Bike Traffic: Santa Monica Lifeguards Declare 'SigAlert' After Bike Path Gets 'Worse Than 405' on Fourth of July

By Simone Wilson Tue., Jul. 5 2011 at 5:45 PM

The good old days

Hilarious L.A. oxymoron o' the day: bike traffic!

L.A. County lifeguards, bless their hearts, were faced with said phenomenon while regulating a packed Santa Monica coastline this Fourth of July. Forget Carmageddon, people -- we just survived the Bike-ocalypse.

Apparently, a few thousand jolly Angelenos all got the (same exact) bright idea to take a nice breezy bike ride by the bay on their 78-degree day off. The priceless, all-American result, via City News Service:

Los Angeles County lifeguards declared a SigAlert on the entire beachfront bike path along the Santa Monica Bay Monday, which they said was worse than the San Diego (405) Freeway as bikes moved at 2 miles per hour.

Jesus. If anyone has video -- please. The world needs to witness.

"The bike path is packed with people," Lifeguard Captain Angus Alexander told City News. "It's like the 405 Freeway at the beach -- bumper to bumper."

We hope this doesn't foreshadow the fate of 1,680 miles in new bike lanes the L.A. City Council has promised to build by 2020, but you have to admit, it's kind of a funny thought.

Indeed, in any other situation, drivers passing by on Ocean Avenue yesterday might have gotten some small bitter satisfaction from watching L.A.'s holier-than-thou traffic solutionists become entangled in their own gangly, open-air version of rush hour. But according to Alexander, the Independence Day car situation was equally nightmarish, "with vehicles ... waiting in line, hoping to find an empty parking spot."

In total, 800,000 revelers flocked to the county coastline to rub shoulders with their fellow patriots in the ocean bathwater yesterday.

As in, like, almost a million people.

Yet as awful as that sounds, we really wish we'd been there -- if only for one glimpse of Bike-ocalypse. Video. Please. We beg.

[@simone_electra/swilson@laweekly.com]

Tags:

bike lanes, bike path, bike traffic, Carmageddon, Fourth of July, gridlock, lifeguards, Santa Monica, the 405

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ShakinBoots

"...bitter satisfaction watching LA's holier-than-thou traffic solutionists...entangled in their own traffic jam"

If Simone wasn't so busy trying to be snarky, she'd see the bigger picture here. There are PLENTY of people in and around LA who WANT to ride their bikes. LA has too few safe places for people to ride. A traffic jam on the bike path has been building for a very long time. Uninformed people like Simone have just been too clueless to know or see it.

WE NEED MORE BIKE PATHS, PERIOD.

Another important thing to note is that clueless pedestrians are cluttering up the beach path. Pedestrians ignore the adjacent ped path and choose to put themselves, THEIR KIDS, cyclists (and other fast moving traffic) in harms way by walking and standing on the bike path and by not looking before crossing the path. They let their kids run right on to the path in front of fast moving bikes/skaters etc. It's STUPID and dangerous! Do they and their kids obliviously stroll on busy streets too?

Pedestrians, PLEASE use the adjacent pedestrian paths. They are RIGHT in front of you, 2 feet off the bike path.

Spiffy Amblyopia

If drivers were passing on Ocean Ave then the bikes could also have been on that road passing other bicycles that were on the path. So it seems the bicycles were going slow by choice, something you don't see automobiles doing a lot of.

angle

1. Why is "bike traffic" an oxymoron? 2. Chalk this incident up to the simple fact that there's not enough publicly available recreational opportunities in LA. 3. Condescending much?