Southland cyclists have never enjoyed as propitious a moment to organize as right now. Municipalities across the region are updating bike plans, giving cycling advocates an opportunity to push what are often well-rehearsed, rote exercises in automobile accommodation into new areas of alternative transportation innovation.
Slowly, policymakers are responding with new improvements like road diets and curb extensions to call attention to non-motorists. Bike lanes and shared-lane pavement markings facilitate the travel of cyclists on key routes that only motorists once dared tread. Other tangible signs of progress, like racks and bike corrals, signal to would-be cyclists that there are viable alternatives to the car.
We need to act locally. Advocates, policymakers and imaginative city transportation and planning officials working together can envision and create a better environment that is both safe to cycle but that also returns economic and social benefits. We need not remain wedded to the outdated idea that the car is the only safe and convenient transportation alternative. Our challenge as local cycling advocates is to persuade policymakers that cycling is not only good for cyclists but contributes to the greater good, as well.
Beverly Hills has its work cut out for them. The parking operations budget is deep in the red. In the last municipal election, voters approved a free-parking giveaway that will saddle the city with additional costs well into the future. The city is about to spend taxpayer money to re-house the Chamber of Commerce in fancy new digs in order to free up the Chamber’s old home on South Beverly Drive in the pedestrian district. That structure will go to make way for – what else – another parking garage. Too often, policymakers plow public investments into the wrong kind of infrastructure because they are simply limited by their own lack of imagination. In my nearly 10 years in and around Beverly Hills, the city has installed fewer than 20 public bike racks.
My experience as a cycling advocate working the committees and commissions of city hall has shown me that the real barrier to innovation is not procedural or budgetary but rather a lack of imagination. We’re a small, wealthy city that enjoys advantages only dreamed of in other cities: an accessible city government, chart-topping sales tax revenues and committees and commissions stocked with sharp folks quite up to a policy-making challenge.
So many cities fail to progress on alternative transportation improvements because they choose to shackle the possibilities and potentials of a post-automobile future to our reluctance to abandon the old automobile-centric paradigm.
An imaginative policymaker might recognize that courting motorists with free parking at enormous expense is a dead end for tomorrow’s cities. Why overlook the economic potential of local-area cyclists when we’re so easy to accommodate? We’re nature’s true locavores – we shop where we ride and we ride where we’re welcome – and we’re paying dividends for cities that embrace us. Policymakers don’t need studies to show that progressive transportation policies are correlated with fast-rising neighborhood incomes because it’s no longer necessary to tease it out of the data. Take a look around.
For more information on cycling in and around Beverly Hills, visit betterbikebeverlyhills.org.
A note from CCBC: Remember tonight (May 19) is our Bike from Work pit stop. Join us by bike for a beverage and free appetizers at Joxer Daly’s 11168 Washington Blvd., Culver City, from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. For more information, visit our website at ccbike.org/.
Bike Safe, Bike Smart! is a weekly column to promote responsible cycling by providing information, education and advice about riding. It’s written by members of the Culver City Bicycle Coalition (CCBC), a local chapter of the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition. Join them for their family bike ride, the last Sunday of every month. For more information and to submit questions, write: ccbicyclecoalition@gmail.com, and visit their blog: culvercitybc.wordpress.com/.
