The framework for a bike system is already spelled out in our Bike Master Plan, which the City Council re-adopted just two years ago in 2010. It envisioned a bike route system that would

connect the major commercial, recreational, educational and employment facilities in the City by the shortest safest possible routes…These bikeway facilities would serve the interests of both children and adults, so that the system could serve as alternative transportation to parks, schools, shopping areas, etc.

The Traffic & Parking Commission could have referenced these city documents when discussing bike routes and treatments like lanes, sharrows, and signage, but instead of reviewing plans and readily available studies and reports, our commission preferred to blame cyclists for the harm visited upon them by motorists.

In arguing against prevailing mobility philosophy emanating from Washington and Sacramento these days (to say nothing of the public testimony from cyclists), three of five commissioners said that roads were for motoring. After all, isn’t the evidence plain? Motorists are the overwhelming majority on our roads, they reasoned. Not withstanding the participation of about forty cyclists in the Bike Route Pilot process, why invest too much in the minority of road users?

Not surprisingly for the three-member commission majority, cycling isn’t on the to-do list. Commissioner Andy Licht loves cyclists – heck, even his kids ride to school – but that’s no reason to make streets more safe and inviting. His kids ride on the sidewalk, he said, and that was just fine to him. To provide safety treatments on a street like Beverly Drive is only to invite that “false sense of security.”

Our commission’s Chair, Julie Steinberg, agreed. She drives a car that’s just too big for her to see a cyclist behind her when she’s pulling out of a space on Beverly Drive. That was apparently sufficient justification to keep sharrows off that corridor. You can’t fault her reasoning given that the windshield frames her view. Doesn’t everybody drive a car with blind spots large enough to block the view of cyclists?

If that’s the prevailing feeling, and if policymakers can’t be shamed into doing so little as to add a sharrow to Beverly Drive, then it’s time to make Beverly Drive into a pedestrian mall.

We’re Not a Special Interest Group

If motorists are the majority and in Beverly Hills the majority rules, does that make cyclists simply another ‘special interest’ beggaring budget-busting giveaways? We don’t think twice about lane striping and signals for motor traffic, do we? Or paying our parking meter collections contractor almost a quarter on every credit card dollar we collect simply to provide cheap curbside parking? Or digging ourselves $20 million into a hole to support public car garages? Why are cyclists viewed as looking for a handout when we demand safer streets?

Our commission majority seems to have fallen into the ‘zero-sum’ trap of seeing our needs come at the expense of motorists. We want to remind them that it is our city’s responsibility to create roads that facilitate safe travel for road users – including cyclists. Heck, even if we’re a special interest bellying up to City Hall, that’s not unfamiliar to policymakers here: every day special interests leave our City Hall trough well-fed.

Indeed many other worthy causes must out-merit $200 bike racks because we simply can’t get one installed anywhere in the city. Yes, cyclists have come hat-in-hand to Beverly Hills for bike racks time and again, but the prospect of ever seeing one – even a single one! – recedes like the sunset. Santa Monica alone has installed hundreds, and West Hollywood has apportioned so much money for racks that we’ll see them soon sprout like weeds. But not in Beverly Hills.

It’s About Safety, Right?

What we learned from the commission’s May 9th discussion about the Bike Route Pilot program is that gut talk and political calculation can and will substitute for a real safety discussion in Beverly Hills any day.

For example, the three majority commissioners (Steinberg, Licht and Friedman) agreed that enforcement of the law as it applies to cyclists was key. To not crack down would be to further encourage crazy cyclists who roll through stop signs and cause all kinds of mayhem on Beverly Hills streets, they suggested.

Of course our commissioners never discussed how driver carelessness, recklessness, and even negligence contributes to bike-involved injury collisions. Every five minutes we see drivers running red lights at many intersections on Wilshire Boulevard. But who are we to let evidence get in the way of the commissioners’ gut feeling?

We saw it play out with the sharrow (shared-lane marking), the most modest safety step a locality can take. The sharrow is endorsed by the federal Department of Transportation and is in use by cities all across the region. But to this commission they are a foreign symbol that could give our motorists a brain aneurysm. Indeed Beverly Hills has yet to lay one down, and why would we? According to this commission, the safety feature actually makes roads less safe because it offers cyclists a “false sense of security.” (There exists no evidence whatsoever to support that conclusion.)

The Short End of a Bad Bargain

Every cyclist who’s been hit by a motorist knows too well that we bear about 100% of the risk from a collision. The costs that include medical expenses, lost wages, and sometimes loss of limb or life. Bicyclists severely injured may never want to ride again. That’s our side of a bad bargain. Motorists who simply write a check for insurance are insulated from responsibility except in the most egregious of cases. We must re-negotiate that arrangement to recognize that we’re in the twenty-first century and mobility is more than motoring.

The road isn’t only for motorists, as some of our commissioners evidently believe. It is for pedestrians and cyclists too. Not only by law but in practice too. Even in Beverly Hills.

Fortunately I wasn’t seriously injured when I was broadsided by a SUV. But seeing two tons of metal bear down on twenty pounds of bike with no protection whatsoever was a reminder that we need roads that care for very mortal human beings on bikes. It is not enough to send us out there with a slap on the back like when we were kids. Roads are more crowded than ever and we have measures at our disposal to make our streets safe. If we choose to use them.