Yes, people walk in Los Angeles

July has been a good month for cyclists and walkers in Los Angeles. Turns out, some neighborhoods in Los Angeles are actually considered some of the most walkable areas of the state: WeHo is ranked #1 and Santa Monica is ranked the #4 most walkable neighborhoods in California.

Sure, we aren’t New York City, still listed as America’s most walkable city or our neighbors to the north, San Francisco is #2 and Oakland #10, but the new rankings are proof that you can (and should) walk in LA. Biking around is getting easier too.

Last week, LA City Council adopted a new law the LA Times reports is the “toughest of its kind in the nation” and “makes it a crime for drivers to threaten cyclists verbally or physically, and allows victims of harassment to sue in civil court without waiting for the city to press criminal charges.”

Adopting this law will go a long way to protecting cyclists who are harassed or their lives put at risk by daily interactions with aggressive or negligent drivers. I see this type of harassment every day while riding to work. Some of the harassment is intentional and some isn’t, but I’d like to believe the cars who have slowed or stopped more often for me in recent days may have heard about this new law protecting cyclists.

This law is in addition to the roughly 1,600 miles of bike lanes the city is in the process of installing throughout the city. In some areas, they are creating bike lanes where they did not exist and in other sections, connecting existing lanes to create a continuous path. Some people may consider bike lanes to be purely cosmetic--many cyclists use roads without bike lanes--but I personally believe the lanes serve as a buffer for car drivers to know that they should stay in their lane and I’ll stay in mine and a reminder that I have every right to access the road that they do.

LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa recently developed a new policy to promote cyclist safety, Give Me Three, following a particularly harrowing bike ride he took downtown last year.  He’s also proposing the three feet buffer-zone become California law. It isn’t a novel idea to give cyclists space, but it’s an additional layer of biking rights in a city where car is king and nearly 40 cycling-related deaths have already occurred this year.

And a personal piece of good news for cyclists at NRDC. We’re joining the federal program created by Oregon Representative Earl Blumenauer in The Bicycle Commuter Act, which provides companies with tax breaks “if they offer $20 per month to employees towards the purchase of a bicycle and any repairs or storage costs.”

Yes! I am excited to see my bike repair and maintenance costs reduced by $20 each month. This is a great program that both encourages companies to participate in a healthy program that provides tax breaks and also provides employees who can bike to work with an added financial incentive to get on two wheels.

With these recent cyclist policy changes and walkability studies, our city of cars can become a city of shared roads that allow all forms of transportation to safely commingle. Becoming mobile again and examining our city in a new way is a great alternative to hunkering down in a single occupancy vehicle on the Carmageddon-inspired 405 freeway/parking lot, and avoiding skyrocketing gas bills if you ask me.