Los Angeles County is a great place for cyclists, with its mild climate and growing infrastructure. The county has a Bicycle Master Plan that plans to build 800 miles of bike lanes over the next ten years, making it easier and safer for cyclists to travel. The Walk & Bike Count separates three main modes of active travel: people who walk, ride bicycles and drive motorized scooters. The data in this report will be available for viewing and downloading on the open data portal of the city of Los Angeles, in the SCAG active transportation database, and also on NavigateLA.
Six of these seven locations had an exclusive bicycle lane. Helmet use fell to about 14% in places without bicycle facilities and increased to 52% in bike lanes. Four years of longitudinal counting data suggest that demand for bicycles continues to increase in Los Angeles and that, as bicycle facilities are built and improved, the number of passengers will increase. We captured the use of shared bicycles in 50 of the 63 locations and observed if a cyclist was using the Metro Bike Share system or any other bicycle sharing system without a spring.
For people riding motorized scooters, the smaller sample sizes at each location resulted in higher percentages of driving on the sidewalk. The locations that recorded 100% of traffic on the sidewalk had only one user. Excluding these locations, Adams Blvd had the highest percentage of scooters on the sidewalk, at 91% (11 samples). In the seven places where more than 100 scooter drivers were caught, the average driving on sidewalks was 21%.
Bicycle accidents in Los Angeles affect cyclists of all ages, but the highest number of bicycle accident injuries occur between 15 and 34 years of age. And while Los Angeles still has a long way to go to become bicycle-friendly, it has plans to continue building infrastructure to help cyclists travel safely, regardless of their destination.
