WHEELS Wednesdays: New York's Gettin'em; Canada's Gettin' Rid Of'em

Guess which city is welcoming bike lanes? And guess which one is set to remove them? If you guessed some European or Canadian city for the first one, and a U.S. one for the second question....well, you'd be wrong.

New York City, according to DNAinfo.com (the Ameritrade founder's nifty news operation) is adding bike lane's to busy First and Second Avenues in Manhattan--the capital of traffic congestion (and Calgary; San Mateo, Calif., and Salem, Ore. are also adding lanes). Toronto, of all places--progressive, flat, Canadian--may be removing lanes on busy Jarvis Street, InsideToronto.com reported.

MULTI-MODAL Mondays: L.A. - The Ballona Creek Bike Path

Needless to say, the number of dedicated bike paths/bikways in the LA. Basin is fairly limited, relative to total roadway mileage. But, that is slowly changing. One of the bike-paths that has been around for a few years is a little far from my place in Burbank--it's the Ballona Creek bike-path that runs along the (mostly) concrete-sided path of Ballona Creek from near downtown Culver City, rougly10 miles to the ocean, where the creek spills into the sea, between Marina Del Rey and Playa Del Rey, two seaside neighborhoods quite close the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX).

The hope for this day-trip was to make it all the way from Burbank, via subway and bike, to the ocean, and then, using the beach trail to skirt LAX, grab the metro rail at Aviation Blvd. back; however, as is often the case in the summer in Los Angeles, once I got within a half-mile of the beach, the coast began to fog over, and the temperature plummeted by about 20 degrees, from a pleasant 85 to a less pleasant 65, plus a stiff breeze, making it feel even chillier. Normally, I wouldn't care, but I was dressed very lightly for the higher San Fernando Valley temps.

The trip began with a quick bike ride to Universal City station, a speedy seven-minute ride under the hill to Hollywood, and a series of streets recommended by the L.A. Bicycle Coalition to Venice Blvd., on which I traveled along the capacious Venice Blvd. bike lane, southwest toward Culver City. One lovely salad from Trader Joe's later, I resumed the finding the Ballona Creek trail -- even if you don't have a map, it's easy: just head south from downtown CC toward the Baldwin Hills--you can't miss them, as they loom over CC. The creek runs along the northern edge of the hills. However, there are specific access points to the bike path--you must enter at one of those access points: I entered at Duquesne, and rode southwest about 7 miles to Lincoln Blvd. (Route 1)--at that point, afternoon fog drove me back.

Turning around, I headed back the way I came. But at Venice Blvd., and Hauser Blvd., I turned north on Hauser into the Miracle Mile section, then headed east on Wilshire Blvd., for a very bumpy (slow lane is horrible condition) ride to Wilshire and Western, where I grabbed the Purple/Red Line subway, back to the Universal City.

Notes: Do not use Wilshire when traveling east west--choose a parallel street to the north or south--most of which go all the way through. Wilshire is not that busy on a weekend, but the slow lane is full of patches and potholes, and you may break your bike...or your back. The creek trail is charming and flat, and eventually goes near/through what remains of coastal wetlands. It's as pleasant a ride as you will find, off the beach, in developed L.A. Excellent benches, rest areas and nature/historical signage along the way make this a worthwhile route to travel. You can, of course, put your bike on one of the numerous bus-lines that cross this route, and shorten the total length and time of the ride.

FLEET-FOOT Fridays: Tour de France Stage 1

Too cool: the official site for the Tour de France provides up-to-the-minute information about the race, plus maps and more. If you want to know how this famous race fits into the 'grand tours' international racing scheme, click here, and scroll down to "Grand Tours" section. The race runs in stages, all over France.

One theme of recent transit spending--better late than never--is funding links from central business districts to airports, which are a huge source-point of carbon emissions from all those taxis, buses and cars feeding airplane passengers to the terminals--as well as taking them away to the ground destinations.

So, it's not surprising that the feds are handing out $1.58 billion to 27 transit projects, including a light-rail link from downtown Denver, CO to its airport--reducing the carbon footprint of that massive facility, the Environment News Service reports. Other projects including a New York rail connection from Long Island commuter lines to Grand Central station (the lines now go to Penn Station), further work on connecting DC to its Dulles International Airport, and a Minneapolis-St. Paul light-rail connection, which would (by implication) connect Minnesota's capital city to the Twin City's airport (MSP) via an existing link that runs from downtown Minneapolis to MSP.

By the way, rail links to LAX's (busiest airport on the west coast of North America) terminals are not even in the planning stage.

TRIPS Monday: Venus or Venice Blvd.? Both Are Hot as Hell

Faced with yet another temporary closure of a portion of the metro Blue Line in L.A. for Exposition Line construction, yours truly chose not to bike/shuttle bus the gap in pursuit of a beach bike ride in either Long Beach or the South Bay. Rather, I decided to see how far I could get in biking to the Westside beach area, with very little time available to me on Sunday. I used this L.A. County Bicycle Coalition map to find the the best, quietest, least traffic-filled route on a very sunny, hot afternoon, as well as this L.A. Metro Bike Map:  this map.

First Leg (train): Universal City metro to Hollywood and Highland....helped very nice mother and daughter British tourists, and took train one-stop to Hollywood.

Second Leg (surface streets...Hwood to Venice Blvd.): Exit and head west/south on Orange to De Longpre; west on DeLongpre two-three blocks to Sycamore; left/south on Sycamore a long way through beautiful pre-World War II apartments territory to 4th St.; right/west on 4th to Cochran, a few blocks down; left/south on Cochran to Venice Blvd....and that's as far as I got. Turned around and returned home. Hot and tired, and needing to get home to walk dogs, I made the trip back to home...

Third Leg....To Be Continued...Next time: proceed right/west/south on Venice Blvd. to the ocean.

FLEET-FOOT Fridays: Size Yourself and Map Your Path

When I want to size myself for a new bike I use this handy interactive tool.

Meanwhile, the number of cool mapping sites and tools are exploding. MapJack mashes the street-view functionality of Google Maps with the two-dimensional map itself, in a split screen that allows you to get both views at once. Very helpful; they cover a few U.S. locations like Vegas and San Francisco, along with some big cities in Canada--the bulk of their coverage is in Sweden, Thailand and Puerto Rico...go figure. The World Sunlight Map appears to be working, and is updated; run by a quirky group, but who cares...it's really interesting!

Dicey, but worth a look: Frappr appears to be a beta search engine that digs up mapping tools and maps; no other information available. Try it at your own risk.This site allows you to see campgrounds within a proximity to a U.S. location you choose.

WHEELS Wednesdays: A Special Report From LaneLand

Bicycle lanes continue to attract eyes: a University of Massachusetts think-tanker says they create more jobs than other kinds of spending (for building them, or the echo?) Still, lane miles grow. Burbank, Calif., re-did roughly three miles of Verdugo Ave., converting from a four-lane arterial (with parallel parking), to a two-lane, with bike lanes. Here's the master-plan.

LaneLand is still in turmoil, though: The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, Tenn., reports business owners along that cotton-trading hub's Madison Ave. don't cotton (sorry...) to a "road diet," which shrinks the four-laner to two, for bikes. They object that they started their businesses on a four-laner (and your point is what, exactly, given cars can't all park at the store-front?). TBD....