You are invited to join the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition on Tuesday, morning for the Playa to Downtown Los Angeles ride with Jared Blumenfeld, West Coast Administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency.
Our ride will include a stop in mid-morning at Lin Howe School, near Downtown Culver City.
The goal of the ride is to draw attention to bicycling as a viable means of sustainable transportation.
This ride will highlight the soon-to-be adopted bike plan by the city of Los Angeles and Culver City's recently adopted bike plan as a step that cities can make toward creating more bike-able communities.
The EPA would like to see more communities adopt comprehensive bike plans and provide the infrastructure needed to encourage more people of all ages to bicycle.
We will be joined on the ride by Mitch Katz, the new (pro-bike) Director of the County Dept. of Health Services, recently transplanted from San Francisco, Barbara Romero, L.A. City Planning Commissioner and Chief of Urban Projects and Watershed Division of the Mountains and Recreation Conservation Authority (MRCA), and many other folks along the way.
Our ride will take us up Ballona Creek where the MRCA and Santa Monica Bay Restoration Commission are doing improvements to enhance the path for both cyclists and pedestrians — and to help clean storm water before it runs into Ballona Creek and the Santa Monica Bay.
MRCA is also working on a Playa to Park trail network that will better connect Ballona Creek with Baldwin Hills and Kenneth Hahn State Park.
Our first stop will be around 10:20 in Culver City at Lin Howe Elementary School to meet with Principal Amy Anderson, kids, parents and members of the Culver City Bicycle Coalition, Culver City staff, and Gayle Haberman from the L.A. County Dept. of Public Health (DPH).
Culver City recently passed its first bike plan, funded by a grant from the Health Dept. and Lin Howe School recently received state Safe Routes to School funding to improve the walking and biking environment around the school, develop encouragement programs, and increase the number of students and families that walk or bicycle to Linwood Howe.
We will ride up Venice Boulevard and weave our way up and across the city, using some of the proposed Neighborhood Network streets, including 4th Street to our second stop in MacArthur Park at 11:45 a.m.
We'll meet with Los Angeles Councilmember Ed Reyes and Diego Cardoso, L.A. City Planning Commissioner and Metro Executive Officer, in MacArthur Park, where we will be joined by volunteers from LACBC's City of Lights program.
A little after 12 noon, we will stop by the new County Cycling Collaborative Bike Wrangler Space on 6th Street to meet with our Bike Wrangler Jonny Green. We will share this innovative program with Mr. Blumenfeld before heading into Downtown to meet with the staff from Mayor Vllaraigosa's office at City Hall.
Here's a list of our stops and times:
Meet: 9:15 a.m. at the bike bridge over Ballona Creek in Playa del Rey
Ride Start Time: 9:45.
1st Stop: 10:20, at Linwood Howe School.
2nd Stop: 11:45, MacArthur Park, northwest corner of 7th and Alvarado.
3rd Stop: 12 noon, CCC Bike Wrangler Space on 6th Street.
Final Stop: 12:45, Los Angeles City Hall.
Ms. Sahli-Wells, representing the Linwood Howe Safe Routes to School Committee and Culver City Bicycle Coalition, may be contacted at meghan@ccnan.org
