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The Alliance held its most recent Winning Campaigns Training in Los Angeles last week, hosted by the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition (LACBC). Thirty biking and walking advocates from 18 organizations, two states, and two countries came together to participate and propel their campaigns toward success.

Most of the participants were local members of the LACBC Regional Partnership and have been working together for months and years to build a cooperative network of L.A. bike-ped advocacy. Additional participants from Sacramento, Idaho, and Mexico added diverse perspectives that led to rich discussion and enthusiasm. Ron Milam, an organizational consultant and the founding Executive Director of LACBC, joined me in facilitating the workshop.

The Alliance’s signature training uses proven curriculum, targeted specifically to the unique needs and experience of bicycle and pedestrian advocates. They are intended for any potential campaign leader who would benefit from gaining the tools to craft and manage powerful advocacy campaigns. Manuel Zavala, of the Montebello Bicycle Coalition, summed it up well: “This training gave me the confidence to conduct a proper campaign!”

“I have been absolutely changed, empowered and inspired by this training to become a more effective campaign manager,” added Andy Rodriguez, LACBC’s Bilingual Bicycle Safety Coordinator.

“Every Alliance-facilitated training or retreat I’ve attended has been inspiring, but this training has been my favorite,” said Carol Feucht, Membership and Online Media Manager for the LACBC. “Seeing so many groups, particularly LA county’s fledging regional groups, at this training signifies how far the regional bike-ped movement has come.”

The weekend included a walking tour of the area and through the site of Occupy L.A., and a bicycling tour that highlighted a recent campaign win for the LACBC: the 7th Street Bike Lane. Supported by an Advocacy Advance Capacity Building Grant, LACBC will continue its bilingual education and outreach to build a larger and more equitable network of bike lanes and bicycle-friendly streets in South, Northeast, and Central Los Angeles.

The workshop was a great preparation for the California Bike Summit, held in L.A. November 4-6 and hosted by the California Bicycle Coalition. Los Angeles County is also the location of the 2012 Pro Walk / Pro Bike Conference and Alliance Leadership Retreat, both held in September in Long Beach.

This affordable training wouldn’t be possible without the generous support of our sponsors: Planet Bike, VBT Bicycling and Walking Vacations, SRAM, Bikes Belong, AARP, Alta Planning + Design, Clif Bar, Team Estrogen, Sun Bicycles and Specialized. Additional support from Kaiser Permanente allowed the Alliance to offer 15 scholarships to the LA training.

Register now for the Alliance’s next Winning Campaigns Training, hosted by Palmetto Cycling Coalition, in Columbia, SC from November 4-6.

By Lisa Seyfried, Contributing Writer

Thanks in part to the incredible popularity of Capital Bikeshare, the District of Columbia is awash in new cyclists. And new legislation proposed by the Washington Area Bicyclist Association (WABA) aims to boost their safety by giving bicyclists strong legal recourse when they are wronged on the road.

The proposal comes on the heels of a stunning act of intentional violence toward an innocent commuter on his way to work this summer. A helmet-cam video (above) shared by WABA showed a male cyclist being verbally assailed and then struck by a pickup truck. The man was thrown from his bicycle, crashing to the pavement, as the motorist fled the scene. Circulated by bloggers and advocates, the incident quickly served as a catalyst for many community members to push for a new measure to protect cyclists’ rights on the road.

The new anti-harassment legislation, titled ‘Assault of Bicyclists Prevention Act of 2011,’ would seek to provide a civil right of action for cyclists in the case of assaults, and the ability to recover legal fees and damages. The goal is to provide legal recourse for cyclists who have been intentionally harassed or assaulted by drivers in the District of Columbia.

“Given the obvious physical differences between automobiles and bicycles, there is ample opportunity for bullying in the form of harassment, assault, and battery,” WABA Executive Director Shane Farthing said of the proposal’s purpose in July. “That opportunity should be curtailed by consequences for roadway bullies — but to date the imposition of consequences has been rare.”

The WABA-proposed legislation is based on the Los Angeles anti-assault law that passed in July 2011. The LA legislation came after several years of LA bike activists working to pass a Bicyclist Bill of Rights. Supporters of the DC bill hope it will send a message to motorists that cyclists have the ability to take legal action when their rights are violated on the road.

The legislation will move forward to a public hearing on November 2. WABA is encouraging its members (or any bicyclists) to fill out the crash tracker on its website to provide more anecdotal evidence of why this bill is needed. Read more about WABA’s efforts to push this legislation forward here.

Just in time for the long weekend, we’ve uploaded a number of new videos to the Alliance Resource Library this week. But that’s not all…

• Before you press play and kick back with YouTube, make sure you delve into two important reports that came out this week:
  • Dangerous By Design 2011 was released by Transportation for America on Tuesday, casting the spotlight on the epidemic of preventable pedestrian deaths across the U.S.

  • The Advocacy Advance team released a new/updated report on “Getting a Fair Share for Safety from the Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP): Bicycle and Pedestrian Advocacy Case Studies,” examining the states that have successfully dedicated federal safety funds to reduce bicycle and pedestrian fatalities and crashes.

• As for the videos…

  • A beautiful two minutes of inspiration from our friends at Planet Bike

  • Four great, new PSAs from the just-launched Safe Streets Save Lives campaign in South Carolina

  • An impressive “Active and Green Transportation” video produced by high school students in Marin County, CA

  • A video from Transportation Alternatives, highlighting the work of Bronx residents — and students — in improving safety at a dangerous intersection

  • A video from the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition featuring three residents talking about their desire for bike lanes on 7th Street — in three different languages

  • A clip from “Beauty and the Bike” — a movie documenting an effort to get more girls riding in Darlington, UK (a resource that came up in our Mutual Aid Call on Bringing More Women into the Movement earlier this week!)

  • And, last but not least, some informative and humorous PSAs from the New York City Department of Transportation telling cyclists “Don’t be a Jerk” and obey traffic laws (don’t miss Commissioner Jannette Sadik-Khan calling John Leguizamo a jerk!)

Enjoy — and have a great long weekend!

By Jeff Miller, Alliance President/CEO

For more than six hours I soaked up as much as I could: the sun, the views, the smiles, the sheer beauty of seeing hundreds of thousands connecting with their neighbors and city in a wonderfully unique and natural way. Los Angeles is known to most of us for its tangle of congested highways and smog from the millions of cars. But yesterday, during CicLAvia,I saw an amazing city of cyclists!

Estimates put the crowd at 200,000-500,000 people and I think every demographic was represented among the masses. Sure, there were plenty of folks wearing lycra on expensive bikes — Lance Armstrong included — but they were out numbered by the hipsters on their fixies, sporting tattoos and U locks hanging from belts. Really the largest numbers were everyday people, wearing normal clothes on a wide range of bikes. There were small kids on scooters or riding bikes with training wheels; young boys and girls on BMX bikes, parents with toddlers in seats and trailers; couples on tandems (and a few tandems ridden solo with signs offer the seat up for a small fee or smile); teenagers riding with their cliques; men with long beards; ladies with fashionable skirts and fancy hats; and people of every ethnic and social background together. All of them were viewing their city and fellow citizens like they had never seen it before — free of dominating and oppressive automobiles.

Cops were grinning with all the “thank yous” and reveling in the people watching. Gear geeks were astonished at the range of cargo bikes, antiques, high-end rigs, Pedersens, custom “big wheel” style bikes and homemade, custom-painted bikes. Dozens of homemade giraffe bikes stood over the crowds, but none more so than the four-frame-high beast (including a tandem frame for the foundation) that supported it’s cape-wearing captain 10 feet above the crowds. In short, it was a bicycle advocate’s dream — everyone you could imagine riding back and forth across the city, excited at the possibility never before conceived and happening at that moment.

Open streets events (Sunday Parkways, Ciclavias, etc.) have a magical ability to open the hearts and minds of people from shop owners to politicians. A hundred times the size of the biggest San Francisco Critical Mass ride I’ve ridden, it has none of the rancor or controversy. Kids have the safety and freedom to again play in the street while parents admire and laugh. Couples kiss at red lights, beaming with the joy around them. Families even cruise comfortably down streets they never would think of being on for fear of gangs. And the overwhelming threat of swarming two-ton SUVs and the noise and exhaust they emit are distant enough to forget. Everyone is having so much fun it almost escapes them that this is how it could be. Except it doesn’t.

Everyone gets a glimpse of how it could be. Young and old, thin and “not so thin,” rich and poor, all connect and realize they have a community they didn’t know existed. That is the power of the bicycle, and open streets events like this help open the possibilities and prospects of safer and complete streets. If your community has an open streets event of any sort – celebrate it and cajole every neighbor, elected official, family member, and friend to experience it. If your community doesn’t have one, it is well worth the effort to organize one. In the end, open streets aren’t the answer, but they are an incredibly powerful tool of persuasion and we all need to leverage that.

To see the full list of tweets and photos from Jeff’s CicLAvia adventure follow him on Twitter @jeffreybcmiller.

The event was three weeks ago, but we’re willing to bet that folks in Los Angeles are still smiling about CicLAvia.

On 10-10-10, the City of Angels hosted its first open streets event, closing a 7-mile stretch to automobiles and throwing open the floodgates for car-free fun. The public rushed in: An estimated 50-100,000 participants showed up on foot, on bikes, on inline skates and plenty of other creative means of self propulsion to reclaim their public space.

The Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition was a key partner in making the event possible and (wo)manned a pit stop in MacArthur Park. Over the course of the day, advocates supplied bicyclists and pedestrians with water, energy bars, air for their tires, LACBC brochures, and route information. But mostly they reveled in the unprecedented and off-the-chain atmosphere.

“Several families stopped by — many from the first ever MidDay Ridazz Family/Kids’ ride — and it gave us hope to see some of the future leaders of the bicycle movement out on their bikes, experiencing how fun and efficient bicycling can be,” membership manager, Carol Feucht, wrote on LACBC’s blog. “Props to the one kid who explained to a pit stop visitor and me what sharrows were and where we could find them. That’s a future LACBC employee right there!”

Over on Streetsblog LA, writer Damien Newton noted that, even residents who didn’t directly participate, benefited from CicLAvia. It wasn’t just the cyclists and pedestrian who were inspired by the wide open roads. The success of the event trickled far beyond the streets themselves. “CicLAvia touched hundreds of thousands of people, even if it was just that they heard laughing on their streets instead of cars honking their horns,” Newton wrote. Organizers hope to make that millions in 2011. Four days after the event, still basking in the success, the CicLAvia board met. They’re still in the early planning stages, but LA residents could be treated to as many as half-a-dozen LA open streets events next year.

The sooner the better: Feucht joked that Angelinos already are suffering from CicLAvia withdrawal, pondering the creation of a support group to ease the pain until the next event. “Our cheeks hurt from smiling so much, and we can’t wait until the next one,” Feucht added. “Sunday, October 10, 2010 will be remembered as the day Angelinos came together to reclaim their streets by playing in them.”

For a tiny dose of that day’s energy, check out the StreetsFilms above.

Last summer, the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition launched its City of Lights program to assist and empower the area’s many immigrant cyclists. The new initiative quickly led to the creation and distribution of more than 600 Spanish guides that cover the fundamentals of safe cycling.

Bridging the language gap is just the first step, though. The far bigger leap is addressing the lack of bicycling infrastructure in Central LA. But early in the campaign, City of Lights volunteers recognized a serious problem — with a relatively cheap and simple solution.

“Despite the affordability of cycling to work, some day laborers have told us about an unwillingness to bike to the day laborer center because of the threat of bicycle theft,” the City of Lights blog noted back in December. “The fences and poles that laborers use to lock up their bicycles often do not provide adequate visibility or assurance to potential cyclists.”

It wasn’t just the day laborer center that lacked safe parking options, either. When the City of Lights crew conducted a survey in late 2009 they discovered that the Pico-Union and Westlake neighborhoods — two of the city’s most densely inhabited areas with more than 140,000 residents within a five-mile radius — had a mere 53 bike racks. The scoping led to a list of 40 proposed bike parking locations submitted to the LA Department of Transportation, and a new Bike Parking Community Resource Guide for advocates and business owners.

Last week, LACBC celebrated a key victory in its parking campaign. Video cameras rolled and volunteers cheered as LADOT pounded four new bike racks into the pavement outside the CARECEN day labor center.

“This is a really important site, because it was the birthplace of City of Lights,” says Allison Mannos, the LACBC’s urban programs coordinator. “It also sets a precedent for low-income cyclists and working people who don’t own cars that their needs for safer neighborhoods, worksites, and streets are just as important. Having bike parking encourages such long-running ‘accidental environmentalism’ that working class people, such as day laborer cyclists, practice everyday.”

With the City of Lights program gaining steam, city officials promised CARECEN is just the first site of many to come. “LADOT is proud to partner with LACBC, CARECEN, and Councilmember [Ed] Reyes in providing adequate bicycle parking opportunities to some of the Angelinos who are most in need,” said Rita L. Robinson, LADOT General Manager.

Learn more about the exciting work of the City of Lights program here.

Photo: Allison Mannos, LACBC urban programs coordinator, celebrates with CARECEN’s Jose Veliz.

After nearly six years of delays, Los Angeles finally has its first sharrows.

This month, the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition celebrated the painting of the white icons that alert motorists of cyclists’ rights to the shared lane.

“For LACBC this marks a very important victory and we’re hoping today will be turning point for Los Angeles,” the LABC blog noted on June 11, the day city workers put paint to pavement. “Sharrows have been used in cities all across the U.S., in Canada and even in Australia. Los Angeles however had still not seen a single official shared lane marking.  But today we can say that LA has sharrows and they are here to stay.”

The LA Department of Transportation is planning sharrows on six streets, but the first pilots — on Fountain Avenue and Fourth Street — already are causing some debate. For instance, exactly where in the lane should the sharrow be painted for optimal efficacy? Eleven feet from the curb? Fourteen feet from the curb? Last week, the LABC weighed in on that, too.

“We understand the community’s concerns about proper placement of sharrows and we agree that in addition to getting sharrows on our streets the goal is to ensure that best practices are achieved,” the blog explained. “Moving forward, LACBC recommends that LADOT carefully consider alternate placement locations for sharrows depending on the lane width, traffic volume, size of parking lane, and other important factors that determine where they should be placed in order that sharrows are used effectively.”

Surf over to the LABC blog for more information.

In the wake of the stunning police behavior at the local Critical Mass ride last month, the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition hand delivered a strong message to the Mayor. The LABC called out Antonio Villaraigosa on the discrimination and disrespect area cyclists face at the hands of his police department and municipal government.

In less than a week, the Mayor responded, breaking his silence and standing, on the record, with cyclists.

In the LABC letter, Jennifer Klausner, the group’s executive director, says the needless violence at Critical Mass isn’t an isolated incident.

“Los Angeles police take cues from our built environment,” Klausner writes. “Our current street configurations and their lack of infrastructure for bike transportation show that bicyclists are not valued and not welcome here. We urge you to work with the LADOT to immediately implement multiple high-profile bicycle lane projects already approved… Further, we urge you to step forward and publicly voice your support for bicycling as a valid means of transportation in the City of Los Angeles. Your silence on bicycling issues has led many in the city’s cycling community to conclude that you oppose bicycling on our streets, and provides tacit support for those who do, both within the LAPD and other city departments, and with the public at large.”

The mayor responded quickly, specifically asking the group to post his message on its blog.

“Bicyclists have every right to use our City streets and to be treated with courtesy and respect — both by drivers and law enforcement,” Villaraigosa says in the statement. “I fully support LAPD Chief Charlie Beck’s efforts to improve the relationship between cyclists and police officers, and I was very disappointed to hear about the confrontation in Hollywood on May 28. The video from that night is disturbing. The LAPD is conducting a full investigation of this incident, and I have complete confidence in Chief Beck’s commitment to making the City’s streets safe for everyone.”

Will his “commitment” turn into action? Keep track of developments and read the full letter on LABC’s blog.

According to the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, “Last week, The South Bay Bicycle Coalition (SBBC) and LACBC were notified that they were awarded a RENEW grant from the LA County Department of Public Health to create a regional South Bay Bicycle Master Plan. This plan would aim to create an inter-jurisdictional bikeway system and connect cities in the South Bay region of Los Angeles.

To read more about it go to: lacbc.wordpress.com/2010/03/30/success-in-the-south-bay-south-bay-bicycle-coalition/

For some important facts about some of LACBC’s recent grants go to: lacbc.wordpress.com.”

The Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition (LACBC) has just released a new report about cyclists and pedestrians across the city of Los Angeles, CA. L.A. Bike Count: Every Cyclist Counts is an in depth assessment of the use of the city’s public streets by bikers and walkers on a typical day for commuting and recreational purposes.

To produce this report, LACBC brought together and trained over 100 community volunteers who contributed hundreds of hours and counted over 14,000 cyclists and 60,000 pedestrians at over 50 strategic locations citywide. The count also included gender, helmet use, sidewalk riding, and riding on the wrong side of the street. All this information can be found in the report and is key in influencing and guiding future decision making about where to focus engineering, education, enforcement, and other improvements to increase bicycling and walking in LA.

Key findings, as mentioned in LACBC’s press release, include:

• Overall, women riders were in the minority, accounting for just 15% of all riders observed across the three time periods studied. This translates to a male-to-female ratio of 6:1. These findings speak to the need for safer streets to encourage women, children, and other risk-adverse groups to feel welcome on our public roads.
• Helmet use was highest during the weekday morning period (7:00 - 9:30 AM) when 49% of riders wore helmets. These baseline data may be useful for targeting educational campaigns promoting bike safety.
• Overall, 4% of bicyclists were observed riding on the wrong side of the street in any given intersection. However, only 2% of riders in intersections with bike infrastructure rode on the wrong side.
• Where bike paths and bike lanes are present, 17% of riders were seen riding on sidewalks, compared to 52% where there is no bike infrastructure.

To view the full report and description of LACBC’s efforts, visit http://la-bike.org/index.html

The Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition (LACBC) and local residents successfully saved the Reseda Boulevard bike lane from being removed. About 60 people attended the August 11th Northridge West Neighborhood Council meeting to protest the proposal to remove the bike lane in order to install peak hour traffic lanes on Reseda Boulevard. Their voices, along with others who wrote letters to Councilmember Zine’s office and to West Valley DOT, resulted in the proposal being unanimously voted down. According the LACBC, “The implementation of peak hour lanes would make it impossible to install the already approved bike lane extension and would also have resulted in the partial removal of some of the existing lane.”

To read about the Los Angeles DOT’s reaction that they were never planning these peak hour lanes, click here…

Click here for more info on LACBC.

According to the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition (LACBC), “LACBC has worked steadily to increase bike safety among low-income cyclists at the Carecen Day Labor center in Macarthur Park. We have distributed over 100 front and rear bike lights, taught 2 bilingual bike safety workshops and will be hosting bilingual bike maintenance workshops in July and August.  We plan to host bike rides and other events for the summer, in the hopes of expanding to another day labor center.

Learn more about City of Lights Program

For more information on LACBC, click here…

More than 1,600 cyclists participated in Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition’s 9th Annual L.A. River Ride, making it the largest River Ride ever! The event is LACBC’s largest fundraiser and raises awareness of the need for bike path connectivity along the LA River.

For more information, click here…