In February, the electronic bike counter located at Main Street just south of where it intersects with Colorado Avenue, stopped working; but as first noted by Cynthia Rose of Santa Monica Spoke the bike counter is back up and running. First installed just south of where Main Street intersects with Colorado Avenue, the counter displays the number of riders who have ridden by that day as well as the cumulative number of riders for the year.
Similar bike counters have already been installed in the most bike-friendly cities in North America, including San Francisco, Portland, Oregon, and Montreal, Canada. Bike counters are more widely used in European cities, like Copenhagen, where biking is a more common-place mode of transportation.
It’s certainly good news that the bike counter is up and running again, but it comes at a time when expansion of the city’s Bike Action Plan is uncertain…to say nothing of basic repairs and maintenance. In the city’s budget that begins on July 1, funding for bicycle and pedestrian safety improvements and repair and maintenance were slashed. An attempt by Councilmember Jesse Zwick to place a measure on the ballot that would have helped backfill those funds was blocked by Mayor Phil Brock, Vice-Mayor Lana Negrete, and Councilmembers Oscar de la Torre and Christine Parra.
For its part, the city announced a list of safety and road improvement projects that are underway or are about to be underway in the city in its monthly newsletter. These projects include safety enhancements at freeway over crossings, a bike lane alignment along 14th Street at Olympic Boulevard, and new advanced bicycle boxes and lane allocations along Ocean Park Boulevard at Lincoln Boulevard. At this moment, it’s doubtful that such a list of projects will be announced next year at this time.
