Did my first long bike ride in a while over the weekend
On Saturday, I struck out across the city for my first long bike ride in a while. I've been cooped up at home hitting deadlines for a while, and I barely biked at all this fall or winter. I gotta get back out there!
I took the train from west LA to Pasadena and exited at Lake station on the A line, which is one of those stations that plays a constant loop of possibly procedurally-generated classical music to drive unhoused people away. The volume is a lot quieter now than it used to be when the program launched... but when you emerge from the train onto one of the small number of stations that are playing this music, it remains a very surreal experience.
I then biked up to the north end of Wilson Dr and recorded that street end to end for my YouTube street recordings project. This is considered a "greenway" by the city of Pasadena, but it has practically no bike infrastructure beyond sharrows, a few plastic bollards near intersections, and a few blocks of painted lane at the south end. In fact, you can see the entirety of their "greenway" plans for Wilson from 2021 on this PDF. See all those "install D11-1" markers? That's not infrastructure - that's just a "bike route" sign.
Dire! These signs are so tiny and helpless that they genuinely upset me, these days. In LA, you tend to see a lot of them in places that the city claims are bike routes, but which have experienced practically zero investment. I'm not sure which of the more physical improvements on this PDF have been installed yet - I'll have to compare the plans to the video I recorded.
I've been told that the city of Pasadena prefers to do this kind of minor tweaking on out-of-the-way residential streets than to put in a proper bike lane in a "destination" area like N Lake Ave. This is a common problem in cities around the LA area - they will refuse to pedestrianize or traffic-calm destination areas, preferring to prioritize cut-through drivers or drivers who seek parking on the main drag. In Culver City, we used to have more traffic calming in our pedestrian-heavy downtown, and a conservative majority ripped it out. Pasadena, on the other hand, has opted for this limp parallel "greenway" implementation three streets over from the denser north-south road where the Metro station is. The only way for me to get to Wilson via "bike roads" required me to bike on the sidewalk along Maple, which is a one-way frontage road running east-to-west.
Personally, I think bike infrastructure should be on the main drag. I think it's important for bike advocates to demand that we have safe places to ride in the actual areas where our destinations are located. People are going to bike on Lake anyway, because that is where their destinations are! Nobody has a destination on Wilson besides the people who live there. (And not a ton of people live there. Most of that street is single-family homes.)
After completing Wilson, I then cut across South Pasadena to Arroyo Seco bike path, which I've never actually ridden on before. (I did, however, bike on the freeway during the Arroyo Fest 2023.
I was shocked and pleased to learn that the Arroyo Seco path is basically at water level currently. The paved area intended for bikes is right down at the bottom of the concrete-lined river channel, and at times is only three or so inches above water level. There was even a moment when I had to navigate around a small eddy pool that was actually flowing over the bike path. We've had a lot of rain recently, which probably contributes, but it felt like riding straight down on the shore of a river. Pretty crazy!
I was pleased against my better judgement, though. The fact that it's practically at water level means that it's far too low. It's much closer to the water than any of the other river bike paths I've been on in this area, which possibly makes it less reliable to people who want to use it for commuting during the winter and spring.
I recorded that one end to end too. It's extremely short and is the best way to get from the Pasadena area towards downtown LA. After the bike path, I took Figueroa to Chinatown station and headed home.
Then, when I got home, I learned that I'd recorded this stuff in the wrong mode! The footage is too bumpy, so I will have to go back and do it all again sometime soon. Oh well! At least it's a nice ride.
Biking around LA is always an adventure. Our fucked up regional structure means that every few miles of sprawl, you'll stumble into a politically independent city with its own goals and unique levels of investment in ped and bike safety. There is always something political to see in the environment around you... when you're on a bike, it's much harder to ignore the decisions that leaders are making about the value of your life.