[Carfreeliving] Will LA leapfrog San Francisco?

[Tom Radulovich]

Jason,

A bike lane down Wilshire would be great, and if it happens before we  
get one the length of Market Street, shame on San Francisco. Wilshire  
does have a rapid bus line, one of 22 rapid bus corridors either in  
operation or being planned in LA County, while we have yet to build,  
or even plan, one.

As I made my way down the Market Street lane this morning, dodging  
the pools of fetid water in the rotted pavement and double-parked Fed  
Ex trucks and tour buses, I realized that there is absolutely no  
sense of joy or beauty or delight involved in San Francisco bike  
planning. The best we can do is design facilities that are marginally  
safer than riding in mixed traffic, but what if the city set out to  
create bike lanes and paths that are a delight to ride on? The bike  
path along the Hudson River waterfront is designed not only for  
safety, but is designed to be attractive and fun as well. A friend  
from LA who lives there part time just bought a bike because he liked  
the path so much, and wanted to be able to ride on it. Will anyone  
look at the existing Market Street lane and say, "Cool, I want to get  
a bike so I can ride on that!"?

My friend Jeannene tells the story of going to Vancouver and seeing  
Larry Beasley, Vancouver's Planning Director, say in a public meeting  
"We want to design a city that delights you." When was the last time  
you heard a bicycle, pedestrian, or transit planner here speak of  
delight, much less lay it out as an imperative of planning? When I  
was walking through Paris, I definitely got the impression that many  
of the better boulevards and promenades were designed to delight the  
walker, not just to keep us out of the way of cars. The Mayor's first  
"clean and green" project, the median landscaping and blue and gold  
fences (which are really there deter pedestrians from jaywalking on  
Van Ness and messing up traffic flow) are clearly aimed beyond the  
merely functional and are aimed at delighting the motorist. So where  
are the projects aimed at delighting bicyclists? As others have  
pointed out, the Panhandle bike paths are rather grudging and stingy  
accommodations compared to what they could have been, and Market  
Street and Embarcadero, which should be our grand bike boulevards,  
are pretty sad.

Maybe it is the bureaucratic mindset of most transportation planners;  
I encounter the same "practical" mindset in transit planning here,  
where Muni buses are designed without padded seats so that they can  
be hosed down, much like the design of cattle cars. Maybe our  
movement has set its sights too low, focusing on technocratic aspects  
of design, and emphasizing safety while forgetting the importance of  
amenity, not to mention beauty, joy, or delight. But what is the  
point of living in a city that where joy and delight are not  
imperatives? I understand that sometimes incremental improvement is  
all we get, but there also seems to be no vision for what could be. I  
fear we could end up with a continuous bike network, but one so thin  
and stingy it fails to attract people to bicycling.

Tom Radulovich
tomrad at well.com



On Aug 23, 2005, at 10:04 PM, Jason Henderson wrote:


>
> What about a bike lane on Wilshire? That would put LA
> ahead of San Francisco!
>
> I am reading "Long Emergency" by Kunstler. Anybody
> read it?
> -jh
>
> --- Tom Radulovich <tomrad at well.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>> LA is creating a continuous bicycle path along the
>> LA river, and
>> dedicated a new "Bike Park" last month:
>>
>> http://www.smmc.ca.gov/PressRelease/Crystal.pdf
>>
>> Meanwhile, the rutted, discontinuous bike lane on
>> Market Street has
>> become a parking lane, with no apparent enforcement,
>> which might just
>> be more dangerous than no lane at all. Aargh!
>>
>> Tom Radulovich
>> tomrad at well.com
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
> Jason Henderson
> San Francisco CA
> (415)-255-8136
>
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