Last week, Planning Commission Chair Jim Ries made good on his recent promise to bring in a noteworthy guest speaker to talk bikes. Renowned bicycling advocate and planner Charlie Gandy, currently the Long Beach mobility coordinator, was welcomed as a guest speaker before the commission on Wednesday to inform the continuing discussion on Santa Monica's pending Bicycle Action Plan.

Gandy gave an inspirational talk about the rapid progress Long Beach has made in trying new street markings, configurations and infrastructure for bicycling. His presentation was dotted with humorous moments, always a pleasant respite in what can be very dry and wonky discussions.

More importantly, Gandy highlighted a few innovations happening in Long Beach besides the usual bike lane, such as the sharrows on Second St. in Belmont Shore, which have been enhanced with green striping. While sharrows are a state-approved street-marking design intended to encourage cyclists to take a safe lane position outside of the so-called door zone, including the green striping is not in the state and federal traffic manuals.

Gandy says it was not that difficult to get unconventional projects approved by higher agencies, because they are eager to study the results of such experiments. Santa Monica has its own more conventional sharrows on a small stretch of 14th St., north of Arizona.

A recently completed facility Gandy was quite proud of, and is to my knowledge a first for Southern California, is their Bicycle Boulevard, which connects to two major schools. This was funded primarily through federal safe routes to school grants. Bicycle boulevards are generally low-traffic-volume residential streets, where additional treatments that calm traffic speed, and create a street environment that is safer and more inviting for cyclists and pedestrians. A number of roundabouts were implemented along the corridor as part of this strategy. Other ambitious and innovative projects have already had funding secured and will begin construction soon.

Also stressed during the presentation was the importance of education efforts that go beyond the infrastructure, getting traffic rules and bike safety taught in schools, as well as offering classes for adult education and educating staff in various city departments.

Not everything has gone exactly as planned in Long Beach, though—such as the recent controversy over bike registration. Gandy was aware of the arcane and poorly implemented program, similar to the one soon to be reformed in Santa Monica, but he did not initially consider it a priority to fix it. The issue blew up when Long Beach Police overreacted and began confiscating bikes and giving out fines that beyond the California legal limit for penalties. Their council is set to replace or get rid of the law soon.

Seeking lessons for Santa Monica, the commissioners and members of the public had numerous questions for Gandy. Some of them focused on dealing with pushback from those skeptical of bike improvements. Gandy replied with some of their approaches to public outreach and emphasized that he has been able to get things done quickly because of the unanimous support of the Long Beach city council, including its more conservative members. Some members who were initially more skeptical were won over by the fact that what’s good for bicyclists can also be good for business, by allowing more locals to easily flow through their business districts, and that the costs for moving traffic by bike are significantly less than expanding capacity for cars.

Santa Monica is also a place where bicycling is on the rise, helped in part by innovative programs of our own, such as our wildly successful bike-valet program for special events and the farmers market. In the world of on-street infrastructure for bike routes, however, Santa Monica has stagnated in recent years. Many of the design standards from 1995 are showing their age, and significant gaps still exist in the network.

I think the biggest lesson for Santa Monica is the importance of public outreach and building the political will to try new things. Kevin McKeown, a long-time advocate for bicycling in Santa Monica, has always been a safe vote for bikes on the city council, but I don’t think we are quite yet at the level of consensus that had been reached in Long Beach.

Unanimous council support has given Gandy the liberty to run with projects and move fast, while change for bicycling in Santa Monica has proceeded quite slowly. That delay was emphasized by Recreation & Parks Commissioner Phil Brock, who has advocated for simple improvements to the beach bike path that have languished for years.

It is my hope that seeing another city so close to home being an innovator for bikeable streets in Southern California sparks a more competitive drive in Santa Monica to lead as well. Our ideal weather, terrain and scale, well-suited for bicycling, really gives us the potential to become a model city for incorporating bicycling into local transportation. That goal meshes perfectly with our sustainability aspirations and our LUCE plan. We’ll see if we are up to the challenge.