Real life Paperboy

Those of the Nintendo Generation are pretty familiar with a game called Paperboy. It is a pretty simple concept: a paperboy delivers newspapers. The thing that made the game challenging is that it entailed riding a bicycle through an obstacle course of potholes, dogs, cars and tornados. A bike ride through Hollywood is, minus the tornados, a carbon copy of the challenges faced by the intrepid paperboy. It is flat out dangerous. The lack of sensible urban planning that has led to this current situation really needs to be put under the microscope and those who neglected this vital aspect of city transport should be asked what they were thinking.

There is a proposed bicycle path overhaul that can be found on the LA Department of City Planning. It is hard to imagine how to make riding a bicycle, the greenest form of quick transportation, any harder on the citizens of LA. The nadir has been reached and now since things cannot get any worse, things can now get better. How long it will take to realize this plan remains to be seen. The pace of improvement seems to be like all other forms of transit improvement – stuck in low gear.

The 2009 bicycle plan is well and good, but they are proposals (on the world’s smallest pdf by the way). Everything in LA concerning better mobility is a proposal. It exists on paper. Trains, buses, down to the very bike path which is no more than a swath of open space gets proposed then sat on for ages while gridlock intensifies. There is no sense of urgency concerning any improvements. The word that is constantly AWOL is implementation. Things look great on paper, but when it come to realizing the best laid plans, implementation gives way to delays time and time again. Published project completion dates on these projects remain as elusive as ever (see cover letter). If a group of urban planners cannot create empty space for bicycles by a set date, all hope is lost.

Bicycles are a very important stop gap to LA’s public transportation plans because they are the easiest bit of infrastructure to create while new track is being laid for rail and the heavier parts of the network are being built. A bike ride to the subway station can be quicker than waiting for a bus and/or no service is available to the specific area you need to get to. Bicycles cover over most of the dead spots on the transportation map.

The terrain of Los Angeles mostly flat and well suited for bike riding. LA is great for bicycles and barely has a cycling culture. Contrast this with cyclists in San Francisco, where riding a bike is comparable to the mountain stages of the Tour de France, and the absence of a well maintained set of bicycle lanes is even more puzzling. Infrastructure like more bicycle lanes and parking is needed immediately, then bicycle renting schemes, available in many major cities, can be implemented later on down the road.

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cycling • urban planning