Knabe: no tolerance for bumpy bike trails!

I posted Monday morning about the cracked and bumpy coastal bike path through Marina del Rey and pointed out that it was in the district overseen by County Supervisor Don Knabe.

Here's the latest from Knabe spokesman David Sommers, who e-mailed me last night:

Here is an update on what the County accomplished today in order to immediately address the conditions at the stretch of the bike path you mentioned in your blog entry this morning.

Right after we contacted them, the Department of Public Works (DPW) reported they sent a crew out to put a temporary asphalt patch on the impacted area. DPW will be working to make a more permanent repair to the area and to other adjacent sections of the bike path and parking lots.

DPW also reported that this area is one of five spots they had previously identified to repair, slurry and repaint. Those repairs were scheduled to happen in approximately 3-4 months.

As I mentioned to you in a separate e-mail this morning, I think it’s important to point out the ongoing work the County is doing to improve and maintain the entire bike path network along the coast. The larger Marvin Braude South Bay Bike Trail is over 20 miles long and passes through more than half a dozen cities.

Because much of it is built directly on the sand, it requires more significant upkeep, repairs and engineering than a normal bike path. Much of the path is quite deep in order to stabilize it in the sand. The County is constantly working to keep it free from sand and debris, reconstruct it where needed, or slurry and crack seal it where needed.

Supervisor Knabe is committed to ensuring the Bike Path is open and safe for both recreation users and bicycle commuters. In fact, in May of this year, he dedicated $5 million in Fourth District Capital Improvement funds to refurbish or completely rebuild over 21,000 feet, or four miles of the bike path. This is mainly concentrated around Playa del Rey and Calle Miramar near Torrance State Beach.

Additionally, in March of this year, the County completed the renovation of another stretch of the bike path in Playa del Rey between 62nd Avenue and Playa del Rey.

Please let me know if you need any further information from me.

As always, the Bottleneck Blog is glad to be of service. If there is a terrible pothole in your neighborhood, e-mail me a with a good photo and contact number.

--Steve Hymon

photo: Richard Hartog /LA Times

Comments

[bikinginla]

I rode that very section of the bike path today after taking the Marvin Braude bike path down to the South Bay and back. Yes, it has been patched, albeit with the care usually used to patch potholes -- just dump a little hot asphalt into the hole, and call it a day. It may be bumpy, but at least it won't catch any tires now.

On the other hand, the entire section along Dockweiler Beach above and below LAX is in pretty much the same condition.

There's really no excuse to allow what should be one of L.A.'s crown jewels to be in this condition. At least the north end along Will Rogers State Beach has finally been repaved.

[calwatch]

The funny thing is that the rotten bike trail wasn't actually THAT rotten (look at where the arrows are, which is the bike trail). From a Google aerial shot you can see that the area to the right of the yellow dashes is an access road to a parking lot, which is maintained by the county Beaches and Harbors department. Seriously, if it was DPW's problem, they would get a bag of cold mix asphalt and a shovel and toss it in there. I've seen guys come out on their days off to fill potholes, and I've run into the occasional truck driving at 10 mph down the bike lanes to inspect the bikeway's condition (and shoo away homeless who live under the bridges). It takes maybe 10 minutes to clamp it down with cold asphalt, but with the County bureaucracy being so big, it is sometimes difficult to guess the right department.

[Chunkdog]

There was a power outage in Redondo Beach back in April. SC Edison had to tear up part of the bike path along Catalina Avenue to repair the power issue. As of today, 10/1/08, the path has not been re-surfaced.

[Ken Alpern]

Good for you, Steve, for pointing this out, and good for Supervisor Knabe for taking action! I appreciate both your blog for being an ombudsman of sorts for issues such as this as well as a growing governmental understanding that this is intolerable.

It's refreshing to know that the DPW was on its way to fixing this, anyhow, but it's yet another reason why Prop. R is needed to pass--because the county MUST rely on itself to fund transportation/infrastructure while the state and the feds are tied up (perhaps inappropriately, but it's our reality) with other priorities.

This crack in the bikeway is just a small representative example of what our local infrastructure needs are!