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On April 1st, the Los Angeles City Council considered – and passed – an allocation of $1.2 million in funding for a citywide Safe Routes to School Plan.

Safe Routes to School programs are state and federal funding programs aimed to improve bicycle infrastructure within a two-mile radius of schools, including funding for education and encouragement programs. According to the Safe Routes to School National Partnership, 25 percent of school-aged children living in the City of Los Angeles are overweight, and parents driving their children to school accounts for 15 – 25 percent of the city’s morning traffic congestion. According to Jennifer Klausner, the Executive Director of the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, “Approving the funding for this plan is a progressive step toward making the streets around our schools safer and more inviting for children and families bicycling and walking to school.”

The plan will fund the first year of a two-year study that will use collision data to prioritize the city’s efforts and develop a meaningful approach to make communities more walkable and bikeable by pushing funding to the areas that need it most. The current approach has 15 city districts competing to submit projects to LADOT for each round of state DOT funding, and the areas in need of SRTS dollars don’t always win funding. According to Jessica Meaney, the California policy manager of Safe Routes to School National Partnership, the passage of this plan will create a more efficient strategy. “The city of LA is huge,” Meaney said. “It takes a lot of effort to prioritize areas of highest need. This strategy is looking to the long term.”

Included as part of the City of Los Angeles Bicycle Plan, a $5.47 million plan that will also fund new bike lanes, bike racks, and bicycle-friendly pavement markings, the SRTS plan will be financed with the Measure R local return dollars that LACBC and allies fought for last year. The passage of this plan will make the city more competitive, ensuring that it will receive future state and federal SRTS funds.

Keep up-to-date on the SRTS program in Los Angeles by following the Safe Routes to School National Partnership Media Center and the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition blog.

The Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition (LACBC) is proud to announce that their involvement with the cities of Glendale and Burbank have led to momentous results in the two cities becoming bicycle friendly communities.

According to LACBC, “Due to our participation in Glendale as part of the Safe and Healthy Streets PLACE Grant, Glendale has started to take visible steps in becoming more bike friendly.” The most recent advancement is the newly painted sharrows, or shared roadway markings on some of Burbank’s neighborhood streets. These ‘sharrows’ are a relatively new street marking for bicyclists whose main purpose is to guide cyclists to ride outside the car door zone, where they could potentially collide with a door opened by a motorist.

In Burbank, LACBC welcomed the new Bicycle Master Plan that was adopted on December 15th, 2009. According to LACBC, “This plan offers visionary and creative options for the planning of bicycle infrastructure in Burbank and Los Angeles. LACBC was present at the adoption and brought up important points about how Burbank and Glendale could potentially work together to ensure mutually beneficial outcomes and good connectivity between the two cities.”

For more information visit http://www.la-bike.org/

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…