These are bike routes?
So, you're asking, what exactly do these photos show?
The top one was taken on Riverside Drive this morning. I snapped the photo after passing a couple of those little green signs saying this stretch of Riverside was a bike route (one of those signs is under the pedestrian sign). Really?, I asked myself, as I watched surrounding traffic whip by at 50 mph. The Metro bike map for Los Angeles County designates it a class III bike route, which means it's a route that, according to planners, is safe for bike riding.
The bottom photo comes from the 23 Freeway in Ventura County, taken by regular reader Chris Bucka, who says he rarely sees cyclists using the bike lane. Gee, I wonder why. It's actually a short lane, intended to connect Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley and Moorpark.
Although bike riding is allowed on some freeways in California -- mostly in rural areas -- such lanes occasionally show up in more populated regions. There's also a bike lane along parts of the 101 Freeway between Ventura and Santa Barbara. The "Get There by Bike" section of the Ventura County Transportation Commission's website, by the way, has a "coming soon" label, and when I clicked on the bike map link, I got a "page not found."
UPDATE, 5:10 p.m.: I just got off the phone with Steve DeGeorge, the director of planning for the Ventura County Transportation Commission. He said that the Commission is working on a new bike map and that an effort to use Google maps fell apart because of a software bug that doesn't allow them to properly draw where bike routes are. The present map was hacked into, he said, and they could no longer leave it posted on the site.
As for the issue of bike routes along freeways, DeGeorge agreed that it was far from ideal, but in both cases cited above putting the bike route along the freeway was the only way to offer connectivity for cyclists trying to get around the county. And, he said, that separating the bike path from the freeway involves a lot of factors, including money.
"There are a bunch of things that go into it -- not only do you have to build it, you have to maintain it and sweep it every so often and build it wide enough to be swept," DeGeorge said. "So, all things considered, it was either put it on the freeway or have no alternative way around."
There is a chance, however, that part of a redesign of the 101 could include a separate bike path. But the short stretch of bike path on the 23 freeway is going to stay in place because there's no other way for cyclists to climb the Norwegian grade between Thousand Oaks and Moopark.
top photo: Steve Hymon Los Angeles Times
bottom photo: Chris Bucka
