RE: "Biking works for local trips but L.A. is too spread out for this to work. "

On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 9:00 PM, Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Biking: If Portland can do it, why can't L.A. can ...":

L.A. is nearly 4 times the size of Portland and with a larger commuter work force. Biking works for local trips but L.A. is too spread out for this to work.



Posted by Anonymous to L.A. traffic sucks: Let's fix it! at 7:00 PM

nando replies:

See, this is the problem. If you look at everything from an "all-or-nothing,""black-and-white," "the glass-is-half-full-or-half-empty" perspective, then you'll miss the "something's," the "shades of grey," and the "bottles" from which you could "fill that glass"!

Extreme situations call for extreme solutions or any solution that helps. In such a situation, everything and anything helps; every little bit helps. Obviously, this reader hasn't read the blog. The blog calls for a mosaic of solutions, because, obviously, NO one single solution will ever work or will ever be implemented.

No one is suggesting that you bike from Santa Monica to Hollywood. But if I remember right, the MTA Rapid Red buses do have bike racks on front. You could actually load up your bike onto the bus on the bike rack, ride all the way to wherever the Rapis Bus (or any other bus) takes you, and then bike from there to wherever you need to go. It is perfectly do-able! I myself did it in Austin. And people are actually doing it in L.A.

Also, this kind of "solution" will only work, obviously, at the local level. Santa Monica could have its own Portland-like (or Paris-like) biking program. Westwood should have its own. Beverly Hills should have its own. West Hollywood its own, and so on and so forth... Thinking city-wide and in centralized, LA-mandated terms, will, of course, defeat any such idea. The best ideas start locally and spread out as word-of-mouth and benefits make the rounds.

This is the kind of defeatist mentality ("Biking works for local trips but L.A. is too spread out for this to work. ") that keeps any solution or solutions from being tried or implemented.

Back in the 16th century, the Spanish conquistadores actually thought that California was an island! One of the early Spanish explorers started the idea and it just got perpetuated until they discovered that, hey, it wasn't true at all. Will Durant once wrote that "everything is impossible until it is done" (Obama anybody?). So don't ever say that "L.A. is too [whatever] for this to work. " Try it. Give it a real good try. And then go from there.

I think this whole nation (especially under this new visionary Kennedy-like administration) and this whole world are going to be moving in that direction: the direction of trying what has never been tried before, the direction of finding solutions to problems that had never thought possible before. That's the only way this earth will be able to support a 6 billion or a 10 billion or a who-knows-how-many billion population world that owns who knows how many millions or billions of automobiles.

Think about it.