MOBILITY 2035 THE DISCUSSION--One goal of Los Angeles’ recently enacted Mobility Plan 2035 is to expand transportation choices for people, including bicycling. Under the Plan, bike lanes would be added to selected major streets. Other local streets would be re-engineered to make them safer and more efficient for bicycling and other non-motorized modes; the Plan calls these the “Neighborhood Network.” Some vocal opponents of the plan argue that Los Angeles is too big and sprawling for bicycling to be a real alternative to driving. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I am 51 years old, several years (sadly) past my physical prime. I ride a hybrid bicycle with relatively wide tires and a boxy pannier (that’s a fancy-pants word for a basket hanging to the side of my rear wheel). It is not a bicycle built for speed. I occasionally use a smartphone app to track my bike rides; on relatively flat urban streets—that would be most of Los Angeles--I usually average a bit more than 12 mph, a fairly typical bicycling speed. As much as it pains me to admit it, I am kind of average.
The other day, I made a trip from Union Station to the Beverly Center area, at the tail end of the evening commute period. According to GoogleMaps, the 8.1 mile trip would have taken me 35 minutes by car, for an average speed of 14 miles per hour. People on bicycles are not to blame for any of that slow travel speed. Instead, it is a function of so many motorists driving their (mostly single-occupant) cars through the most densely populated part of one of the world’s largest cities. There is nothing that Caltrans or the City of LA can do (within the realm of political and economic feasibility) to make things better for motorists in LA’s dense urban core.
But I didn’t drive; I rode my bicycle. My trip took 46 minutes, 11 minutes slower than the hypothetical car trip. But let’s take a closer look at that time difference.
Like most people, I prefer to bicycle on streets with bike lanes, and local streets with lower levels of traffic. However, Central Los Angeles (outside of Downtown) does not have many streets like that. Thus, GoogleMaps sent me on a 9.3 mile bike ride—1.2 miles longer than a car trip. I had to ride south to 7th Street; west on the 7th Street bike lanes to their terminus at the old Ambassador Hotel; north to 4th Street; west on 4th Street, which has “sharrow” pavement markings and is a designated bike route, to its terminus at Park La Brea; and then along 3rd Street to my destination.
My average speed for this ride was 12 miles per hour. The extra 1.2 miles took 6 minutes, more than half of the time differential between driving and biking. When the City adds bike lanes and builds out the Neighborhood Network, it will reduce biking distances for those who won’t ride on major streets without bike lanes. That will make bicycling more time-competitive with driving, and a more attractive alternative.
Two other attributes of my trip slowed my bike ride by a couple of minutes, both of which the Mobility Plan seeks to address.
The 3-mile stretch of 4th Street (from Catalina Street to Cochran Avenue) has approximately 25 stop signs, each of which required me to come to a complete stop and then--using only my own middle-aged legs, lungs and heart—get back up to speed again. The Mobility Plan aims to add features, such as mini-roundabouts, realigned stop signs, speed humps and possibly traffic diverters to make places like 4th Street work better for bicyclists without increasing automobile cut-through traffic.
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At key intersections on 4th Street, such as Rossmore Avenue and Highland Avenue, cross-traffic does not stop. Because very few motorists yield to bicyclists (or pedestrians), people on bikes or on foot often must wait a long time for traffic to clear before proceeding across the street. The other day, it took me about a minute to cross Highland Avenue. Under the Mobility Plan, the City would make it faster and safer for non-motorists on the Neighborhood Network to cross major streets.
At the end of my trip near the Beverly Center, I rode directly to my destination and locked my bike to an adjacent parking meter. The friends I met all complained about have to circle around looking for parking, and then walking 2 or 3 blocks to our destination. Thus, bicycling actually shaved a couple of minutes off my trip.
Do the math. My bike trip took 11 minutes longer than a car trip. About 8 minutes of that extra time was due to the almost total absence of bike infrastructure in LA’s dense, central neighborhoods, which required me to ride more than a mile out of my way, and to ride more slowly. I saved 2 minutes by being able to park at my destination. In other words, if the City implements the Mobility Plan, this middle-aged man would be able to bike fairly long distances around Los Angeles just as quickly as I could drive.
And that is for relatively long trips. In neighborhoods with high levels of traffic congestion and without abundant free parking—Koreatown, Hollywood, Pico-Union, Westlake, Mid-Wilshire--bicycling would be faster than driving for many short trips, if the City implements the Mobility Plan. Many of those trips are faster by bike today, but because there is almost no bike infrastructure in these neighborhoods, bicycling is not comfortable or safe.
It is true that not everyone can bicycle, and it is true that a bicycle is not practical for every trip. But, for most healthy people, in many neighborhoods and for many types of trips, bicycling could be just as fast and convenient as driving.
(Jeff Jacobberger received his Master of Planning degree from USC and works as a transportation planner. He has served as Chair of the Mid City West Community Council and drafted the original Memorandum of Understanding between the Department of Water and Power and Neighborhood Councils.)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 13 Issue 67
Pub: Aug 18, 2015
