City Summit: How Can We Improve Biking in Los Angeles?

For the novice or casual bike-rider, the sprawling streets of Los Angeles present a daunting if not downright terrifying landscape: Cars dominate the routinely gridlocked roadways, drivers rarely yield to cyclists, and some of city's few existing bike lanes disappear without notice. Hence the pervasive narrative that you can't live in Southern California without a car.

But Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa notes, "with its flat landscape and enviable climate, Los Angeles should be a haven for cyclists."

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"Should," you might be saying, is the operative word.

That's why the mayor's office is holding the City of Los Angeles Bike Summit. On August 16, at the MTA Board Room, Mayor Villaraigosa will meet with community members to discuss making biking "safer, easier, and more enjoyable" in the city. If you have a question you want the mayor to address, you can submit it here. You can also vote on which questions you think the mayor should answer; he'll tackle the most popular ones.

Sounds like a great step toward improving biking here in the Southland—though if Villaraigosa wants to rip the title of World's Bikingest Mayor from Boris Johnson, he better start stopping crime on his bike.

Photo by Joe Linton / L.A. Eco-Village