Los Angeles Lives by Car, but Learns to Embrace Bikes

By ADAM NAGOURNEY
Published in the New York Times
May 19, 2012

…Bicycling [in Los Angeles] is no longer the purview of downtown messengers or kamikaze daredevils. Its advocates include hipsters who frequent the bicycle repair cooperative known as the Bicycle Kitchen (which, experiencing growing pains, is about to move to bigger quarters) and middle-class riders who hum along a bike path on the beach in Venice and Santa Monica. There are biker-commuters who like to shock people by boasting that they do not own a car. And the mayor, Antonio R. Villaraigosa, who broke his elbow in a bike accident involving a taxicab and has since become one of cycling’s biggest cheerleaders, is intent on resurrecting a plan that he acknowledged had been “kind of languishing a bit.”

“There was not a biking network when I was there,” said Janette Sadik-Khan, who attended Occidental College here in the late 1970s and today is New York City’s transportation commissioner, leading the way in expanding a network of bicycle lanes. “You are beginning to see the bones of one emerging now, and it’s very exciting.”

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