Neither Gridlock Nor High Parking Fees Stay Cycling Couriers : Communications: It sounds primitive, but bicycle messengers are back. Why? Try driving in downtown Los Angeles.

As the summer heat envelops a Los Angeles morning, messenger Luis Alfaro rests atop his Schwinn mountain bike on a downtown sidewalk and explains the perils of bicycle delivery.

“Sometimes drivers yell, ‘Hey, biker, get out of my way,’ ” says Alfaro, a 29-year-old messenger for Red Arrow Bonded Messenger Corp. “But I just keep on smiling.”

A beep sounds from Alfaro’s backpack, and he reaches for a hand-held computer that transmits digital messages between Red Arrow’s roaming cyclists and headquarters.

With a few keystrokes, Alfaro queries the device for order information, jots an entry in his log and--in a combination of high technology and lower-body strength--pedals off for a Grand Avenue pickup.

Alfaro is one of a growing number of bicycle messengers who brave blinding dust, choking fumes and speeding taxis for a handful of Southern California delivery companies that rely on cyclists to pedal their services through an increasingly crowded downtown.

Delivery companies now find bicycle messengers faster than drivers for shuffling urgent legal documents, blueprints and even takeout Chinese food between downtown addresses.

“We certainly have found our bicycles much faster for us and economical for the customer,” said Red Arrow manager Jim Bochniarz, who bills his South Garland Street company, now in its 65th year, as Los Angeles’ oldest messenger service. “It also is an advantage for the people who live and work downtown because every bicycle means one less vehicle to contend with.”

Most Southern California delivery firms use pagers and portable radios to dispatch couriers, but Red Arrow, a subsidiary of United Parcel Service, aims to outflank its competitors with state-of-the-art technology.

Red Arrow cyclists carry battery-powered terminals linking them with a central computer that tracks their location, represented at headquarters by blue rectangles on computer screens. A messenger can instantly review a version of an order as entered by dispatchers, request directions or receive last-minute changes. Dispatchers can keep accurate tabs on deliveries.

“It saves time waiting to use a telephone,” Alfaro said.

Although Red Arrow benefits from technology that most of its competitors have yet to apply, the company also draws on the basic advantages that its rivals share: a cyclist’s ability to thread through traffic and park at the customer’s front door.

“For the amount of work we get in the downtown area, it would be hard to compete without bicycle couriers,” said John Newell, office manager of First Courier Service, a Los Angeles firm concentrating on downtown law firms. It has a fleet of about 25 cyclists. “Bike messengers usually can get through traffic quicker. Some of these guys can do amazing things.”

Bicycle messengers have been on the job in Los Angeles at least since 1925, but the city’s sprawling configuration has made them less ubiquitous than their counterparts in New York or Chicago.

“You need a high-density city for messengers to work,” said John Storm, owner of a Boston delivery company and president of the Messenger Courier Assn. of the Americas.

Newell and other observers predict that the number of Los Angeles bicycle messengers will grow as Metro Rail construction chokes traffic, and office development continues.

First Courier has doubled its cyclist fleet within the last year and a half, as business has doubled, said Newell, who claims the largest fleet of bicycle couriers in Los Angeles.

The spread of couriers whizzing through downtown faces public opposition, insurance problems and competition from the proliferating fax machine. Critics of cyclists claim that they break traffic laws and endanger pedestrians.

“The bikers tend to make their own rules when delivering,” Storm said. “Here in New England, they drive right up on the sidewalk and run you over.”

One critic, Jeff Rhodes, president of Los Angeles’ Now Courier, calls for regulation of the two-wheeled messengers. With offices in Los Angeles, Orange County and San Francisco, his company uses walkers to address limited parking and heavy traffic downtown.

“A lot of pedestrians in San Francisco don’t like the bikers because they cause traffic problems and accidents,” Rhodes said. “Unfortunately, I see the growth of bikers continuing in Los Angeles. I think there will be more injured pedestrians and traffic accidents caused as a result.”

Critics also contend that the typical pay structure for bicycle couriers--a base rate plus commissions--encourages them to disregard safety. The result is a liability that insurers are reluctant to cover.

“Usually if they get in almost any kind of accident, they have a chance of getting killed,” said Storm, citing the death two years ago of a 22-year-old bicycle courier who collided with a truck on his first day on the job.

Ed Katz, president of Choice Courier in New York, said his company abandoned experiments with bicycle messengers after too many accidents.

“It was too costly because it affected our insurance premiums,” he said.

Ginger Jones, with the Los Angeles insurance brokerage Booth & Simpson, said a delivery company’s general liability policy typically covers bicycle messengers. But she predicts that insurance companies will refuse to cover cyclists as they become more common in Los Angeles and generate claims.

“Because we sue so much in California, a bicycle can be a large liability against a carrier,” she said.

Los Angeles delivery companies do train cyclists and require them to obey traffic laws. Red Arrow makes its cyclists wear helmets.

The most effective safety measure, however, appears to be defensive cycling, said Gerard Alfaro, a First Courier messenger who says he threw himself from his bike during a run three weeks ago to avoid colliding with a bus.

“We have too many crazy drivers in LA,” he said. “When you’re a biker, you’ve got to be careful.”