Thursday, September 24, 2009

Bike Girl Loves Plans

Bike Girl loves plans. There is nothing more elegant than a well laid, and well executed plan. She also loves bicycles. In fact, she even named herself after bicycles (BIKE Girl people, BIKE Girl).
Because of those dual loves, and her current address in Los Angeles, one would think Bike Girl would be ecstatic about the Los Angeles Bicycle Master Plan. It has a good name. It has bikes, plans, Los Angeles, and it's the Master of all plans. Bike Girl would love to peruse the plan and participate in the debate about the plan.

But unfortunately, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation does not want Bike Girl to comment on the plan.

The LADOT even went so far as to make sure that not a single meeting is in Bike Girl's area. It is no secret that Bike Girl has her base of operations in City Councilman Tom LaBonge's district. One would think that the "Bicycle Councilman's" constituents would want some say. But no meetings are in Hollywood. Plus, there are none in the hipster-cycling meccas of Echo Park and Silverlake. Nor is there a meeting in cyclist-dense East L.A.

Bike Girl could also submit comments online, but oh! only until November 6th. Bike Girl has a very busy schedule of bike riding, bike racing, bike wrenching, bike blogging, oh, and working. How could she possibly get through 212 pages, with 351 pages of appendices by then?

Our beloved protagonist is not the only one the LADOT does not want to comment on the Bicycle Master Plan. It has strategically timed the 6 month late release of the plan so that Neighborhood Councils cannot review the plan. Bicycling Activist Dr. Alex Thompson says the short deadline for comments makes it nearly impossible for his NC to react.

Bike Girl may even go so far as to say the deadline makes participation "infeasible."
Cyclists who want to participate in debate on the Master of all Los Angeles Bicycle Plans can e-mail West LA Councilman and City Council Transportation Committee Chair Bill Rosendahl at Councilman.Rosendahl@lacity.org. Ask for the deadline be pushed to January 4th, 2010.

4 comments:

Alex said...

Infeasible! I love it.

Anonymous said...

Yeah. I'm sure ladot considered your geographic limits of participation and then planned the meeting just outside that venn/topo diagram.

Ps

the third person gimmick is really tired.

Bike Girl said...

The Anonymous poster has clearly missed the point.

danceralamode said...

Yes, the anonymous poster is clearly an angry little person. I, too, am trying to drudge my way through the plan. But what's the point? Any comments I might have won't be considered, and since my neighborhood council can't do anything about it...All I can think of is let's get every cyclist in LA to surround the building when it's time to vote on this plan. We'll do an old fashion "bike in" protest. Does Bike Girl like protests?