Bicycle Fixation Weblog
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08/07/2010: "Boulevardier"
Fourth Street Bicycle Boulevard, that is....A few days ago I was interviewing Michelle Mowery, LADOT's Bicycle Program Coordinator, who is the one stands in between all the conflicting parties in the great debate over how to allocate LA's street space most effectively--not an easy seat to occupy by any means. I was looking for a history of 4th Street's status as a bike route, and its future possibilities as a bicycle boulevard.
As regular readers will know, I have been volunteering on an LACBC committee dedicated to the project, and I am assisting Patrick Miller ("Trickmilla") with an article he's writing about it. I had been wondering just how much of a struggle might lie ahead, especially if, as i feared, Los Angeles perhaps had no administrative description of the sort of thing the bicycle community here envisions as a "bicycle boulevard"--encompassing traffic diverters as well as more normal traffic-calming features.
i was happy to see, on the record and on official letterhead, a description titled "Bicycle Friendly Street--Level Five," which pretty much covers the full-scale bicycle boulevard we're hoping for: cut-through car traffic shunted aside, local car traffic slowed a bit, through access for bikes, et al.
So that's one less bureaucratic impediment to one less car!
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On another note, I wish I had brought my camera last night, when Gina said, "Let's dress up and go out!" You should have seen her, in her flirty dress, sunglasses, and heels, looking like an Italian fashion model as she pedaled her mixte down the street.
A fine pair of boulevardiers we made, except perhaps for the glaring orange of my bike. And a fine dress-up dinner we had, while our bikes waited outside the restaurant.
