Is Gil Cedillo going to crush the legally approved, officially funded, North Figueroa Street bike lane project?

Maybe. It is hard to tell since phone calls, emails, Tweets, Facebook posts, and several personal visits have yielded 0 responses from anyone on his staff over the course of the last two weeks.

According to one city hall insider, Cedillo is playing a spiteful game with Ed Reyes’ river projects, bike projects, and sidewalk projects in order to crush any “legacy” Reyes or his former staff might cling to. The still-closed Ed P. Reyes Greenway sits nearly finished but still locked up; Cedillo wrested $500,000 from the LA River shortly after taking office and answered no questions about what was going to happen with the money.

According to a local who spoke personally with Cedillo recently, the newly elected councilman is bent on installing bike facilities using local historian Charlie Fisher’s ridiculous “alternative route” (with no less than two wrong-way on a one-way street segments and $500,000 extra for traffic signals – hey, maybe the LA River money is going to pay for that!).

My personal talks with his district office staff in late 2013 revealed both a windshield perspective in his office (i.e. nearly everyone on his staff is a solo car commuter and has trouble seeing LA as a transit user, pedestrian, or cyclist) and an intention to hold community meetings, maybe, in the future on the pre-approved project.

You see, the bike lanes are legally approved by a vote of the city council. The money is allocated for their installation. The LADOT bikeways division is likely still working on the line drawings for it’s road striping crew to follow and then plug into their re-striping calender.

With legal and financial hurdles cleared, the last obstacle is Gil Cedillo’s personal approval – yet multiple calls and inquiries placed to Gil Cedillo’s office or the LADOT bikeways division gets a non-answer about when we can expect the lanes to go in. Any suggestions to add in a suite of curb ramps, continental crosswalks, traffic light signal re-timing, bike parking corrals, and a before and after study of the effects seems to be falling on deaf ears.

Anyone out there in reporter land want to put in a call? Anyone out there in concerned citizen land want to do the same? In the 2013 election at minute 18:15 in this video debate Cedillo stood in support of bike lanes on N. Figueroa Street (thanks Walk Eagle Rock for link!).

You can call Gil Cedillo’s downtown office at 213-473-7001.

You can message Gil Cedillo on his Facebook page.

You can tweet him @gilcedillo and @gilcedillocd1

You can write him a letter:

Councilman Gil Cedillo

200 N. Spring Street, Room 470

Los Angeles, CA 90012

You can even email his staff at

councilmember.cedillo@lacity.org or drop by in person at his offices.

If you can get an answer please publish it it online or email the results to info@flyingpigeon-la.com