Students equipped to better bike safety
Imagine three whole 24-hour days inside a car. Then repeat. Every year. Sound grim? Fortunately, you are not alone. Unfortunately, Los Angeles residents suffer an average of 72 annual hours of delay when traveling during peak hours, which puts us at No. 1 in the nation for traffic delay.
Why then, the solution seems simple ““ abandon your four-wheeled friend for a ride on LA’s convenient and versatile public transportation system. Maybe when you’re forty. But as of now, for many UCLA students, faculty, and Angelenos in general, the most viable alternative to time-consuming traffic jams and gas-devouring automobiles are bicycles. But what happens when bike-riding becomes dangerous, potentially life-threatening?
Often left with no alternatives to sharing lanes with cars and pedestrians, riding a bicycle to campus is quickly becoming an extreme sport for many UCLA students. Near-death encounters such as that of Omari Fuller, described in the Jan. 7 article titled “˜Bikers lack safety in Village’ are far from uncommon, and Fuller is correct in thinking that “there’s a lot of influence that UCLA could have on the city that it’s not leveraging.”
In addition to the several student groups on campus dedicated solely to issues related to biking and transportation, UCLA houses its very own Institute of Transportation Studies with notable scholars and updated research on the very problems UCLA students and Angelenos face daily.
In fact, a quick Internet search on transportation in Los Angeles will direct you to an informative series of articles on the New York Times’ Freakonomics blog written by one of UCLA’s very own, Eric Morris, a doctoral student in the Department of Urban Planning and a scholar at the Institute of Transportation Studies.
UCLA is equipped with a student population of nearly 40,000, as well as numerous groups, organizations, and scholars dedicated specifically to bicycling safety and public transportation. Now is the time to execute that very leverage emphasized by biking survivor Omari Fuller, and become the constituency clamoring for change suggested by UCLA Transportation Service’s Transportation Planning and Policy Manager Dave Karwaski in that article.
This spring, the Los Angeles City Council and Department of Transportation will pass final decisions regarding the Los Angeles Bicycle Plan. A draft of the Plan proposes approximately 696 miles of new bikeways, and has been released in print and online to the public. Public comments are crucial to making the best of this golden opportunity, and the City of Los Angeles is actively seeking to determine whether or not there is clear public support for these new implementations.
Last week, over 250 student petitions were collected in just a few hours by the Public Transit campaign of the UCLA chapter of the California Public Interest Research Group to express public support for increasing bike lanes in areas including sections of Wilshire Boulevard, the hazardous street unavoidable for many student bikers. However, further action must be taken to ensure change is solidified.
Students can practically implement the recommendations given by Fuller and Karwaski by meeting with local politicians, attending City Council meetings, and most importantly, demonstrating overwhelming public support for the Los Angeles Bicycle Plan.
From critical mass events to awarding local politicians with superhero cloaks, student groups such as UCLA CALPIRG are putting a fun twist on grassroots advocacy for not only a safer biking environment, but also the first steps to improving public transit in Los Angeles as a whole.
There are 40,000 potential voices to be heard at UCLA, and countless outlets to make change a reality. The gears of change are set in motion only by choosing to step on that pedal and move forward. Let’s put the pedal to the metal and witness the first steps of change for public transit in Los Angeles.
Want to put the pedal to the metal? Check out CALPIRG’s “˜World Class Public Transit’ campaign at its weekly meetings in Kerckhoff 160 on Thursdays from 5-6 p.m. or visit the Los Angeles Bicycle Plan Web site at http://www.labikeplan.org/.
Grace Haenim Yoo
Third-year, East Asian studies
More voices needed in health debate
Once again the Daily Bruin shows unbalanced editorial commentary with “Flawed health bill wins by foul play” by Alex Pherson on Jan. 7. In the final analysis, Pherson’s stance on the health care bill, and on just about every other policy issue, is that his side is very right, the Democrat side is very wrong.
His partisan views are indeed extreme, and I had hoped that the Daily Bruin would try to offer an opposing viewpoint. Are you telling me that no one on your staff is able to write a health care analysis that shows the merits of health care reform? Come on Bruin, I know you can do better than that.
Dean J. Garrett
UCLA Alumnus
Construction crucial for benefits
As a UCLA alumnus I enjoy picking up a copy of the Daily Bruin whenever I happen to be on campus. While Karen Louth’s column, “Pauley face lift threatens tradition” was well-written and compelling, it suffers from shortsightedness and perhaps a misunderstanding of how student fees operate.
I agree with Louth’s concern that some of the fees used for Pauley Pavilion renovation might otherwise be used for immediate infrastructure needs. Such a concern, however, is tempered by the fact that according to the Sept. 30, 2009 Daily Bruin article by Neha Jaganathan, of the $25 million in funding coming from student fees, “$15 million will come from the Student Programs, Activities and Resource Center student fee referendum.”
Further, Jaganathan points out that these fees were proposed and approved by students “in order to be used specifically for student facilities.” I have very fond memories of attending basketball, volleyball, and gymnastic events at Pauley. Moreover, I had the pleasure of playing intramural basketball at Pauley. Pauley is the epitome of a student facility ““ and this is one of the very projects that the SPARC fee is intended to cover.
As one who attended UCLA in the mid-90s, such complaints fall upon deaf ears. Louth claims that she does not “understand why students who are here now are ignored in favor of students who will be here later,” and asks, “Why do existing students have to pay for facilities they will never see?” The answer is obvious ““ all major capital improvements take time and money. In order for any institution ““ be it educational, governmental, or commercial ““ to build new facilities, money must be raised and spent now in order for people in the future to benefit.
The following is but a portion of the construction and renovation that I lived through during my four years at UCLA: the renovation of Powell Library, the renovation of Royce Hall, the renovation of Ackerman Union, the opening of the Arthur Ashe building, the building of the Tom Bradley International Hall, and the building of De Neve Plaza. The cost to students of all these projects was enormous: having to study in the atrocity known as Temporary Powell (or “Towell”) Library; once Powell reopened, using Towell as the student union; waiting with thousands of other students in unbearably long lines to buy books in the basement of the Ashe building; limping along on crutches to get to the student health center which was on the far end of campus prior to the opening of the Ashe building; and worst of all, walking through the green fencing and construction zone that was the main quad. If you stood at the top of the Janss Steps, you couldn’t walk across the quad. In fact, you couldn’t even see the quad, or even Haines Hall because of the fencing that surrounded everything. Students crammed through the narrow passageways as they raced from class to class. It was awful, but after all the buildings had been renovated we all realized that it was well worth it.
The next time you study at Powell or enjoy a performance at Royce, look around you, soak it all in, and remember that it wasn’t always like this. As is the case with most things in life, you are standing on the shoulders of others ““ those who have sacrificed something in the past so that you can enjoy the present.
Chris Cruz
Class of “˜98