[this page is a draft, and represents a set of ideas that are still being threshed out by those involved with BikeSummit]

The "One-Liner" Explanation of BikeSummit 2008

BikeSummit 2008 will need to be ready for media coverage and public outreach. We'll need a quick, easy to understand, explanation of this effort. Here is a draft version of a one-line explanation of BikeSummit 2008:

"Bring together bicyclists and community for a better Los Angeles"

- drafted at July 21, 2008 Organizing Meeting

Mission/Goals

• Turn bike riders into bike advocates
• Turn "everyone else" into bike advocates
• Strengthen ties between bike organizations
• Improve bike organizations' capacity to affect changes
• Connect bike organizations with environmental, livability, and economic development groups.
• Generally raise awareness of bicycles

Common Agenda

These items are both general, and hopefully, specific to a few subregions of the County. So, when facilities like bike lanes are mentioned - we would like to see them advocated for generally, but would also want to see that several small areas in L.A. County have bike lanes installed as a result of organizing the BikeSummit can enable and support. The success of this will be measured in lane miles of lanes put down, ot just press coverage for one news cycle.

Facilities
Bike lanes, bike boulevards, sharrows.

Policies
In the City of Los Angeles

• Obtain a source of funds to construct 1996 Citywide Bike Network (approx. $60million)
• Endorse Councilman Ed Reyes' motion to reform the L.A. Bicycle Advisory Committee
• Alter LAMC section 12.21 A 4 and 16 to:
• include Residential and Open Space zones
• lower the required floor area to 100 sq. ft. (or eliminate requirement altogether)
• allow bicycle parking in lieu of 25% or more of required minimum car parking
• Legal definition tweaks:
  
• Define "transportation" to include bicycles and walking as follows: "Any method or mode of moving goods or people using a street, highway, road, or public right-of-way. Bicycling, walking, using transit, and vehicular use are transportation."
  
• Amend the definitions of bicycling and walking to be "modes of transportation".
• "Streets" should be redefined (LAMC 11.01 and LAMC 62.00) to be: "Street" is a way or place of whatever nature, publicly maintained and open to the use of the public for purposes of moving goods and people. Street includes highway.
  
• Use alternative roadway performance measures in the Streets and Highways definitions (LAMC 17.05-A) and call for their implementation in the General Plan and the Bikeway's Plan in the "Monitoring and Evaluation" sections. These measures should include:
• 1. Trends in retail sales tax income;
• 2. Crash, injury, and fatality reduction and monitoring;
• 3. Social surveys to establish livability;
• 4. Air pollution reduction and monitoring;
• 5. Noise monitoring;
• 6. Substituting automobile-based counts of speed and throughput (like Level of Service, Average Daily Trips, and "accessibility") for people-based counts;
• 7. Demographic surveys of street users.
  

In the County of Los Angeles

• Get 1% of the MTA's sales tax increase funds dedicated to bicycle projects; get an additional 1% dedicated to pedstrian projects.

• Revise the MTA's funding guidelines for its "Call For Projects" program, which disperses "Local Returns" money from the sales taxes it collects.
• A draft of changes to the policy is as follows:
  
• "Bicycle and pedestrian projects may occupy the right of way, and may be allowed to reduce the Level of Service, Average Daily Trips, and "mobility" on that portion of right of way they occupy if the local agency can show that the following criteria will be met:
  - automobiles will drive the less than the speed limit in the improved area
  - fatalities and injuries from vehicle on bike, and vehicle on pedestrian, crashes will be reduced
  - If located in a commercial business district - retail foot traffic and sales tax income will be increase
  - Livability, as measured by a survey administered in a 300' radius from the improvement, will be improved (where livability is an index of social cohesion, general happiness, feelings of safety, a large "home" area for individual residents, and a general match of roadway users with census data)."
  
  All the onus to prove these things is on the local entities - and the MTA staff can judge using these criteria before allowing LOS, ADT, etc. to be degraded.
  
  This amendment of MTA policy would be BETTER than a locked-in 1% - because it could be more lucrative and would allow for more sweeping changes in the way bicycle and pedestrian projects are discussed in policy making circles.
  

Education
General bicycling safety education for cyclists
Law enforcement outreach and traffic law enforcement training
Bus driver education