Re “Bike lanes pedal down Santa Monica, Fountain,” Aug. 24 issue

Bike lanes on Fountain Avenue are a bad idea. Vehicular traffic is like water, it will always find a way to get through, and if it doesn’t it will back up, just like the water flooding several blocks of Melrose Avenue.

Fountain is a major cut-through street, carrying thousands of cars a day, its importance to traffic memorialized in Bette Davis’ famous line decades ago to Johnny Carson. When asked about advice she would give to a young starlet trying to get into Hollywood, Davis quipped, “Take Fountain!”

It isn’t wide enough for bicycle lanes to be added without eliminating either traffic lanes, impacting traffic flow or parking, impacting those who live in the apartment buildings built without sufficient underground parking. Fountain is on the side of a hill, so getting to and from it is not easy for a cyclist.

The bicycle lane should be installed first on Santa Monica Boulevard, in the median strip. Santa Monica Boulevard is wider and the median strip is an ideal place for bike lanes. Plus, traffic moves more slowly, so riding a bike will be safer.

City authorities should see how many people use it before installing bike lanes on Fountain. And I sure hope they plan to do traffic studies wherever they install bike lanes to measure the impact on traffic and to see how many bike riders use them and how many bike riders are hit by cars.

Two final, more general comments. Cities cannot make changes in historic traffic patterns in isolation, but should be required by regional planning authorities to coordinate plans. A bicycle lane on Fountain, or on Santa Monica, that ends at the city borders, just reduces vehicular traffic without really providing something useful for bike riders.

And traffic calming or bike lanes are incompatible with the overdevelopment favored by city authorities who receive lucrative campaign donations, like the proposed giant Television City project also on the front page, and in some cases outright bribes, from developers. This is especially true of the corridor from Pico Boulevard or even Venice or Washington on the south and Sunset on the north, from the Pacific Ocean to downtown Los Angeles. The region’s road structure was developed in the 1920s. The population has increased dramatically since then, with the demise of the very functional Red Car system and the rise of the freeways. Even when the L.A. Metro [system] is fully developed, it will never be as comprehensive as the subway systems in New York, London or Paris, where one can live or visit without a car.

The combination of overdevelopment and reducing vehicular traffic lanes will leave us trapped in our homes because it will just take too long to get places.

Daniel Fink

Beverly Hills