Thursday, December 18, 2008

Making Glendale Bikeable

I'd like to welcome to Glendale Colin Bogart, who is the City's new in-house liason from the L.A. County Bicycle Coalition who will be working to make our streets in Glendale safer and more inviting for cyclists. Read about it in the News-Press here.

The initial scope of the projects being considered at the moment is quite modest, but ultimately the city needs to update the 1995 Bikeway Master Plan and actually IMPLEMENT IT.

The 1995 Bikeway Master Plan was put online in PDF form recently, and I've read it in its entirety. It's a good plan! But the only bit of it that was ever implemented is the baffling three block stretch of bike lane on Riverdale, and, very recently, the new bike lane on Glenoaks. There is currently no meaningful network of bicycle infrastructure that links up in a logical fashion or even attempts to feed the downtown area.

As I was about to bike home tonight (dark, cold, rainy), I walked my bike down the sidewalk to the curb and waited for a gap in traffic.

A Lexus stopped for me.

I waved for the lady not to wait for me.

She waved to let me enter the road.

I DOUBLE waved for her to continue through.

She rolled down her window and yelled, "I promise I won't run you over!"

An offer I couldn't refuse! I biked onto the road.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

When I was in high school our favorite bike ride was the ride down to the zoo.... It was a beautiful down hill ride about 3 miles... Then we would hang out at the zoo, BUT it was a miserable uphill ride back, fortunately we knew a lot of friends with trucks so we could throw them in the back.

This crisp weather is beautiful for bike riding.

Scott said...

The zoo is still a fun ride. My usual quick loop is along the river, past the zoo on Crystal Springs to Los Feliz and back home. Almost exactly 10 miles. Sometimes I'll stop at the zoo.