Bike Action Plan & Energy Resilience

This week the Santa Monica City Council approved the Bicycle Action Plan by unanimous vote and last week the ribbon was cut on a new high capacity Bike Center facility. Tuesday’s vote finishes the long public process of drafting avisionary document, and marking the beginning of the real work of implementation. I am much more hopeful for the full implementation of this plan than the never quite finished bicycle master plan from 1995.

The momentum has shifted a lot since 1995 and there is a new and largely younger crowd emerging and rallying around bikes. They are carrying the torch from the tireless advocates that fought for years even when it seemed like no one was listening. Rates of bike ownership in Santa Monica now represent a majority of residents. The survey data cited in the plan indicates commuting among employees of major city employers has been inching up recently, despite fairly little change on the street for bicycling in the time I have been living here. The remaining naysayers and critics that oppose bike facility development are looking more out of touch with every passing year. What I don’t think our society has quite come to terms with yet, is how drastically economic, ecological, and cultural shifts will be shaping our transportation reality. These emerging shifts are demanding more serious consideration for bicycling in urban transportation. Riding a bike will be viewed as an increasingly logical response for people trying to manage our high levels of unemployment, stagnant wages and climbing fuel and food prices. Private automobiles are simply not economical machines, and for the typical commute in L.A., which is actually less than 5 miles for 60% of commuters, they are not as necessary as we make them out to be. When combined with transit service, the reach by bike can also be extended much further. For these and other reasons it is my belief that bicycling ridership will continue to grow even if the city were to do nothing to encourage it. For example in San Francisco, significant ridership gains were seen in recent years despite a legal injunction that had delayed the development of any new bicycling facilities.

Read the rest of the story at Santa Monica Patch