Unfortunately, you are dealing with a bureaucracy that has probably made the decision what to paint on the ground when they made the plans to repave the street. That happened probably months ago
From talking to the Chief Engineer from Street Maintenance, they make the plans for how the street is to be designed (i.e. lanes, parking, bike lanes) before or concurrent with the plans for the repaving. He told me the best thing to do to get bike lane on the street is to find out when the plans for repaving our going to happen(which is about 3 to 6 to 12 months prior if I remember correctly). When you find out when and where the repaving is going to happen, then start the campaign to get the bike lane paint on the street with the neighborhood council, your council members office, the mayors office. Make the noise and the machine will respond with some oil for your squeak or some paint for your lane.
It might be too late. The plans on how to paint the repaved the streets are most likely already decided.
You can try to call the council member in that districts office anyway and see what happens. Try the mayor too.
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When I talked with the Chief Engineer from Street Maintenance, in roundabout way he spelled out a plan to push for Bike Lanes on all the repaved streets.
1st) Find out way in advanced when the street is going to be repaved. (I'm sure with a few calls with his office you can find out advanced notice) Not this
Roadwork in Progress
but the schedule way in advance. 3-6-12 months head of the actual work
2nd) Create a usergroup of concern cyclist (residence/citizens) of people who will lobby to get the lanes painted. You can also make the announcement for lobbying plans on here and other local bicycle forums. Communicate to people who are going to help in the lobbying however you can.
3rd.) Find the neighbor council in the areas that are going to repaved. Go to the neighborhood council meeting bring up the repaving plans and asked for the neighborhood council's support to have the city paint bike lanes. Have your group or whoever you can get involved with the lobbying to do the same with neighborhood council. The more people, the more of an impact.
4th) Call the city council members office in that district. Notify them of the repaving and tell them it would be a great idea to paint bike lanes. Have everybody who is willing to lobby do the same. They will have a assistant to the council member who handles this issue. Find out that persons name and number. Notify your lobby/usergroup to contact this person regarding the issue
You might want to do the same with the mayors office. If you got the neighborhood council on board make sure you let the council members and mayors office know they support the bike lanes.
5th) When the repaved streets gets painted with bike lanes, make sure to thank everybody you lobbied. You will end up building a positive relationship with them.
This sounds like more work then it actually is. The hardiest part will be getting to neighborhood council meetings. These are fun though. It is a great social experience and you get to see who is really serious in this community about making change to make paint on the street happen.
The emails and phone calls only take a few minute.
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I never did any of this work because I really am not a fan of bicycle lanes, so my heart to do this was never really into it. I just went with Roadblock and lobbied for the bike lanes on Reseda Blvd. because I love politics, lobby and steering government action,plus the boss asked me.
Now the boss has made a request to donate to cover the cost of the band width of my long winded answer. Won't you help him out, won't you help the website out?
DONATE TODAY!
sexy03.4.10 - 1:43 am
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and you may be wondering why you can't just call tomorrow and next week they just changed the plans and add painted bike lanes on the street(if they haven't planned for that already)???
There are laws and safety issues that have to be taken into consideration. How wide the car lanes are, parking on the street or not, left hand turn lanes, enough room for two lanes and bicycle lane, or just one and bicycle lane or no parking at all to accommodate the said plan. Then they have to have it reviewed and approved. Then they send out the work orders to the proper channels and the workers have a set plan to paint the street a certain way. It would be difficult to change all of that planning over night.
sexy03.4.10 - 1:55 am
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Ridazz Roulette!
