Photo by Lucyrk in LA via LAist Featured Photos on Flickr
As city staff gears up for a series of public meetings seeking input on the draft master bicycle plan for Los Angeles, cyclists are coming together, advocating for the process to be extended into 2010.
"The plan is 6 months late, and we only have six weeks to submit comments?" noted Dr. Alex Thompson on his bicycle blog the day it was released. "That may seem like a lot of time, but consider that the plan is 212 pages, with 351 pages of appendices."
The public review/comment period was announced on the evening of September 24th with the last day to submit comments on November 6th.
Now the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition is asking cyclists to speak up about that very issue. "LA City is offering a very limited amount of time for the public to review and comment on the LA Bike Plan draft," their e-mail newsletter said today. "The current deadline is November 6. That does not leave the public, the Neighborhood Councils and other organizations enough time to thoroughly review the draft and to submit comments."
Besides the small time frame for review and public comments, bicycle writers have taken aim at the plan's merits. Writing at Streesblog, Activist Stephen Box said that "LA's Draft Bike Plan is thin on content of substance, is the product of an ongoing flawed process, and avoids at all turns any attempt to position itself as a document of change with a real plan for implementation."
Also writing in at Streetsblog is Joe Linton, who calls the plan "non-committal, sloppy and perhaps illegal."
