Top Story: Transportation

Sisterhood of the traveling bikes

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.

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.”

Posted 2/7/12

Bike plan heads toward finish line

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

 

This is how we rolled

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.

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.

Need bike parking? No sweat

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

 

Catching an early bird Expo Line ride

This is only a test—but not for long. As the Exposition Light Rail Line rolls closer to becoming a reality for Los Angeles transit customers, operators are now trying out the trains daily on portions of the new route. (Details on the test runs—from Flower and 23^rd Street to La Cienega and Jefferson Boulevard—are here, along with safety tips.)

Supervisor and Metro Board Member Zev Yaroslavsky recently hopped aboard one of the test runs. The view from the train made it clear, he said, that getting from Point A to Point B will be only part of the Expo Line’s journey. As new routes connect with existing lines, entire regions of Los Angeles County are becoming accessible via public transit.

“Every one of these lines is another tipping point,” Yaroslavsky said.

All the test runs are a prelude to opening the first leg of the line early next year. Initially, trains are expected to run from the 7^th Street Metro Center downtown to La Cienega and Jefferson. Meanwhile, construction is continuing on Phase 1’s westernmost station in Culver City.

This interactive map provides a preview of some of the cultural attractions, employment centers and educational institutions along Phase 1 of the route—including USC, the Natural History Museum, the California Science Center, the California African-American Museum and the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

Eventually, Expo Phase 2 will extend all the way to 4^th Street and Colorado Avenue in Santa Monica. Ground was broken on that phase a couple months ago. When complete, the 15.2-mile line will be the first mass transit rail project on the Westside since the Red Cars.

Posted 11/6/11

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