Thursday’s Headlines: Farewell to L.A. Edition

The National Association of City Transportation Officials convention is over, and by the time you read this, I’ll be heading back to New York. But Los Angeles continues to impress me. Mark my words: By 2028, the City of Angels will be more bikeable, more walkable, and have a world-class subway system. And it’ll still be one of the greatest culinary cities in the Western world.

But enough about those Korean short ribs I had last night at Sun Nong Dan, here’s today’s news:

After Friend of Streetsblog Jon Orcutt tweeted a picture, amNY’s indefatigable Vin Barone wrote about a Manhattan bike lane with a lightpost smack dab in the middle.

Classic bone-head government story — unfortunately one involving @NYC_DOT obstructing a bike path. Sad that DOT won’t even answer a press question about it https://t.co/L2fu3HtLnf

— Jon Orcutt (@jonorcutt) October 3, 2018

Chris Robbins reports on how the de Blasio Administration is still targeting e-bike–riding delivery men and women instead of the businesses that employ them. And he reminds us: “The de Blasio administration has yet to provide any hard evidence that the throttle-based e-bikes … are more of a public danger than the pedal-assisted e-bikes.” (Gothamist)
The L train had a mini L-pocalypse on Wednesday. (Gothamist)
Some advocates say the city’s plan to raise the pay for Uber and Lyft drivers doesn’t go far enough. (NY Post, amNY)
Andrew Gounardes’s race to defeat Brooklyn State Senator and street safety pariah Marty Golden continues to draw lots of attention, this time from amNY. The story reminds us that Golden is more or less running on his record of “celebrating senior citizen’s birthdays and speaking at community events.”
And, finally, here’s our award for placard abuse of the day. (H/T Felix Salmon)

Ferdinand Cesarano

There is also a lamppost in the bike lane on the Shore Parkway (Belt Parkway) bike and pedestrian path. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3e7b72378d2f293fb80da6ccc11f6190f5980f69930588f7411630afaf60766b.jpg
qrt145

I was going to say “no, that lamppost is on the buffer between the path and the fence”. But then I saw the painted arrows! The fact that whoever designed this thought that those two feet of space, next to a fence and filled with plants and debris, is a “lane”, is already ridiculous.
Joe R.

Strictly speaking, I agree it’s ridiculous to consider that a “lane”. In practice, most of the traffic there is bike traffic owing to the rather large distances between points of interest. It’s not a big deal if the occasional pedestrian walks in the bike lane in locations where the pedestrian path is unusable. The visibility is good enough so a cyclist can see them very far in advance. I know I had no issues with the few pedestrians I encounter in the bike lane whenever I ride that path.

Some of the bridges are the bigger problem. Here there really isn’t the room to pass a pedestrian. We really need separate biking and walking paths on those.