SeeCalifornia.com

SUMMER IN THE CITY: Have you noticed more bicycles in your California city or town? While not all places are seeing a surge of interest resulting in a sea of bikes, there is a definite uptick in the use of them in more crowded places such as L.A.’s South Bay where we went on location and photographed this scene on Memorial Weekend 2013.  If you would like to see your city become more active in promoting bike ridership, encourage officials to check out programs in Long Beach, Davis and other cities that approach the topic differently but are on the same page about the benefits of riding bikes. See Bicycle Master Plans of Various CA Cities!

Here are just a few bike efforts:

• Bicycle master plan – Long Beach have a 20 year plan to create friendly roadways for bikes. Funding includes efforts to obtain grants for projects.
• Laws – Where cars are prohibited in cities such as Avalon or the campus of UC Davis,  bicycle ridership increases.  
• Bike valets – numerous cities have created bike valets where guests can park their bicycles free for safe keeping.
• Public relations – Bike days events, bike road striping, social networking and a variety of promotional efforts encourage the public to embrace the bike. 
• Bike paths – with roads and paved paths separated from car traffic the momentum for bike ridership increases.
• Bike incentives – some companies and municipalities offer financial incentives and other perks for employees who ride bikes to work.  Other incentives can include removing bicycle license fees from city laws to help citizens and visitors enjoy bikes at less cost.
• Partnerships – ambitious projects often need the finances that can’t be obtained from one source alone. One such project is  bridge renovation connecting Long Beach with South Bay & L.A. The project will include exclusive bike lanes.