westside/Central service area will be held at 5 p.m. on February 8 at 615 South Shatto Place, just a short walk from the Wilshire/Western stop on Metro Red Line. Changes are proposed to four existing bus lines.

Additional meetings will be held in Huntington Park, Inglewood and El Monte. For meeting times and more details about the proposed changes, click here.

If you can’t make the meetings, comments can also be submitted by email to servicechanges@metro.net.

Posted 1/25/12

Get rid of your e-junk and help kids while you're at it on Saturday in Woodland Hills.

Got an old computer, printer, cell phone or TV to unload? Recycle it on Saturday, January 21, at Serrania Avenue School in Woodland Hills from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

The event, sponsored by Friends of Serrania, is free and will accept all kinds of discarded electronics equipment. Proceeds from the recycled items will help fund student programs at the school.

The school is located at 5014 Serrania Avenue in Woodland Hills. For more information, click here.

Posted 1/19/12

The Orange Line Extension's on the move, and so are some of the stops on the busway's route.

Metro’s Orange Line Extension is well on its way to improving transit options in the western San Fernando Valley and beyond. As construction continues, however, some current riders on the rapid transit busway will have their stops temporarily relocated in the days ahead.

From January 18 to January 30, the Pierce College, De  Soto and Canoga Stations will move one block south, along Victory Boulevard. Ticket sales and parking will still be available at the original stations, but patrons should allow extra time to walk to the temporary stops, where tickets will not be sold.

The Orange Line Extension is currently ahead of schedule and under budget. It is expected to open two months early in June with a final price tag of about $180 million, substantially less than the $215.6 million budgeted for the project.

Once the four-mile extension is completed, it will stretch from Canoga Park to the Chatsworth Metrolink Station, improving north-south mobility in the San Fernando Valley and linking with Amtrak and other regional transit providers.

Posted 1/11/12

Sunday's re-enactment aims to bring history to life at Campo de Cahuenga. Daily News photo

Before there were skyscrapers, freeways and blockbuster movies—even before there was a Gold Rush—a place called Campo de Cahuenga entered the history books as a pivotal place in California history.

It was there in 1847 that the Articles of Capitulation were signed. That ceremony ended the Mexican-American War in California and led to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, by which Mexico ceded all of California and a huge portion of what is now the western United States.

On Sunday, January 15, the Campo de Cahuenga Historical Memorial Association will reenact the historic signing by General Andres Pico and Lieutenant Colonel John C. Fremont, regional leaders of the Mexican and U.S. forces, respectively. Re-enactors will be dressed in authentic uniforms and a replica 1847 howitzer will be fired to mark the occasion.

For entertainment, there will be dance performances, access to the site’s archeological dig, refreshments and a $2 taco bar. Flags of the 12 nations that once laid claim to a part of California will be flown.

The event, the 62^nd such re-enactment, takes place Sunday from 1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. after a presentation of a memorial wreath at 12:30 p.m. Campo de Cahuenga is an outdoor historical site and museum located at 3919 Lankershim Boulevard in North Hollywood.

Posted 1/10/12

Bonnie Verdin is in charge of getting things moving when it comes to utilities and the 405 Project.

Bonnie Verdin knows where the wires are buried. Also the sewer pipes, cable conduits and gas lines.

And with the 405 Sepulveda Pass Project heading into its most intensive, multifaceted construction phase yet, she’s under pressure to get it all moved, as quickly and safely as possible.

As Metro’s “third party administration supervisor” on the project, Verdin is a real power player, in every sense of the word. She and her team are charged with making sure that the complex network of utilities running under Sepulveda Boulevard and other construction areas is relocated in ways that satisfy Caltrans regulations, city policies and staffing levels, neighborhood noise standards and the contractor’s need-it-yesterday timetable.

Talk about Mission Impossible.

“The heat is on my back because our contractor needs to get going,” she says as she gets ready to tackle one of the bigger upcoming challenges: moving a 6-inch gas line and an 8” crude oil line in West Los Angeles to clear the way for construction of new “flyover” ramps at Wilshire Boulevard.

Other massive and costly relocation jobs have been averted thanks to design changes as the project has progressed. That means, for example, that a 96-inch water line near the Getty will be staying put, thanks to a redesign that moved the construction far enough to the west to avoid the line.

Upcoming work on the Wilshire ramps and around the Getty are key as the project seeks to make up for lost time, some of it due to the scrapping of a plan that would have built a new Mulholland Bridge over the freeway before tearing down the old one. The reversal of that plan led to last summer’s “Carmageddon,” which Verdin watched from the comfort of her Whittier home.

While the rest of Southern California regarded the Mulholland Bridge demolition with trepidation because of the planned lengthy shutdown of the freeway, Verdin had another preoccupation: an 8-inch high-pressure gas line running through the bridge. With onsite crews monitoring the gas line, it came through the demolition unscathed. (The process will be repeated next year when the other side of the bridge is torn down.)

It’s not all about what lies beneath. Sometimes the job requires taking overhead power lines underground—an aesthetic bonus in the long run but potentially disruptive to the neighborhoods involved while the utility relocation work is going on.

Then there’s the responsibility of running interference among the 20-plus utility owners and agencies involved—from AT&T to Verizon, with everyone from Chevron to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power in between.

“You can see the complexity and congestion,” she says with a bit of understatement. (For a look at just how complex, check out this Metro graphic of subterranean Sepulveda Boulevard.)

Even when everybody’s on board, she still has to help broker who gets first dibs on working on a given stretch of the project at a given time—something that’s cropped up when project contractor Kiewit Pacific Co. and the city Department of Water and Power both have crews ready to go with different missions to accomplish.

Verdin, 55, who previously was in charge of utility relocation for the Orange Line, has been with Metro for 21 years. In 2008, she started work on the 405 project, which will add a 10-mile northbound carpool lane along with an array of other improvements. The project is set to finish in 2013.

Her first move, as any household contractor knows, was to get it touch with DigAlert for a full picture of the subterranean utility landscape.

Then it was time to determine who was responsible for every piece of it. Establishing what’s known as “right of occupancy” was essential to figuring out who would foot the bill for moving each line and pipe. (Because it’s a joint Metro-Caltrans operation, the complex rules governing the relocation effort mean that some of the costs are paid from the project budget and others are borne by the entities that own the lines. Some $44 million is currently budgeted for utility relocation in the project budget, with millions more coming from individual utility owners.)

Verdin’s academic background is in food and nutrition sciences, but her work in utility relocation has provided a steady diet of diplomatic challenges.

“I would say that my job is to broker consensus, really, among the parties,” she says. “It teaches one patience and persistence.”

Sepulveda Boulevard’s unseen utility underworld is shown in this Metro graphic.

Posted 12/14/11

On the big screen, Woody Smeck introduces a sneak preview of Ken Burns' National Parks documentary series.

Woody Smeck may speak softly, but he carries a big reputation.

With his wide-brimmed hat and low-key eloquence, Smeck has become the public face of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area and in many ways its staunchest guardian.

As superintendent of the country’s largest urban national park for more than a decade, Smeck has presided over the recreation area as it added thousands of acres of new public open space. Working with partners from every level of government as well as those from community and non-profit groups, Smeck has helped shape everything from firefighting practices to educational outreach to preservation guidelines for sensitive wildlife habitats.

And he has been a tireless advocate for the 153,750-acre recreation area, appearing in this video and countless other forums to explain the complexity and importance of the vast natural preserve at the edge of the one of the world’s largest cities.

Now he’s getting ready to to make his mark on another national treasure. In April, he will become Yosemite National Park’s new deputy superintendent. And those who’ve walked the path with him here are already feeling the loss.

Woody Smeck

“I’m so sad,” said Kim Lamorie, president of the Las Virgenes Homeowners Federation, which honored Smeck with its “Citizen of the Year” award in May.

“There is only one Woody Smeck.”

In honoring Smeck, Lamorie credited his “quiet but persuasive ability to finesse funding” of new open space acquisitions. Future generations, she said, will “revel in the wonder of the wild and wonderful resources you have preserved.”

Geoffrey Given, who heads the advisory board for the Santa Monica Mountains campus of the educational program NatureBridge, said Smeck’s impending departure is “a huge loss for Santa Monica [but] a huge gain for Yosemite.”

“He has been an unbelievable advocate and supporter of what we do,” Given said. “At all of our fundraising events, he’d show up in uniform with his flat-brimmed hat on.” Smeck also put his money where his hat was, backing the organization’s educational outreach with funds from his own agency’s budget, Given said.

“I think he has made historic contributions to the National Recreation Area,” added Joe Edmiston, who as executive director of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy has worked closely with Smeck for years. “His shoes will be very difficult to fill.”

In announcing the appointment, Yosemite Superintendent Don Neubacher said Smeck “has the ideal background to helpYosemite achieve unequalled operational and innovative excellence.”

Smeck said Neubacher first reached out to him about joining the Yosemite team about 1½ years ago. With his youngest daughter still in high school, the timing wasn’t right initially. But now that she’s graduating at the end of this school year, Smeck decided to accept the offer.

He’ll head to Yosemite solo in early April and will live in park service housing until his wife, Karen, can join him, probably in July. They plan to buy a home in Mariposa.

The new position could put Smeck in line for greater executive responsibilities down the line—either at another national park or in Washington, D.C.

But he said he’ll miss his Santa Monica Mountains stomping grounds, where he got his professional start in 1991 as a young landscape architect with degrees from Cal Poly Pomona. Smeck reached the recreation area’s top job in 2001. He still marvels that he was able to get there without first transferring to other points around the National Parks system.

“People told me not to expect to stay [in one location] very long,” said Smeck, now 49.

The Superintendent and the President in 2003.

But stay he did—long enough to rub shoulders with influential people ranging from TV documentarian Ken Burns to President George W. Bush.

Bush’s visit in 2003, he said, was a high point—a recognition of the power of collaborative work toward a common goal.

“It was a great opportunity to talk to him about how partnerships work, how cooperative management works, and he genuinely listened to what I had to say,” Smeck said, recalling a 45-minute hike into the Rancho Sierra Vista area of Point Mugu State Park with Bush and a small group that included Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky. “To get a presidential visit…was very uplifting for everyone.”

He said he’s also proud of completing a general management plan that “provides a unifying framework for preservation and stewardship” of parklands going forward. That plan, created with various state partners and the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, established a “cooperative vision” that has informed an array of other actions, including blueprints for fire management and land protection.

His career is a natural outgrowth of an outdoorsy childhood in California’s Central Valley. “I spent my summers hiking and camping in the Sierra Nevada Mountains—especially Sequoia National Park,” he said. “By the time I was 21, I had experienced most of the Sierra Nevada wilderness.”

His first day on the job in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area started inauspiciously when he got lost trying to find the Rancho Sierra Vista trailhead.

“Back then, you had to drive through residential areas and gravel roads to find the obscure parking lot,” he said. “One of my first assignments was to develop a new entry road and trailhead from Potrero Highway. Today, I’m happy to report that visitors have a very scenic entry drive and wonderful staging area with good signs, drinking water, and clean restrooms to start their park experience at Rancho Sierra Vista.”

As he prepares to venture north to the world-renowned glories of Yosemite’s Half Dome and Bridalveil Fall, he acknowledged that he’ll miss the lesser-known but equally beloved natural treasures he’ll be leaving behind in the Santa Monica Mountains.

“Oh wow, there are so many incredible places. If I had to pick one, the place that’s the closest manifestation of heaven for me is the Old Boney Trail in Point Mugu State Park,” he said. “It is just such a pristine, wild, raw, natural environment. It’s as if you’ve been transported into another world. It is spectacular.”

For Smeck’s photo of the Old Boney Trail and some of his other favorite sights in the Santa Monica Mountains, check out a gallery of his photos below.

Posted 12/14/2011

Winds split the limbs of this Bodhi tree and ripped a bench from its bolts. Photo by Frank McDonough

Call it triage—or maybe, more accurately, “tree-age.”

Clean up crews at the Los Angeles County Arboretum &  Botanic Garden are just beginning to get a full sense of the destruction wreaked by last week’s raging windstorm. Home to some 10,000 species of plants, the 127-acre public garden in Arcadia lost hundreds of specimens, including a huge Bluegum eucalyptus planted in the 1880s.

“This is going to take weeks to assess—we still can’t get into some areas because we haven’t cleared them,” said Superintendent Tim Phillips.  “We have a three-member curatorial team mapping the damage and they’ve been working until dark since Monday. And that’s just for the general overview.”

Philips said that although “entire collections have been severely damaged”—including the garden’s iconic Ear Pod trees—there also were some spirit-lifting surprises.

“We have a native population of Engelmann oaks, which are the most northerly stand inCalifornia. The winds came down right over them and they came out unscathed,” Philips said.

The once-perfectly manicured grounds, now coated with limbs, leaves and debris, remain closed to the public. Arboretum officials said it will take at least two weeks before a small section of the grounds can be reopened. They expect that the place won’t be restored entirely until next year. Progress updates will be posted on the arboretum’s website.

Arboretum officials are appealing for the public’s help in restoring the grounds through a fund-raising drive that represents “the single biggest tree planting campaign in the institution’s history.”

“The most important thing folks can do is to help us replant the Arboretum,” said Chief Executive Officer Richard Schulhof, who expects the initiative to run into the tens of thousands of dollars.

“Many of the trees we lost were planted 50 years ago at the time of our founding. Now we have to plant the next generation.”

Fortunately, he said, the storm arrived just as the Arboretum had completed a strategic plan to update and improve the gardens.  Prior to last week, he said, there wasn’t much room for new installations.

Now, Schulhof said, the staff can increase the gardens’ focus on water conservation and gardening within the Southern California climate and maybe create new spaces featuring drought-resistant plants or lawn alternatives.

“It’s heartbreaking, but it’s also a godsend,” said botanical information consultant Frank McDonough, who has been photographing and helping inventory the damage. “This will allow us to curate more items, and curate with a policy that reflects the needs of L.A.” (Click here to see a gallery of McDonough’s pictures.)

McDonough said the windstorm was a reminder “that you don’t know what you have until it’s gone.”

CEO Schulhof agreed

“There was a pink trumpet tree that was in just the most ideal location,” he recalled sadly. “It created a perfect vista in one part of the Arboretum. It was one of my favorites, and that tree got knocked down.

“But there are many wonderful specimens that survived. I’m looking at one now, a Philippine species of eucalyptus. It’s probably the greatest specimen of its kind in California, and here it is, still standing. Tall and beautiful.”

The windstorm damaged thousands of specimens at the Arboretum. Photo by Frank McDonough

Posted 12/7/11

Two historic deodars were toppled in Los Feliz by windstorms. Photo courtesy of City Councilman Tom LaBonge.

For more than 75 years, majestic deodar cedars have lined Los Feliz Boulevard along Griffith Park. The imposing trees are an indelible part of the neighborhood’s character—and such a significant slice of the Los Angeles landscape that they’ve been granted cultural landmark status.

But no amount of civic protection could spare two of the beloved giants from the savage winds sweeping through the county this week. They were among hundreds of trees damaged or uprooted as gusts of wind approaching 100 miles an hour slammed Southern California, downing power lines and wreaking havoc including widespread outages, road closures and “wind days” in some local schools.

Much of the damage has been centered in San Gabriel Mountain foothill communities such as Pasadena, San Gabriel, Arcadia and Sierra Madre.

But the winds have left their mark on the Westside and the San Fernando Valley as well.

The toppled Los Feliz deodars, their massive roots completely unearthed, served as a powerful reminder of the winds’ damaging potential.

The trees, located in a stretch of some 200 deodars that together are classified as city Historical Cultural Landmark 67, were planted as part of a civic beautification movement in 1935.

The landmark designation means that they may not be pruned without official approval—but the winds did not play by the rules.

Deodars have long helped create a sense of place in Los Feliz.

City Councilman Tom LaBonge, whose district is home to the trees, said the damage came as part of “the worst windstorm I have ever seen in the City of Los Angeles.”

“We don’t like to lose any of them,” said Donald Seligman, president of the Los Feliz Improvement Association, which maintains the trees. “They’re very unique for Los Angeles.”

With more high winds on the way, officials are urging extreme caution around power lines and trees. If you encounter a downed or dangling line, stay away from it and call 911 immediately. If you can, stay indoors, but don’t use the elevators, which could stall if there is a power outage.

To report damage to roads in unincorporated Los Angeles County, the number is 1-800-675-HELP (4357.)

More wind safety tips, from the Los Angeles City Fire Department, are here. And updated information on school closures, power outages and a recently-opened emergency shelter in Pasadena is here, along with a list of other helpful links.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, chair of the Board of Supervisors, declared a state of emergency in the county on Thursday afternoon, clearing the way for state and federal assistance. The cities of Pasadena, Sierra Madre and Monrovia also have declared local emergencies in the wake of the wind-borne devastation.

The urban forestry division of the city Department of Street Services was among the many agencies scrambling to stay on top of the damage Thursday morning.

“It’s pretty bad,” said chief forester George Gonzalez. “Calls are pouring in like crazy.”

Although the velocity is unusual, “wind events” typically happen three to five times a year in Los Angeles, Gonzalez said.

The ferocious Santa Ana winds are expected to continue today with gusts of up to 80 miles an hour in Southern California, the National Weather Service said. They’re part of a bigger storm that’s expected to affect the southwestern U.S. through at least Friday.

Nick Falacci took this picture of the huge tree that fell on his Pasadena house. No one was injured.

Posted 12/1/11

Times change, and so has Los Angeles bike culture. Now the county’s jumping into the cycling revolution with both wheels.

A newly drafted Bicycle Master Plan, the county’s first since 1975, puts forth a wide-ranging new blueprint for cycling in Los Angeles County that includes the creation of 695 miles of new bikeways in unincorporated territory over the next two decades, including 20 miles of rider-friendly “bike boulevards.”  Nearly 300 miles of the new bikeways would be dedicated bicycle paths and lanes, while the rest would fall under the category of “bicycle route,” in which signage and, potentially, pavement markings, would designate preferred cyclist thoroughfares.

The plan as drafted also contains a range of policy and program recommendations, including  support for new “end-of-trip” facilities for cyclists to stow bikes and maybe take a shower; a push for a county “healthy design ordinance”; proposals to make roads safer for cyclists; a recommendation to add bicycles to the county’s transportation fleet; and an endorsement of bicycling as a valid, and growing, transportation option that makes people and communities healthier and more environmentally-friendly.

“It’s a sweeping document in that it provides a vision,” said Abu Yusuf, the county’s bikeway coordinator. “We’re trying to be very proactive.” He said the draft plan is as much about human behavior as it is about infrastructure: “If people aren’t motivated to use the bikeways and to feel safe doing so, they’re not going to use the facilities.”

The plan goes out for a final round of public comments later this month. Once those comments are integrated into the document, the plan, if adopted by the Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors, would become part of the county’s General Plan.

The action on the county bike plan comes as Los Angeles rides a huge wave of cycling activism. The city, to great acclaim, recently approved a new bicycle plan that aims to add 1,680 miles of new bikeways. Bicycle advocates have also pushed for greater law enforcement attention to motorists who hit cyclists, for “sharrows” markings to make it clearer that cars need to share the streets with their two-wheeled brethren, and for bike-friendly amenities like a new “bike corral” in Highland Park and “open street” events like CicLAvia.

“The cyclists have come out of the woodwork, so to speak, in the last 18 months and demanded that government do better. And the county is doing better,” said George Wolfberg, a member of the county’s bicycle advisory committee, which helped prepare the draft plan.

Sam Corbett, a senior associate with Alta Planning + Design, which created the bicycle plan draft for the county’s Department of Public Works, said street-level efforts in Los Angeles are part of a larger national picture.

“I’ve found that grassroots activism plays a critical role in pushing the agenda and elevating the importance of bicycling issues in Los Angeles and in other cities throughout the country,” Corbett said. “Without advocates and concerned citizens’ requests for more bicycle-friendly policies, programs and facilities, there’s no question that we wouldn’t have seen as much progress in the past 10-15 years throughout the country in improving bicycling conditions.”

The county plan proposes adding four kinds of bikeways at a cost of $284.8 million over the next 20 years. Those include some 69 miles of “Class 1” car-free bike paths that would be created in unincorporated pockets across the county, with the largest stretches in the San Gabriel and Santa Clarita valleys. There also would be nearly 225 miles of “Class 2” bicycle lanes, with dedicated space for cycling painted onto roadways throughout unincorporated Los Angeles County.

And the plan calls for creation of more than 380 miles of “Class 3” bicycle routes—primarily in the Antelope and Santa Clarita valleys, but also through the Santa Monica Mountains.

“Don’t get too excited about that, unfortunately,” said Tom Foote, a lawyer who regularly commutes from his Topanga home to his office in Santa Monica. Foote, a member of the bicycle advisory committee that consulted on the report, said no one should expect to wake up one day to find a dedicated bike lane running through the mountains; the topography would make it tough, if not impossible, to widen roads sufficiently.

However, the bicycle route designation would mean bicycle signage and possibly shared lane markings in some areas, and would require future planners to consider bicycle needs when they work on roads in the future.

Finally, the report advocates creating 20 miles of “bicycle boulevards” in the San Gabriel Valley and the county’s central, urban core. Such boulevards—with “calming” features such as traffic circles, along with signage and shared lane markings, added to streets that already have low automobile volumes—have proven popular with families and other riders in places like Berkeley, Corbett said.

The plan covers all of unincorporated Los Angeles county, with nearly 2,657 square miles comprising 65% of the county’s total land but home to just 11% of its population. The sheer size poses difficulties for bicycle planners.

“The challenge in a lot of the county is that it’s vast. There’s a huge amount of space,” Corbett said, noting that while trips of 5 miles or less can be enticing to a would-be cyclist, 15- to 20-mile voyages in places like the Antelope Valley can be daunting.

Another obstacle comes from Los Angeles’ entrenched car culture. “Politically and just practically, it can be challenging to put in bikeway facilities,” Corbett said.

To help overcome those challenges, the plan marshals an array of environmental, health and safety information to make the case for thoroughly integrating bicycles onto Los Angeles streets that have long been considered—by some—to be the exclusive domain of automobiles.

Among its findings:

Streets must be made safer for cyclists. There were 1,307 collisions involving bicycles reported in unincorporated county areas from 2004-2009. Many of those—228—took place in East Los Angeles. On the Westside, there were 56 crashes, with the vast majority (37) occurring in Marina del Rey. “Bar none, safety is the No. 1 concern that citizens have with cycling,” Corbett said. Helping people overcome those fears through education and better design puts more cyclists safely on the streets, the report said.

Bicycling is the green transportation choice. By 2035, increased bicycle use is expected to reduce the number of vehicle trips in unincorporated areas by more than 6 million a year, reducing emissions of hydrocarbons, carbon dioxide and other substances linked to climate change and smog.

Cycling is a public health issue. Bicycle-friendly communities contribute to improved public health by encouraging physical activity and helping to combat chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart disease.

Riding is a lot cheaper than driving. The report said cyclists’ annual operating costs run just 1.5% to 3.5% of motorists’ expenses. (An argument that seems likely to get more persuasive as gas prices move north of $4 a gallon.)

In undertaking its first bike master plan in 36 years, the county has to make up for lost time, and lost funding opportunities. The biggest state source of funding for commuter bike facilities requires master plan updates every five years, Corbett said.

The bike master plan puts the county back in the game—lagging behind places like Portland, New York and even Long Beach, but ready to roll. “It’s undoubtedly a big advance over the last master plan, which is ancient and completely outdated,” Foote said.

“This is a major document,” added Yusuf. “It provides a vision for what the county wants to do.”

Public workshops on the county’s Bicycle Master Plan begin March 28 at 6 p.m. at the Topanga Elementary School. For a list of meeting times and locations, click here.

Posted 3/10/11