I went to last night’s Bike Metro Roundtable because I’m easily excitable over the future of cycling. This public event is filled with updates of the different projects from Metro that we’ll be seeing as soon as this year. Plus I got a free t-shirt!

As we all know, Metro covers the entire county, but Mr. CiclaValley is all ears because we’re all in the same gang. Except Kool. I don’t think he was part. Here are some notes from the meeting:

Bike Share is moving forward. A Request for Proposal for a downtown system went out last December and the Board will make their decision in June. The goal is to place 65 stations with 1,000 bikes. This will mean I don’t have to lug my forty pound bike downtown anymore.

Making their appearance soon will be Bike Hubs across the region, including El Monte(this summer), Hollywood & Vine(late this year), Culver City(early 2016), Union Station and North Hollywood. These stations will provide high capacity, patrolled facilities along with bike repair. The only part that stinks about them is no showers. I’m not afraid to make these types of jokes.

Bike Week starts May 10 th . There are too many events to list, but the highlights are a Bike Panel(subject matter still TBA), a Bike Art Show to take place during the whole month at Caltrans and a showing of the Ghost Bike Documentary. The week will culminate with a big event that Friday at Union Station, which ironically, I won’t bring my bike.

. There are too many events to list, but the highlights are a Bike Panel(subject matter still TBA), a Bike Art Show to take place during the whole month at Caltrans and a showing of the Ghost Bike Documentary. The week will culminate with a big event that Friday at Union Station, which ironically, I won’t bring my bike. The biggest talking point was the complete streets presentation. I’ll skip the part about defining what it is, but the biggest take away is that by 2017, all jurisdictions must adopt a complete streets policy to be available for funding.

This set of a line of questioning as Kevin Burton of the WeHo Bicycle Coalition brought up the proposal for East Valley Transit Corridor(that’s us!) that is being studied for Van Nuys Blvd. As it stands, there is no plan to add bike lanes along with rapid transit, even though they are slated in the city’s master plan. Dennis Hindman of Toluca Lake brought up how the corridor is the most dense in the valley and in turn, Laura Cornejo of Metro replied that there were internal discussions taking place. If you want to hear more, come to the Move LA Town Hall on Feb 26 th about the Future of Transportation in the Valley.

on Feb 26 about the Future of Transportation in the Valley. Of other news, Metro is bringing in 78 new light rail cars, with testing already taking place along the Green Line. While they may not increase bike capacity over their predecessors, they have a really cool name I tried pronouncing in my head all night. Kinkisharyo P3010! I now have a name for my next child!

New triple bike racks are being installed on roughly 900 new buses with Metro possibly buying another 350. The bike racks can only go on 40’ buses, but older ones of that length can also be retrofitted. The Orange Line buses are also allowed to carry a trio of bicycli despite the buses length, because they operate along a dedicated busway. Dennis brought up the poor design of some of these racks. Let’s just hope the Orange Line goes rail at some point.

Lastly, the new bike locker parking program was covered, which is pretty much the old program, just run in house now. The leases are still six months, but there will be an app and required online registration. And that they’re still grey and you may not know what they are.

All in all, the meeting was well attended with the next to be scheduled during the third week of June. I believe I was the only nerd to bring his bike helmet in and if that wasn’t enough, I left my gopro up on top. I’d like to thank everyone for welcoming be in