LA designated a bicycle-friendly city

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Presenting the award to Councilman Ed Reyes at a press conference at Macarthur Park, Andy Clarke, President of the League of American Cyclists, admitted to being a little surprised himself. "I'm not sure that I ever thought I'd see the day where we could designate the city of Los Angeles as a bicycle-friendly community. But we are here today to celebrate that remarkable achievement."

The League is a national organization which promotes cycling across the country. This is LA's first such award.

Clarke said the award is based on rigorous standards. "We ask about engineering, education, encouragement, enforcement, and evaluation -- hundreds of bits of data and things to collect."

L.A. has improved since last year, when it only received an honorable mention.

More bicycle friendliness is good for traffic and the environment, according to Eric Bruins of Los Angeles County's Bicycle Coalition.

"Currently, half of all trips in LA County are less than three miles. Shifting even a fraction of these trips to bicycling will reduce congestion, clean the air, and improve our health. Just doubling the current number of miles travelled by bike in the county would take the equivalent of over thirty thousand cars off the road."

And yet it's hard to believe that cycling on city streets is safe. A recent study from the University of Wisconsin Transportation Research Institute said bicycles are involved in almost three percent of all traffic deaths in Los Angeles. The national average is just under two percent.

Los Angeles is the thirteenth largest city in the world with an estimated 26 million cars.

Jim Bledsoe, an activist with Bicycle Kitchen, a community hub for do-it-yourself bike repairs, said bicycling could help build a more closely-knit sense of community in LA: "When you get in your car, you're in this little, isolated, hermetically-sealed box."

In a town fabled for its disconnectedness and self-absorption, getting out of that box might give you a whole different sense of what it means to be an Angeleno.