LA Bicycle Commuters Form 'Bike Trains' For Safety

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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

A grassroots project in Los Angeles - a city, of course, dominated by cars - is helping those who commute by bicycle but don't like being out there alone in traffic - called LA Bike Trains. It's built on the idea of strength in numbers. Alex Schmidt has this encore report.

ALEX SCHMIDT, BYLINE: It's 6:45 a.m., and Barbara Insua is busy packing a bag.

BARBARA INSUA: I have the pants. Here we go. I have the shirt.

SCHMIDT: Insua will ride seven miles from her home in Pasadena to NASA's jet propulsion lab where she works as a graphic designer. Insua only started doing this ride a few months ago.

INSUA: It was kind of daunting because, you know, seven miles to the lab. I didn't know how to do it. You know, I'm not an avid cyclist so...

SCHMIDT: Enter bike trains - basically it's commuting by bike in groups. Each bike train route has an experienced conductor who guides you. Insua especially likes that these volunteer conductors offer new riders door-to-door service from their homes to the train.

INSUA: He came and picked me up at my house - went way out of his way to get me to bike for, like, two or three weeks. And then I was conditioned.

SCHMIDT: We set out on this chilly morning to meet up with the rest of the bike train nearby. This commuting concept came to long-time cyclist Nona Varnado when she moved to LA from New York. She found that riding here was completely different.

NONA VARNADO: I realized that I needed a one-to-one personal education on how to ride around the city. I needed to be shown, this is how you cross an intersection.

SCHMIDT: Varnado figured others could use the same kind of help. Since launching Bike Trains in May with just a few routes and zero budget, the system has grown to a dozen covering Los Angeles by as much as 20 miles each way - like the route from Silver Lake to Santa Monica. Still bike trains are far from seeing mass adoption.

CHARLES DANDINO: Arm straight out to the left is - indicates a left turn.

SCHMIDT: Back on the Pasadena route, we link up with Charles Dandino, our conductor. All in, we're five people. The most popular routes see about 10. Dandino gives us the safety rundown.

DANDINO: Your arm bent 90 degrees at the elbow so that your hand is vertical indicates a right turn. And if you flip your elbow over so that your arm is bent 90 degrees with your hand facing downward, that indicates stop. You want to signal these a little bit early. The communication is going to be your best protection.

HERBIE HUFF: I commend them for trying, but it seems tough.

SCHMIDT: Herbie Huff is a policy researcher at UCLA. She says there are lots of obstacles to taking part in bike trains. Huff thinks infrastructure, like bike lanes, would see the biggest win. And a concept like bike share could be an easier entry point.

HUFF: In order to go on the bike train, you need to already have made a bit of a commitment. You need to have already have a bike.

SCHMIDT: And then there's the issue of safety. In fact, on the morning of the ride, a car cut through the single file of bicycles, missing one by just a couple of feet.

DANDINO: That was a dangerous maneuver.

SCHMIDT: So perhaps the greatest obstacle to bike trains is that drivers don't like sharing the road.

JACKIE BURKE: It's like they enjoy taking up the lanes.

SCHMIDT: Jackie Burke has lived in LA her whole life, and bicyclists slowing her down drive her crazy.

BURKE: It's very frustrating to the point where I want to just run them off the road. And I've actually kind of done one of those drive-really-close-to-them kind of things just to scare them to try to intimidate them to kind of get out of my way.

SCHMIDT: With road conditions like those, it's no wonder our conductor has been playing a mellow soundtrack piped through a small speaker during the ride. Bike trains move at the pace of the slowest rider. So even though there have been some hills and an aggressive driver, all in all, it's been pretty pleasant. We arrive at Insua's office about 50 minutes after we started.

SCHMIDT: How was the ride for you?

INSUA: It was hard because I don't take that route very often. But we made it. We're here.

SCHMIDT: And with that, one converted cyclist heads into work to start her day. For NPR News, I'm Alex Schmidt in Los Angeles.

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