Maxine and Eugene Rosenfeld Foundation
Los Angeles CA 90024
CC: Peter Hendrickson <phendric@capnet.ucla.edu>, lparker@support.ucla.edu, chancellor@ucla.edu, David Karwaski <dkarwaski@ts.ucla.edu>, Carrie Byington <carrie.byington@ucop.edu>, Michael Beck <michaelbeck@ucla.edu>, Amelia Neptune <amelia@bikeleague.org>
Dear Maxine and Eugene,
Congratulations! The new Rosenfeld Hall on Westwood Blvd is slowly nearing completion.
Although this is a very significant contribution to UCLA, please allow me to highlight a problem that your generosity has produced. Of course, building works have impacts on neighbors, and we at the UCLA Bicycle Academy do understand this. Unfortunately on our campus—whether from ignorance or from a lack of policy—these impacts are consistently thrown into the path of cyclists. For more than 18 months UCLA Capital Programs and UCLA Transportation have removed the bike lane that used to run in front of the Rosenfeld Hall. Instead, the bike lane has become a loading zone for a dumpster. This arrangement forces those Bruins who use the most sustainable and healthiest mode of transportation into a dangerous conflict with car traffic. Rather than reducing the number of traffic lanes for cars and maintaining a functional bike lane, the campus administrators mis-used your generosity to create a problem for people on bikes.
The suspended bike lane was a celebrated achievement for a campus which is proud of its bicycle friendly (Gold) designation awarded by the League of American Bicyclists. A bike counter was installed only a few hundred meters from the dumpster. But there is no accounting for the number of Bruins who have been deterred from using two wheels for their commute by the imperfect arrangement in front of Rosenfeld Hall for the last 18 months.
The ease with which UCLA suspends facilities for bikes is disappointing. But it is not new. The construction of the Geffen School of Medicine blocked a major route onto campus for more than two years. In front of Rosenfeld Hall it is an enormous dumpster that eclipses cyclists. On Tiverton Avenue it was a series of portaloos which took precedence over the needs of people on bikes.
When the new Rosenfeld Hall will be opened, we hope to join the celebrations with you. Cyclists attending will then ring their bike bells, celebrating the return of the stolen bike lane, and reminding the campus of its failure to consistently prioritize people on bikes. We also hope that your gift for the next Rosenfeld Project on campus will come with the proviso that no bicycle infrastructure shall be impacted during the building work.
This is not the complaint of a few entitled cyclists who are endangered or inconvenienced on UCLA roadways. Our complaint is that the campus and the health system you have supported so generously in the past is failing, even in the light of an accelerating climate emergency, to support and encourage more people to get around without a car, and without setting our planet on fire.
Dr Michael Cahn
Congratulations! The new Rosenfeld Hall on Westwood Blvd is slowly nearing completion.
Although this is a very significant contribution to UCLA, please allow me to highlight a problem that your generosity has produced. Of course, building works have impacts on neighbors, and we at the UCLA Bicycle Academy do understand this. Unfortunately on our campus—whether from ignorance or from a lack of policy—these impacts are consistently thrown into the path of cyclists. For more than 18 months UCLA Capital Programs and UCLA Transportation have removed the bike lane that used to run in front of the Rosenfeld Hall. Instead, the bike lane has become a loading zone for a dumpster. This arrangement forces those Bruins who use the most sustainable and healthiest mode of transportation into a dangerous conflict with car traffic. Rather than reducing the number of traffic lanes for cars and maintaining a functional bike lane, the campus administrators mis-used your generosity to create a problem for people on bikes.
The suspended bike lane was a celebrated achievement for a campus which is proud of its bicycle friendly (Gold) designation awarded by the League of American Bicyclists. A bike counter was installed only a few hundred meters from the dumpster. But there is no accounting for the number of Bruins who have been deterred from using two wheels for their commute by the imperfect arrangement in front of Rosenfeld Hall for the last 18 months.
The ease with which UCLA suspends facilities for bikes is disappointing. But it is not new. The construction of the Geffen School of Medicine blocked a major route onto campus for more than two years. In front of Rosenfeld Hall it is an enormous dumpster that eclipses cyclists. On Tiverton Avenue it was a series of portaloos which took precedence over the needs of people on bikes.
When the new Rosenfeld Hall will be opened, we hope to join the celebrations with you. Cyclists attending will then ring their bike bells, celebrating the return of the stolen bike lane, and reminding the campus of its failure to consistently prioritize people on bikes. We also hope that your gift for the next Rosenfeld Project on campus will come with the proviso that no bicycle infrastructure shall be impacted during the building work.
This is not the complaint of a few entitled cyclists who are endangered or inconvenienced on UCLA roadways. Our complaint is that the campus and the health system you have supported so generously in the past is failing, even in the light of an accelerating climate emergency, to support and encourage more people to get around without a car, and without setting our planet on fire.
Dr Michael Cahn
Secretary, UCLA Bicycle Academy
 |
