New Spin on Influence Peddling: Bike Lobby Targets Mayoral Race

Cast aside for a moment economic development, crime and the breaking up of the Los Angeles Unified School District. A small cadre of enthusiasts is trying to peddle a new issue in the Los Angeles mayor’s race.

Bike rights.

Tired of being left out of the gears of government, the bicycle lobby is pushing the mayoral candidates to add a chapter on cycling to their briefing books. Will the candidates seek to update the city’s outdated Bicycle Master Plan? Do they support the newly hired bicycle program coordinator? Just how “bicycle friendly” a City Hall do they intend to run?

Those are some of the questions Alex Baum, chairman of the city’s Bicycle Advisory Committee, will be posing in a questionnaire to be sent to candidates.

“Until now, cyclists have never been involved in politics. They liked to be off on their own,” said Baum, 70, who in his younger days rode bikes competitively. “But now they are beginning to realize that they had better get involved.”

There is no telling which candidate will win the endorsement of the admittedly diverse lot of area cyclists.

One favorite has to be multimillionaire Richard Riordan--an avid cyclist himself whose latest campaign brochure includes a shot of him posing, in biker shorts, on a 10-speed.

Others may seek to establish their bike appeal in other ways.

Nick Patsaouras included bicycle promotion as one of his transportation initiatives. And Assemblyman Richard Katz introduced bicycle-related funding legislation in Sacramento, although it was vetoed by the governor.

Councilman Nate Holden says the only bike he rides these days is stationary. But he and his council colleagues, mayoral hopefuls Joel Wachs and Michael Woo, have voted on biking issues--and their records will come under scrutiny.

Bikers, of course, are not alone in their desire to help shape the mayoral agenda. The 31 candidates have attracted attention from at least three times that many interest groups--from Voters to End the Arms Race to the Parents of Watts to the Interfaith Hunger Coalition to the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The cyclists, though, are pushing a unique agenda.

For one thing, they must convince the candidates that bicycling is no longer kid stuff. Top-of-the-line racing bikes can cost more than $3,000 and fully elasticized outfits, special shoes and other accessories are expensive too. Such investments make modern-day cyclists serious about their sport.

“Bicycle transportation is something the politicians should focus on,” said Paul Tay, who will take over next month as the city of Los Angeles’ first cycling czar. A competitive bike racer, he now coordinates biking issues in Hollywood, Fla., where he has ridden all of that city’s 350 miles of roads to assess their suitability for bikes.

“Bikes are interwoven with issues like traffic congestion, air pollution, quality of life and even crime,” said Tay, 30, who does not own a car and has no plans to buy one in Los Angeles after he starts his $50,000-a-year job here. “If everyone is in their cars, no one is on the streets to prevent crimes from happening.”

There are already bicycle groups in Washington and Sacramento lobbying for special-interest legislation. Locally, cyclists have discovered that City Hall can have a significant impact on their rides.

Local bicycle advocates, for instance, have pushed through a law that requires developers to add bicycle parking and showers to all buildings over 50,000 square feet. They also successfully lobbied officials to allow three bicycles on each Metro Rail car.

Los Angeles, which has an estimated 300 miles of bikeway facilities, ranked 10th in Bicycling magazine’s last survey of the country’s most “bicycle friendly” cities. With the hiring of Tay, it is one of only a few cities nationwide--including Seattle, San Diego and San Francisco--to have a full-time bicycle advocate on the city payroll.

But the cycling enthusiasts say more must be done. Los Angeles International Airport still does not allow bike access to its terminals and the tunnel on Sepulveda Boulevard underneath the LAX runways is “a nightmare to ride through,” one local biker says. The city’s bike licensing program may be on the books but bikers say it is rarely enforced, depriving bike programs of thousands of dollars a year in revenue.

The number of local cyclists is difficult to pin down--although national figures indicate that roughly one-third of Americans own bikes. Those die-hards who commute by bike represent just one-third of 1% of the city’s population, according to census figures.

Still, in a tight race where every vote is likely to matter, mayoral contenders ignore the bike lobby at their peril.

“The candidates had better take us seriously,” said Baum, a volunteer who strolls the corridors of City Hall representing bikers in a post that Mayor Tom Bradley appointed him to 17 years ago. “There are a lot of bicyclists out there and we vote.”