Safe & Healthy Streets

Safe & Healthy Streets Community Meeting fall 2009

As you may recall, last fall we held a series of Community Input Meetings to help us develop the Safe & Healthy Streets Plan – a set of policy recommendations to encourage and support biking and walking that we will be asking the City to adopt. We’ve completed the “public draft” of the Safe & Healthy Streets Plan and now it’s available for your review. This is a living document that we expect to revise many times from now until the end of the year. You can download a PDF copy of the Draft Safe & Healthy Streets Plan by clicking here.

The City of Glendale and the LA County Bicycle Coalition will host two public meetings to get your feedback on the Draft Safe & Healthy Streets Plan. If you can attend these meetings, we encourage you to review the plan and come tell us what you think. All are welcome to the meetings.

If you can’t attend either of the meetings and would like to offer your feedback, please e-mail your comments to colin@la-bike.org

Here is a list of the meetings in October.

Safe & Healthy Streets Public Feedback Meeting #1
Monday October 25, 2010
Glendale Central Library Auditorium
222 East Harvard St.
7:00 – 8:30 pm

Safe & Healthy Streets Public Feedback Meeting #2
Wednesday October 27, 2010
Sparr Heights Community Center
1613 Glencoe Way
7:00 – 8:30 pm

We look forward to seeing you in October!

Glendale Bicyclist and Pedestrian Count Success

Volunteer Guillaume Lemoine counting a cyclist on Glenoaks near Grandview

Once again we’ve successfully completed a bicyclist and pedestrian count here in Glendale. Thanks to over 80 volunteers, we’ve recorded the activity of bicyclists and pedestrians at 26 different locations city-wide during typical weekday morning and afternoon commute times and on a Saturday morning. The Glendale News Press published an article about the count which you can read here. We’d like to thank the Alex Theatre, Glendale Massage Envy, and Nestle USA for donating gift items for the volunteers.

Volunteer David Houston counts pedestrians at Glendale & Maple

A report including data from this year’s count as well as last year will be released in early 2011. In the meantime, here are a few preliminary results.

This year’s weather was a little unusual compared to 2009. Wednesday September 22 was cool and overcast, especially in the morning, while Saturday September 25 was the first day of a heat wave that peaked on Monday with the highest temperature ever recorded in downtown Los Angeles. By comparison, both days in September 2009 were sunny and mild.

Based on a selection of five intersections for bicyclists and four intersections for pedestrians, the overall numbers for bicyclists and pedestrians were down this year compared to 2009. If this proves to be the case for the entire count, it could have been due to the weather this year.

The five bicyclist intersections we’ve compared to date are: Central & Stocker (2009 – 22, 2010 – 14), Chevy Chase & Maple (2009 – 70, 2010 – 56), Flower & Sonora (2009 – 200, 2010 – 181), Foothill & Pennsylvania (2009 – 50, 2010 – 31), and Glenoaks & Grandview (2009 – 105, 2010 – 77).

The four pedestrian intersections we’ve compared to date are: Brand & Broadway (2009 – 2,520, 2010 – 2,214), Glendale & Wilson (2009 – 1,329, 2010 – 1,317), Honolulu & Ocean View (2009 – 1,686, 2010 – 1,539), and Los Feliz & San Fernando (2009 – 1,251, 2010 – 1,099).

This year Flower & Sonora still appears to be the highest volume location for bicyclists. For pedestrians, Brand & Broadway may be the highest volume again, but we still need to complete a weekday count at Central & Americana Way, a new intersection for this year’s count.

Glendale Walk to School Day is Wednesday October 6, 2010

R.D. White students and parents, Walk to School Day 2009

Last year, R.D. White Elementary hosted a hugely successful Walk to School Day event as part of International Walk to School Day. This year, Glendale’s Walk to School Day celebration is set to be even bigger and better with 16 schools confirmed as of September 29. Walk to School Day is part of an ongoing Safe Routes to School effort which encourages children to walk or bike to school on a regular basis. If your children or your friends’ children attend a school in Glendale, get involved! Tell your friends! For more information and to participate, contact your local school, go to the Walk to School USA website, or contact Kara Sergile at kysergile(at)sbcglobal(dot)net.

Army of Pink

Glendale Adventist Medical Center is helping to raise money to fight cancer through the Army of Pink promotion, October 1-26, 2010. Go to the Glendale Army of Pink website and vote for your favorite “Glendale Recruit” and Glendale Adventist will donate $1 for each vote to the Glendale Relay for Life. It’s free and you can vote as often as you like!

 CicLAvia Is Coming October 10, 2010

CicLAvia is an event in which 7.5 miles of streets in the City of Los Angeles will be closed to cars so people can enjoy the streets on foot or by bicycle. Inspired by “Ciclovia”, the original street closure event in Bogota, Columbia, similar events are now being held in New York City, Oakland, and San Francisco to name a few. CicLAvia will be the inaugural event for the City of Los Angeles. CicLAvia is free and you can bet it will be huge. CicLAvia will be held on Sunday October 10 from 10 am to 3 pm. For more details go to the CicLAvia website.

 A note about the Denver B-Cycle Program

We were going to post a piece about Denver’s B-Cycle bike sharing program as a follow-up to Ardy Kassakhian’s piece about Bixi in Montreal, but there’s so much going on right now that we’re postponing the B-Cycle piece until next time. Check back for that soon.

Other important dates to remember
Los Angeles Bike Plan remaining public hearings end October 2
Glendale Healthier Community Coalition - Community Needs Assessment, Wednesday October 6, 9 am at the Glendale Adult Recreation Center (stop by after Walk to School Day)
LACBC Regional Groups meeting, Wednesday October 6, 7 pm, 634 S. Spring Street, downtown L.A.

Volunteers at Honolulu and Ocean in 2009

Volunteers are still needed for the second annual Glendale Bicyclist and Pedestrian Count on Wednesday September 22 and Saturday September 25, 2010. Each volunteer will be asked to report to a chosen intersection for two hours and record all the bicyclists and pedestrians who pass by. Detailed instructions and counting materials will be sent to each volunteer prior to the count dates. This year all volunteers will receive a t-shirt! We also have thank-you gifts courtesy of the Alex Theatre , Nestle USA, and Glendale Massage Envy .

The information gathered will help the City to track biking and walking trends in Glendale as well as to determine where there might be greater need for bike and pedestrian infrastructure. The count data will also be used for the City’s upcoming Bikeway Master Plan update.

This year we’re using VolunteerSpot.com to organize all the volunteers. If you can help with the count on September 22 or 25, please click on the button below. You’ll be asked to input your e-mail address, then you will receive an e-mail with instructions and a link to pick the date, time, and location you want.

Thank you!

T-shirt design

BIKING WITH BIXI IN MONTREAL

Ardy with a Bixi bike

Glendale City Clerk Ardy Kassakhian recently traveled to Montreal where he used the Bixi bicycle sharing system and offered us the following article upon his return. We thank Ardy for his contribution! Next time we’ll be posting a piece about Denver’s B-Cycle program, but for now, here’s what Ardy has to say about Bixi.

Recently, National Geographic’s Traveler Magazine voted Montreal one of the most “Bike Friendly” cities in North America and with good reason. Part of the reason was that it was the first city on the continent to introduce a public bike sharing program. Bixi (as the program is called) was designed to take cars off the road and put bicycles back on the streets. During a recent visit to Montreal, I witnessed firsthand how it’s done just that and more.

Summer is a great time to visit Montreal. The weather hovers around the mid 70s and makes it ideal to explore the downtown area on foot or by bicycle. Montreal offers visitors a variety of outdoor activities during the summer months from concerts, endless choices for patio dining to a variety of outdoor festivals. Montrealers appreciate summer and with good reason. Winters can be pretty harsh here. So much that they’ve built a vast underground city of malls and shopping centers attached to their subway system with the purpose of staying out of the debilitating cold. But when the sun is shining, nothing can keep Montrealers indoors. And you see plenty of people out and about and many of them – sometimes entire families – on bikes.

Bixi stand with secure bike docks

Outside any of the city’s multiple metro stops you will find a Bixi stand. The stands consist of an automated kiosk for renting a bike. Next to the kiosk you’ll see about a dozen bicycles lined up and ready to rent out. They are conveniently placed within blocks of each other so you have a choice of any one of 400 solar-powered facilities sprinkled around the city. Renting one of their bikes costs just $5 a day. The individual bikes are locked into special docks which have a keypad where you input your unique code linked to your specific credit card. You can drop off your bike at any location during the day and when you’re ready to leave, grab another bike by inputting another code using your credit card. Each bike is uniquely designed with lights that flash in the front and rear; a basket with bungee cord to secure items; an adjustable seat; a small ringer; and three speeds. Their unique design makes them hard to steal and easy to spot. And for the small price (less than the cost of a day metro pass) you have limitless access to these bikes. Many people we saw used them to run errands, meet friends for a quick bite or just to get some exercise. I used them to work off the plates of poutine I ate. Poutine is Montreal’s ubiquitous national snack and consists of French fries covered in cheese curds and topped off with gravy. And it’s as delicious as it sounds. But I digress…

Bixi payment kiosk

Aside from the health benefits that shared biking provides, there are other considerations that make Montreal such a successful test area for this type of program. Montreal has truly embraced a culture of bicycling and it’s evident in its roadway and sidewalk designs. The city has sharrows and designated bike lanes throughout the downtown area and both riders and drivers observe good road etiquette. In other mixed-use neighborhoods, bikes have their own lanes separated by a smaller sidewalk area giving them unfettered pathways to ride on parallel to the streets used by cars. This separation helps everyone know where they belong and probably reduces the number of crashes. You can see a detailed picture of the different types of safety features Montreal has implemented on the Bixi “Code of Conduct” website.

But most important, what makes the Bixi system work so well is its proximity to metro stations. Although conveniently placed throughout the city, having them next to such a widely used public transit system makes them the ideal companion for people who commute into the downtown from the suburbs and want to use the bikes to get around the heart of the city. I kept thinking how great this system would be for Los Angeles where we have metro stations but the city is so spread out that it’s difficult to get off at a particular stop and then walk many blocks to your final destination. This system is a very convenient go-between alternative to waiting for the bus or walking.

From Montreal to Boston and even in LA where Mayor Villaraigosa has become an advocate, biking is becoming a more accepted form of getting around. In a place like Southern California where we pride ourselves on good health and environmentally conscious practices, it seems like a shared bike program would be a natural fit. And if rumors are true, a program may be around the corner. But if you can’t wait for your own community to adopt shared biking, then travel to Montreal and check out Bixi.

Ardy and his wife Courtney, enjoying the sites of Montreal by bike