Opinion: Cyclists & Drivers: Sharing the road in L.A.

In June 2009, just as L.A.’s bicycling resurgence was beginning, the city of Los Angeles repealed its law requiring cyclists get licenses.

“Are cyclists and drivers sharing the road,” the Times editorial page asked a year ago, “or are they locked in a struggle for street hegemony?”

On the way into work this morning, I spotted (along with, no doubt, several indignant drivers nearby) a cyclist traveling down the wrong way of a street to bypass the traffic choking the two downtown L.A.

A California law requiring drivers to maintain a distance of three feet when passing cyclists on the road goes into effect next week.

As the city of Los Angeles continues its ambitious 35-year project to build out 1,684 miles of bikeways, it is running into resistance in some neighborhoods from politicians, merchants and residents.

Anyone who pedals her bike on the road rightly expects to enjoy the full protection of the law.

Re-imagining the city’s streets to accommodate bikes and cars: It’s the law, but how will it work?

“This is a BFD,” exclaims Charlie Gandy on a Long Beach street corner, but it’s not what you think.

After fits and starts, it looks like Los Angeles County is getting closer to building a bike sharing system.

They have bicycles in Orange County too, you know.

I’ve lived in many parts of New York City, never more than a six-minute walk from a subway stop.

When I look at the renderings of My Figueroa — the city’s first “complete street” designed to equally accommodate drivers, bikers, bus riders and pedestrians — I think, “Now that would be a great walk.”

There will be trade-offs, but the plan to make it bike and pedestrian friendly is worth pursuing.

Any L.A. cyclist can go on about the dangers of riding on the far right of the road closest to the curb.

There’s a joke about a little kid with a trike and a neighbor who professes to like young children and their energetic pedaling up and down the street.

It’s been three months now since the city of Los Angeles, in its wisdom, slapped down the new, controversial bicycle lanes in the 2nd Street tunnel.

Los Angeles actor Michael Shen notes that he and his wife have talked about getting bikes.

“It’s less attractive every year to own an automobile here,” says Echo Park resident Ryan Johnson, looking up from his bike.

When Jennifer Klausner left a dinner party at the home of a longtime friend in leafy Brentwood Glen late one night, she said her goodbyes, pulled on a helmet and clip-clopped to the front door — not in spiky high heels but bike shoes with cleats.

It shouldn’t have come to this, but it did: Some drivers need to be reminded that no cyclist -- anywhere, ever -- deserves to be hit or killed in a car accident.

California Bicycle Coalition Executive Director Dave Snyder looked out at a roomful of about 200 bicyclists and asked them if they knew someone who had been killed or seriously injured while riding.

What do 200 or so bicycle advocates from all corners of California do over the course of a four-day summit in Oakland?

Spend enough time with cyclists and cycling and it’s easy to believe that the world has changed: that the bike has taken over, that pollution is in retreat, that the obesity epidemic has met its match, that the post-World War II thinking about mobility — move fast, in single-occupancy cars — is ancient history.

Hundreds of cyclists and cycling advocates are gathering Thursday in Gov.

So it’s official: The top transportation posts in the nation’s three largest cities are in play.

South Los Angeles is playing a leading role in the city’s movement toward healthier living and complete streets.

As The Times’ Paul Whitefield points out in his Oct. 24 post saying there’s little hope for making L.A.’

There were two applause lines in New York City Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan’s TED talk last month: First, that in six years she “turned cycling into a real transportation option in New York”; and second, that she brought the city its first parking-protected bike lane, with parked cars and a strip of concrete separating cyclists from automobile traffic.

Mayor Eric Garcetti is seeking a new leader for his Department of Transportation in the wake of the departure of Jaime De La Vega.

Bicyclists remind drivers all the time that they have as much right to be on the road as car drivers.

There’s Hollywood, and there’s real life.

Damien Newton, bicyclist, bicycle advocate, founder and editor of Streetsblog LA — and owner of three bikes and one car — listens as I tick off complaints from drivers about bicyclists on the roads of Los Angeles: They blow through stop signs; they ride against traffic; they ride on sidewalks.

In rush-hour traffic, Wilshire Boulevard is not for the driver who is faint of heart.

I’m used to reading nasty messages after I post on The Times Opinion blog.

Michelle Mowery has been working in the intersection -- or maybe in the crosshairs -- between cyclists and drivers for the two decades she has been bicycle coordinator for the city’s Department of Transportation.

Let me be honest.

Wilshire Boulevard on the Westside: I wouldn’t want to ride my bike there.

One of the top complaints of Angelenos in recent years has been the, shall we say, sub-optimal condition of the city’s roads.

Among the virtues of bicycle riding — not burning fossil fuel, not adding to car traffic, enjoying the scenery — is, of course, the health benefit.

Cyclists and drivers don’t get along.

Motor Avenue in Los Angeles went on a “road diet.” I certainly didn’t think it needed to slim down.

It will be even easier for cities to make over their streets to be more friendly to cyclists and pedestrians now that Gov.

The fluorescent green Spring Street bike lane that bicyclists and downtown residents loved but film location scouts and production managers hated has been stripped off the street.

At CicLAvia on Sunday, when the city of Los Angeles closed 7.5 miles of streets to cars and turned the roads into a bike festival, all manner of foot-powered transport was on parade.

Calcutta, India, would seem to have reached some sort of bicycling nirvana.

It’s Walktober, in case you didn’t know, and Oct. 1 is the Walking Day of Action, which means superheroes dressed as lucha libre wrestlers will appear at several Los Angeles street corners at various times all day to protect pedestrians from cars encroaching on crosswalks.

Can Los Angeles be a city for cyclists?

It wasn’t always clear, at least not right away, who was joking and who was serious at a contentious June community showdown over plans to rethink and remake Colorado Boulevard in Eagle Rock.

I hike. Enough said, right?

On Sept. 16, 2014, California will join nearly half the states in requiring cars to keep at least a three-foot distance from bikes that they pass on the road.

When I ride each weekend from my house to Griffith Park, I tend to ride, like most bicyclists, on the right side of the street, next to the parked cars, allowing traffic to pass me on the left.

We’re not first to this party.

Is biking a major shift in the city’s lifestyle, or are the commutes too long and the roads too dangerous?

Rejoice, cyclists! Thanks to Gov.

The fifth time was the charm. Gov.

Will the fifth time be the charm for the three-foot rule? Among the hundreds of bills on Gov.