MetroRiderLA

Bike racks in front of the L.A. Times Building in Downtown Los Angeles. Courtesy of Payton Chung.

Many many square miles of Los Angeles are devoted to parking and securing the private automobile.  The options read like Bubba’s shrimp recipes from Forest Gump: there’s surface parking lots, underground parking garages, multi-story parking buildings, street side parking, valet parking, and parking lifts, to name a few.  Bicyclists aren’t so lucky.  Usually they get nothing.  But that’s not to say that there isn’t a wide variety of bike racks to choose from, it’s just that if there were as many parking lots are there are bike racks, auto drivers would have little to do.

Anyhow, over at the Cool Hunting blog, there’s an article the references a design competition to build a better method of parking bicycles in New York City. Inspired by this competition, the author lists five bike racks that represent the creme de la creme of bicycle parking as it stands today.  These include: the “Arlington”; the Velib from Paris; Cyc Bicrac by Madrax; the witty car shaped rack by Adrien Rovero;  and the Horsehoe Rack by Creative Pipe.  What’s great about all these racks is that not only are they functional, they’re also aesthetically pleasing and add to the built environment in pleasant way… a stark contrast to the urban wastelands that are parking lots.

Image courtesy of jon_hrach.

The transit oriented lifestyle in Los Angeles is often like a jigsaw puzzle, you’ve got all these oddly shaped pieces and you just have to figure out how to connect them. It may seem daunting at first, but it’s never impossible, and with a little work the full picture is bound to appear.

On of my favorite transit puzzles is getting to the airport without a car. Thanks to the FlyAway getting to LAX is like a 300-piece puzzle - even a child could do it. However, LAX is but one of many airports in the region and sometimes you’re just bound to fly out of one of those other aviation hubs. The last time I put together one of these 1000-piece puzzles was when I flew out of Ontario Airport to take advantage of a non-stop ExpressJet flight to Oklahoma City (full disclosure: I’ve actually made this trip a few times since then). A Metrolink and a taxi saved me about $100 and got me a non-stop flight to the mid-west. Not a bad picture for the work it took putting that puzzle together.

Last week I opened up a new 1000-piecer: Downtown Los Angeles to John Wayne Airport (Orange County). The price was right, the time was right, the flight was right, so I bought the ticket/puzzle. As the pieces tumbled out in front of me, I wondered if I made the right decision. Maybe this was one of those puzzles with no solution? Or maybe a few pieces would be missing? Shit. I wish I had a car.

Just kidding.

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Rush hour commuters enjoy their subsidized ride.

Let’s talk subsidy. The American Automobile Association just released the results of a study called Crash vs. Congestion: What’s The Cost to Society [PDF]. Yes, the American Automobile Association, the group that lobbies for automobiles and was formed in order to get more auto roads built. The study reveals that in most metropolitan areas, the cost of traffic accidents far outweighs the already high costs of congestion. In the Los Angeles metropolitan statistical area (which includes almost 13 million people in Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Santa Ana) the report concludes that the yearly cost of crashes amounts to $10.5 billion. Traffic congestion in the metropolitan area costs $9.3 billion annually. Together, crashes and congestion cost Los Angeles and Orange County $19.8 billion a year. That comes out to $1,561 per person per year ($817 per person for crashes, $744 for congestion).

Yikes.

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This Earth Day, April 22nd, the Wilshire Center Business Improvement Corporation(WCBIC)in collaboration with The City of Los Angeles will close off four blocks of Wilshire Boulevard, from Western to Harvard, to show off the possibilities of “green urbanism” that Wilshire Center and other parts of Los Angeles offer. Although so far only Wilshire Center will be closed off the car, the Car-Free Day is a city-wide motion [PDF].

Starting at 10 AM and going until 5 PM on Tuesday, April 22 2008, Wilshire Center’s Earth Day Celebration will include:

• Live music performance (with acoustic set by Michael Franti)
• Bike raffle
• Reusable grocery bag give-away
• Tours of Metro Rapid Bus
• Organic food vendors
• Screening of “An Inconvenient Truth”

The WCBIC really seems committed to the eco-goals that led them to this event, with a whole section of their website dedicated to addressing ecological sustainability. They have a vision of Wilshire Center as a transit oriented urban village, where people can live work and play in a densely populated area without the need for a car. I hope more neighborhoods in Los Angeles follow Wilshire Center’s example and close of their streets on Earth Day… and if the message gets out, permanently.

Via a comment on Streetsblog LA’s recent post about bike parking at Dodger Stadium I found this awesome Streetsfilm about free valet bike parking at the AT&T Park, home of the San Francisco Giants:

I was shocked to find out that over half the people who attend Giants games get there without a car. I bet under 1% of Dodgers fans get to games without a car. The AT&T Park’s website lists public transit directions before car directions in the Getting To The Park section. The Dodgers website, on the other hand, has its own special mini-site dedicated to parking with FAQ’s, safety tips, traffic info, and other such crap that would be irrelevant if they made it easier to get to the stadium without a car. Pathetic.I wonder what kind of overall cost savings (internal and external) the ballpark and stadium sees by having more that half the people attend games without a car.

As of today I’ve now lived a full year without a car. Now that might not seem like a big deal to an eleven year old but for some reason Zach Braff 20-somethings all over are blown away; not to mention the 30 and up crowd.

Yep, the last Friday of February exactly one year ago I exchanged a red metal burden for $1900, which I was able to use to pay off one other burden, which was caused by the first burden. Now I’ve still got burdens, we all do, but one of the biggest ones is now in the hands of a 21, 22 now year old (they grow up so fast) in Burbank.

So what comes of a year without an automobile anyway? Have I gone out less? Have I been trapped by the shackles of inaccessibility? Have my girlfriend and friends abandoned me for a new guy that can drive when they need to go to the grocery store four blocks away? Well—No, I can now go out and not ever have to worry about a designated driver. No, I can get anywhere I want/need to go by way of public transit and my feet and every once in a long while, zip-car (grrr). No, my girlfriend is now pretty much car free and I just meet my friends near the deli after they finally finish parking. Simply put, things have only improved. (more…)