The movement to increase the number of women cyclists on L.A. streets includes Andrea Denike Martinez.

Andrea Denike Martinez still remembers the day she got back in the saddle.

It was Earth Day—April 22, 2010. For the first time since a bad bicycle accident fractured her skull and landed her in intensive care several years earlier, Martinez was ready to once again brave L.A.’s streets on two wheels.

Heading out from her Echo Park home, she was pumped up with environmental commitment—and “so nervous,” she recalled.

But moral support was also on the road that day. “I met another girl on a bike going that very same route.” She was a total stranger, but Katherine Gladwin was going in the same direction so they rode together to their jobs near Wilshire and Western.

They not only became fast friends, but started a small women’s cycling crew they dubbed the Bodacious Bike Babes. Since that first commute, they’ve organized and publicized group rides, volunteered at events like CicLAvia, and generally tried to encourage other women to take the plunge into an L.A. cycling world that remains overwhelmingly dominated by men.

Even though they may have felt alone out there at times, Martinez and Gladwin have plenty of company these days. On Wednesday, February 8, a coalition of women cycling advocates is set to gather in Long Beach to announce an ambitious goal: doubling the number of female bicyclists on Southern California streets within five years.

The initiative is led by a relatively new organization, Women on Bikes SoCal, which seeks to promote the “joy, beauty and benefits of bicycling for women.” Its campaign includes establishing the nation’s first women-only scholarship program for League Certified Bike Safety Instructors. (Information on supporting the initiative is here.)

One of the most visible faces of female cycling in Southern California, Long Beach Vice Mayor Suja Lowenthal, is among those backing the movement.

On a recent bicycle tour of her city, which is noted for its large and growing network of bike-friendly amenities, Lowenthal made it clear that dressing like Lance Armstrong—and riding like a Tour de France champion—are not required to join the cycling revolution.

“I want to wear my heels. I want to do all sorts of kinds of things that are about regular lifestyle,” Lowenthal said. “You don’t have to be the 50-mile-a-week spandex athlete. You can move about with your children and make it a very family-oriented, healthy, active lifestyle.”

In fact, Lowenthal thinks that the health and well-being of kids can be a powerful motivator in getting women to take up cycling. Childhood obesity is a “crisis of epic proportions,” she said, and there’s nothing like getting mothers on bikes to get everyone else onboard, too. “It is that green light: ‘Well, Mom’s OK with it,’ “ she said.

Still, if current statistics are any indication, there may be an uphill climb ahead.

The Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition reports that only 16% of cyclists spotted during last year’s bicycle count were women—about the same percentage as in the previous count in 2009. A new report by the national advocacy group Alliance for Biking and Walking found that only 20% of those bicycling to work in Los Angeles are women—compared to 33% in Sacramento, 38% in Portland and a remarkable 49% in Memphis.

Jennifer Klausner, left, and Alexis Lantz of L.A. County Bicycle Coalition. Photo by Allan Crawford/Women on Bikes SoCal

Ask L.A. women cyclists, non-cyclists and would-be cyclists about the imbalance, and most are quick to sum up the problem in two words: too dangerous.

“A lot of it is people really are deathly afraid of cars, and the way people drive,” said Martinez, 33, co-founder of the Bodacious Bike Babes.

“It’s just too stressful being on the road,” added Kristen Schwarz, 28, who lives in East Hollywood and gave up her bicycle a couple of years ago after one too many encounters with speeding motorists. “It’s tough out there!”

Everyone, it seems, has a harrowing story or two.

“My first experiences in L.A. were pretty terrifying. I went down Wilshire. It was definitely a treacherous route,” said Gladwin, Martinez’s friend and co-founder. “My bicycling career in Los Angeles started in a pretty daunting fashion.”

She’s been struck twice by cars, the first time by a morning rush hour driver who mowed her down on Wilshire. “She stopped and she actually was complaining about heart palpitations because of the trauma she had experienced,” said Gladwin, 29, who was thrown to her knees in the collision. “I was intimidated but I wasn’t going to let that deter me.”

Magdalena Paluch, who interviewed women cyclists as part of a project to create a bicycling app while she earned her master’s degree in industrial design at Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design, said greater female involvement could lead to big things.

“I feel strongly that if anything will change, most of the time it changes because of the women. We are change agents,” she said. “Women are considered an ‘indicator species’ for biking and public transit because women are risk-averse. If you make it safe for women to bike, it’ll be safer for everybody.”

Cycling advocates agree. They say that creating more, and safer, facilities like “protected bike lanes”—in which riders are buffered from car traffic—and “bicycle boulevards” on slower-moving residential streets is the key to overcoming the perception and reality of dangerous L.A. streets.

Joe Linton, a CicLAvia consultant and longtime L.A. bicycle activist, noted that the gender disparity disappears in countries like the Netherlands, which has a highly developed network of bikeways and a culture in which cycling is considered a safe and commonplace way to get around.

“In very bicycle-safe cultures, women are actually the majority. In daredevil places, or places that are perceived as daredevil, like L.A., women are reluctant, and reluctant to go with kids,” Linton said. In Los Angeles, where men have long dominated the bike scene, it’s easy for experienced, hardcore cyclists to forget how women—and other less confident beginning riders—may view the challenges of the road, he said.

Advocates are increasingly pointing to women riders’ safety concerns as a way of advancing a broader agenda of making streets better for all cyclists and pedestrians, of all ages. “This is a growing issue,” said Alexis Lantz, planning and policy director for the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition.

In fact, the women’s safety argument has been made as part of a push for improvements in Los Angeles County’s Bicycle Master Plan, set to come before the Board of Supervisors in the weeks ahead.

Lantz said it also could be a factor as advocates press for more bicycle resources in the Southern California Association of Governments’ Regional Transportation Plan. And, on the federal level, she said, “Safe Routes to School”  funding—which provides resources for many bicycle and pedestrian programs and is now threatened as part of the budget showdown in Washington—is another area in which women’s street safety concerns are a big part of the conversation.

Beyond the public policy arena, signs are everywhere that women are finally starting to make their move into the bike lane—at least a little bit.

Photos of bike-riding celebs like Zoe Deschanel, Hilary Duff and Vanessa Hudgens are all over the Internet, as are fashion-forward blogs such as Los Angeles Cycle Chic. Monday nights are reserved for women at the Bicycle Kitchen. Although nobody’s done a formal count, popular street-closing CicLAvia events seem to be bringing out large numbers of women. And young female activists are creating crews like Iron Unicorns, dedicated to creating “equality for women cyclists, both on the streets and in society.”

All those are valuable in building the women’s cycling movement, Lantz said.

“I think there is something that everyone can bring,” she said. “Cycle chic is a really great way of promoting cycling for some women. I really think that the more attention brought to cycling, the better.”

Long Beach Vice Mayor Suja Lowenthal. Photo by Allan Crawford/Women on Bikes SoCal

Posted 2/7/12

Prices are going up for park-and-ride and shuttle services to the Hollywood Bowl.

Concert-goers planning to use the Hollywood Bowl’s popular park-and-ride service this season, take note:

Buy your park-and-ride tickets in advance and you’ll pay the same $5 roundtrip fare that’s been in effect since 1995.

Those who wait to purchase their tickets at boarding time won’t be quite as fortunate.

The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved the first fare increases for the program since 2009. Roundtrip park-and-ride service will go from $8 to $10 for those who purchase at the park-and-ride lots. Roundtrip service from four shuttle lots—two on Ventura Boulevard and the others at Hollywood and Highland and the L.A. Zoo—will increase from $4 to $5.

In either case, patrons will avoid the Bowl’s famously tough stacked parking and will be able to travel with a clear environmental conscience in buses powered by clean diesel or alternative fuels.

And they’ll be in good company. Ridership on the park-and-ride and shuttle programs hit a 10-year high during the 2011 season, with nearly 31% of all patrons using the service. In all, patrons from all over the county logged 422,612 one-way trips by shuttle and park-and-ride last year.

Posted 1/24/11

Painted bike lanes, like this one downtown, could be coming to county streets. Eco-Village blog photo

A revised bicycle master plan, infused with some new and creative elements, is on its way to the Board of Supervisors following approval Wednesday by the county’s Regional Planning commission.

The bike plan represents the county’s first such effort since 1975. Prompted by supervisors and members of the cycling community, who urged planners to move into the vanguard of bike innovation, the current version of the plan includes a number of up-to-the-minute design elements that could be placed on streets in unincorporated parts of the county. Those include colored bicycle lanes, “cycle tracks” and buffered lanes in which bikes are separated from automobile traffic, and “bicycle boxes” that designate a place for cyclists to move ahead of cars at some intersections.

“While these treatments do not have approved design standards at this time, the County will incorporate them into the Plan’s toolbox of treatments as their uniform designs and standards are approved by the State of California Department of Transportation,” according to an executive summary of the plan approved Wednesday. “The County promotes the use of these innovative treatments and will apply for and implement experimental projects utilizing them where cost effective and where such projects enhance the safety of bicycles, pedestrians, and motorists.”

The latest version of the plan also increases the size of the network of new bikeways proposed for unincorporated part of Los Angeles County over the next two decades, from 816 miles to 832 miles. Creating the network will cost an estimated $331 million. The plan calls for nearly 72 miles of dedicated bike routes and nearly 274 miles of bike lanes, as well as 22.8 miles of slower moving, cycling-friendly “bicycle boulevards” on local or residential streets. However, most of the network would be devoted to some 463 miles’ worth of “Class III” bike routes, with signage but no dedicated space for cyclists.

The Board of Supervisors is expected to invite more public comment before it takes action on the bicycle plan in coming weeks.

“Generally speaking, we feel there’s been quite a bit of improvement,” said Alexis Lantz, planning and policy director for the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition. She said her group will continue to advocate for the plan to function as a “living document” that will contribute to more and better cycling in the county over the next 20 years. That means streamlining the process for engineers in the future to upgrade bike facilities when the opportunity arises to do so, she said.

Posted 1/11/12

B-Cycle will be among three vendors participating in Metro's bike-sharing demo Wednesday.

They share bikes in Paris and Portland, so why not here?

Metro’s inviting the public to a bike share demonstration on Wednesday, January 18.

The agency currently is looking into whether to adopt a bike share program offering short-term bicycle rentals through an automated system, such as a computerized kiosk. (See the motion by Metro board members Zev Yaroslavsky, Pam O’Connor and Antonio Villaraigosa here.)

Three vendors will roll out their bikes for the demonstration at Metro headquarters downtown. The event runs from 10 a.m. till 2 p.m. For more information, click here.

Posted 1/12/11

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

Schoolkids and others should get an easier ride once the county bike plan is revamped.

The wheels are in motion.

The county’s bicycle master plan—its first in 36 years—is about to get more innovative as it heads toward the finish line, Department of Public Works director Gail Farber said this week.

Responding to a unanimous push from the Board of Supervisors, the county’s bike planners will get to work on integrating more forward-looking design elements into the cycling master plan within the next 45 days, Farber said.

The board acted on a motion by Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky which said the new bike plan should “not just move us out of the 1970’s, but move Los Angeles County forward as a leader in 21^st Century bicyclist safety and comfort.”

To get there, the motion said the plan should incorporate “leading edge” designs such as those found in the Model Design Manual for Living Streets recently completed by the county Department of Public Health. Among the proposed innovations are varied lane and sidewalk widths, bolder paint treatments of bike lanes and “cycle tracks,” which separate bike lanes from traffic.

“The motion sends a clear message that the plan needs to do more to make the county a better and safer place to bike,” Farber said. “The board wants us to embrace these design concepts and we certainly plan to do so.”

Cycling advocates have been pressing for a bolder and more ambitious master plan, which will serve as a blueprint for bike facilities in unincorporated Los Angeles County for the next 20 years. The plan as currently drafted would add 816 miles of new bikeways over the next two decades, at a cost of $327.7 million.

The motion approved Tuesday represents a proactive approach to the bike plan, which must be approved by the county’s Regional Planning Commission before the Board of Supervisors formally takes it up early next year.

Testifying before the supervisors’ vote Tuesday was Alexis Lantz of the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition. She said the motion provided “guidance to staff” to create a plan that “truly improves the safety of our roadways, especially for people who need or choose to bicycle to meet their daily needs.”

A “visionary” bike plan could play a role in creating a healthier and more livable Los Angeles County over the next two decades, she said.

Farber said continued collaboration with the cycling community will be important as the plan moves forward. And she said she sees retooling the current draft as “more of an opportunity” than an obstacle.

“We’re excited,” Farber said. “We embrace the input.”

Posted 11/30/11

The county hasn't had a new bike plan since the '70s.

Los Angeles County’s new bicycle master plan, now in its final months of preparation, should be retooled to embrace more forward-looking design ideas and innovations for safer cycling on local streets, according to a motion set to go before the Board of Supervisors Tuesday.

The motion by Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky calls on the county Department of Public Works to create a bike plan that “will not just move us out of the 1970’s, but move Los Angeles County forward as a leader in 21^st Century bicyclist safety and comfort.”

Specifically, the motion says that the plan should “promote the use of leading-edge designs such as those found in the Model Design Manual for Living Streets that was prepared by the Department of Public Health.” Those include “cycle tracks” that separate bike lanes from traffic with dividers such as a lane of parked cars, and experimental street design approaches—including the possibility of varied lane and sidewalk widths in some areas—that do not fall within current Caltrans standards.

The motion urges the county to take the lead in helping such street layouts receive state approval for broader implementation.

If approved, the motion would not mandate such innovations at any particular locations, but would require that they be placed in the plan as options.

Many in the cycling community have been pushing for a bolder county bike plan, as was made clear by a series of bicycling advocates who appeared recently before the county’s Regional Planning Commission. The plan as currently envisioned would add 816 miles of new bikeways in unincorporated Los Angeles County over the next two decades, at a cost of $327.7 million. But many of those new miles fall into the lowest category of bike routes—those with just signage, no dedicated lanes or designated space within lanes.

The supervisors are expected to act on the bike plan, the county’s first since 1975, by March, 2012. But the motion makes it clear that changes need to be made before the plan’s final environmental impact report is finished in the days ahead.

“It is critical that the Board of Supervisors not wait to send a clear message that we expect this plan to do more to make the County a better, safer place to bike,” the motion said.

Posted 11/23/11

The Expo Line will pass USC just as the Red Cars did back in '53. Photo: Alan Weeks/Metro Archives

Remember the Santa Monica Air Line? How about the Los Angeles & Independence?

Probably not.

But the two historic railways will be there—and not just in spirit—when the Expo Light Rail Line begins rolling from Downtown westward in just a few months, with its first terminus at La Cienega Boulevard.

Although the Westside’s first mass rail project in 50 years feels in some ways like the dawn of an era, Los Angeles has been down this road before. In fact, it has been down the same set of train tracks: The Expo Line will run on a historic railroad right-of-way that has carried  Southern Californians, off and on, for more than 135 years now, first behind steam engines and then in iconic Red Cars.

“We’re definitely going back to the future,” jokes John Smatlak, a rail transit consultant and volunteer rail historian at the Orange Empire Railway Museum in Perris. “Of course, it looked a lot different back then than it does today.”

“This was a route that started out in 1875 as a steam railroad built by a silver baron,” confirms Matthew Barrett, research librarian for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, “and then later became part of the Pacific Electric Red Car line.”

Indeed, Barrett says, some images of the Air Line from the Metro archive are being embedded as station tiles along the Expo Line as reminder of the connection. (See gallery below.)

Constructed by John P. Jones, a U.S. senator who had made a fortune in Nevada, the Expo Line route was originally the Los Angeles & Independence Railroad, the linchpin of a grand plan. Jones owned a silver mine in Inyo County and coastal ranch land where Santa Monica now stands. He wanted to connect the two with Los Angeles and persuade the city to situate its port near his slice of the shoreline.

However, his powerful rival, Southern Pacific Railroad, wanted the port to be near its lines in San Pedro, and Jones had lost bargaining power; his silver mine was exhausted. “Jones built the link from Downtown to Santa Monica, and then he went bankrupt,” says Barrett, the Metro research librarian.

In 1877, Southern Pacific bought Jones’ struggling railroad and turned it into a local freight and passenger hauler. Its cars would steam from an ornate Victorian depot Downtown to a long wharf built out into the ocean, carrying tourists and cargo through the then-sparsely populated fields and plains that would become L.A.’s Westside.

Eventually, Southern Pacific leased the line to a subsidiary run by Henry E. Huntington, the real estate tycoon nephew of the president of the railroad. Huntington electrified it and added it to the rail system he was building to less developed land holdings outside L.A.’s city limits.

Henry E. Huntington

Painted a bright, marketable red, Huntington’s electric cars ran between Downtown L.A. and increasingly far-flung suburbs, including Santa Monica. By 1908, the old Los Angeles & Independence rails were bustling with the so-called Red Cars and the line, which also carried a lot of freight, had been renamed “The Air Line,” a common term back then for the shortest distance between two points. In 1911, when a number of railroads merged in Southern California, it officially became part of the Pacific Electric railway.

At the peak of their popularity in the Roaring Twenties, the Red Cars covered some 1,100 miles of railway from the San Gabriel Mountains to San Bernardino to the beaches of Orange County. They became an essential part of Los Angeles’ culture and lore.

The Red Cars showed up in movies. They were written into waltzes. The depots became famous in their own right. Whole communities sprang up as so-called “streetcar suburbs.”

In his history of growth in Los Angeles, “The Reluctant Metropolis”, William Fulton wrote that Huntington “built a $60 million fortune around the Pacific Electric in little more than a decade.” But, he added, Huntington saw the Red Cars mostly as a tool for real estate speculation and disregarded the fact that, with so many lines going through L.A., “it would often take a PE [Pacific Electric] Red Car longer to leave the downtown area than to make the entire run to Pasadena or Santa Monica.”

Still, says Barrett, the Red Cars mapped the urban footprint of Southern California more than any other early influence, including the automobile. “Many assume that the freeways created our sprawl,” he says, “but it was the railways built many years earlier that laid the foundation for it.”

Eventually, Barrett and other historians say, a combination of factors caused highways and cars to displace the Red Cars. And no, they say, it wasn’t just the kind of auto and tire industry maneuvering dramatized in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” (“That was the Yellow Cars, not the Red Cars,” says Barrett. “That movie has done more to create incorrect local history than anything I can think of.”)

Angelenos were also the earliest auto adapters outside Detroit. Voters distrusted the railroads. Real estate speculators realized they didn’t necessarily need to invest along rail lines. By the late 1930s, the Automobile Club of Southern California was calling for “a network of traffic routes for the exclusive use of motor vehicles”—i.e., freeways—while rail advocates were struggling to build a consensus. When gas rationing during World War II ratcheted up demand for rail, it revived profits but underscored the need for investment in rail infrastructure.

“People always omit the context of the time,” says Smatlak of the Orange Empire Railway Museum—a resting place for most of what’s left of Southern California’s stock of retired Red Cars. “Yes, there were tire and rubber and gas and oil companies involved in shifting transit to buses. But by the 1950s, the rail system was really worn out and they were faced with making a massive capital investment.”

Adds Barrett: “If we have anyone to blame, it’s ourselves—or our grandparents—for not being on the steps of City Hall, demanding our electric railway system be preserved in 1943 after the first smog alert was generated.”

The Air Line stopped carrying passengers in 1953. Eight years later, the last Red Car rumbled into retirement. And, with the exception of a decade or two, Angelenos have been waiting for relief ever since, stewing in their cars.

With Metro testing locked subway turnstiles, signs like this one in the Civic Center station take on new importance.

As thousands of L.A. subway riders have learned in recent weeks, honesty is the best policy—especially when somebody’s watching to see whether you paid to ride.

Recent testing to determine the financial impact of locked turnstile gates at four stations, including ticket checks by uniformed inspectors, boosted vending machine sales of day passes and one-way fares by about 50% while gates were locked.

“It was apparent many customers were using [ticket vending machines] for the first time,” according to a report to the agency’s Board of Directors.

As ticket sales went up, overall station entries decreased by 10% during the testing period as some travelers were apparently deterred by the locked gates and presence of ticket-checking staff.

Nevertheless, vending machine revenue was up 35%, the report said. Over time, as customers became accustomed to locked gates, that boost could be expected to level off, perhaps settling around 20%.

The gate-locking trial run also has had financial implications for the traveling public; dozens have been hit with citations carrying fines of up to $250 for riding without a ticket or pass.

The testing comes as Metro continues moving away from its original honor-system approach on the subway toward the locked turnstile set-up common in other large cities such as New York and San Francisco.

The conversion started in 2008, when Metro’s board approved a 10-year, $46 million lease contract to retrofit the Red Line, the Purple Line and some light rail stations with barrier gates—both as a security measure and as a way to recoup lost revenues estimated at the time to be about $5.5 million a year.

Since the gates were installed, however, some have questioned whether the cost of monitoring a locked subway system would outstrip any gain in revenues.

The report did not specifically address that issue, but said the preliminary revenue findings were “quite positive.”

More testing is needed, the report said, to see if patterns hold true when gates are locked during peak travel hours, from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. To that end, a new round of locked-gate testing started Oct. 26 and is expected to continue through January 11, 2012. Upcoming stations targeted for the tests are UniversalCity, North Hollywood, Hollywood/Vine, Civic Centerand 7^th/Metro.

In conjunction with the locked gate testing, Metro is heavily promoting use of its TAP cards, which can serve either as transit passes or as stored-value cards from which funds are deducted each time they’re used. The TAP cards aren’t just quick and convenient for riders; they also enable the agency to keep better track of ridership and ensure that everybody’s paying their way.

But there are challenges because some 40% of riders surveyed did not use the cards, or had transferred from other transit agencies that are not yet part of the TAP system.

Even among the 60% of customers with TAP cards, there were issues.

Up to half did not tap their pre-paid cards unless “encouraged” to do so, the report said. And when the turnstiles were in their usual “free-spin” mode, only 25% bothered to tap.

Posted 11/17/11

Santa Monica's new Bike Center is a sign of the times, offering new resources to folks who cycle to work or play.

Portland may get all the bicycle buzz, but Southern California cyclists can lay claim to some bragging rights, too, as Santa Monica on Friday opens what’s billed as the largest bike parking facility in the country.

The Santa Monica Bike Center will provide cyclists with secure bike storage, rentals, repairs and more. The ribbon cutting ceremony will take place Friday, November 18, at 10 a.m., and will be followed by open houses from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Up to 260 regular customers can reserve personal locking stations and showers for $15 monthly or $99 annually. Lockers and towels will be available at additional cost. (See the website for full membership details, including 24/7 access to the secure bike parking area.)

For all users and visitors, the center will provide other services like bike and Segway rentals, retail supplies, self-service air and repair station, and a “bike valet”—just drop off your wheels and they will be safely stored under supervision.

The center will also be used for special events, cycling classes and bike tours, all part of a plan to show people the upside of choosing transportation that is greener, healthier and, in many cases, just as fast as driving.

“InSanta Monica, a bike is really time-competitive with a car for most trips,” said Lucy Dyke, deputy director for special projects for the City ofSanta Monica. “Our streets are very congested.”

Josh Squire, CEO of Bike & Park, which operates the Santa Monica Bike Centerand others like it nationwide, said it is the highest-capacity bike parking facility in the country.

The bike center is located at Colorado and 2^nd Street—next to the future site of the Expo Line’s westernmost station. The light rail line eventually will connect downtown L.A. to Santa Monica. Phase 1 is nearing completion, and an initial segment—from downtown to La Cienega/Jefferson—is expected to open early next year. (Check out this guided video sneak preview with Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky.) Phase 2, which broke ground in September, will extend the line from Culver City to Santa Monica.

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority partnered withSanta Monica in 2007 to create the $2 million dollar bicycle transit hub. Metro funded $1.5 million and Santa Monica pitched in the remaining $500,000.

Posted 11/16/11