Today, we have a special guest post from LADOT General Manager Jaime de la Vega:

The Los Angeles Department of Transportation is pleased to report that fiscal year 2011-2012 (ending June 30, 2012) was our best year ever for bicycles in the City of Los Angeles.

Can the former department of automobiles really help the city of Angels evolve into the type of metropolis that embraces cyclists, pedestrians, and transit?

We think the answer is an unequivocal “yes”.

LADOT is committed to making Los Angeles a place where cyclists are safe and city streets make room for bicycles.

The city’s adopted bicycle plan and five year implementation strategy (PDF link) call for the implementation of “at least 200 miles of bikeways every five years” (emphasis added), which is an average of 40 miles per year.

The bike plan defines a bikeway as “[a] generic term for any road, street, path or way that in some manner is specifically designed for bicycle travel, regardless of whether such facilities are designated for the exclusive use of bicycles or are to be shared with other transportation modes.”

For FY 2012, LADOT successfully delivered 76 miles of new bikeways. This consisted of 51 miles of on-street bike lanes, 21 miles of sharrow-ed routes (bike routes with shared lane markings), and a 4-mile bike path as part of the Metro Orange Line extension.

This puts us well ahead of schedule (+90%) vis-a-vis the five-year plan.

The slide show below illustrates the progress LADOT has made since 2005, especially during the last year.

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Bikeways by Year of Installation (PDF link)

We are now beginning to see different bikeways connect together to form an emerging bicycle network.

LADOT also advanced other bike-friendly initiatives:

We partnered with CicLAvia on two awesome events that opened the city’s streets to cyclists and pedestrians (and we want to do more!)

We installed new bike corrals in place of on-street parking

We installed 601 new bicycle racks

We experimented with two different types of green bike lane markings in downtown Los Angeles and Boyle Heights, and

We specified 3-bike racks on all LADOT Commuter Express buses, which are now in service

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the City Council continue to be strong advocates for the city’s bicycle program, providing the support and funding necessary for implementation.

Finally, I want to acknowledge the LADOT leaders (noted below) and their staff who made it all happen: Selwyn Hollins, Executive Officer, Operations; Zaki Mustafa, Executive Officer, Project Delivery; the Bicycle Program (Kang Hu, Paul Meshkin, & Michelle Mowery); the Design Division (Verej Janoyan & Tim Conger); and the Field Operations Division (Scott Morrill & Willie Navarro).

We hope that the change at LADOT has been noted positively in the bicycling community and we are committed to continuing this progress in fiscal year 2012-2013.