West Hollywood city leaders have grand plans of turning WeHo into the most bike-friendly city in California. What’s the catch? You might not have a place to park your car anymore, especially if you live on the city’s lower-income East Side and your apartment complex doesn’t provide you with a designated space. The city is planning to rip up potentially hundreds of parking spots, which many residents depend on, in order to install protected bike lanes, an added safety measure for the city’s small but vocal cycling community.

If you park your car on Gardner Avenue, Fountain Avenue or Willoughby Avenue, you’re likely headed for a rude awakening. And those who park nearby better prepare for much more intense competition for whatever parking spots remain.

These changes are not years away – they are happening right now, and it’s more or less too late to stop most of them. 

Meanwhile, our five elected city councilmembers – plus the dozens upon dozens of close friends and allies they’ve appointed to our commissions and advisory boards, as well as our highly paid executive municipal staff members – all enjoy access to reserved parking spots not just at City Hall but at public parks and at city events all across town.

We think that's more than a tad hypocritical.

We hereby challenge our Mayor, Vice Mayor and City Councilmembers – John M. Erickson, Chelsea Lee Byers, Sepi Shyne, John Heilman and Lauren Meister – to share the burden they are imposing on WeHo residents by relinquishing their own special parking privileges.

As an added show of solidarity, we also call upon WeHo's City Council to forego the use of personal and/or city-owned motor vehicles for transportation to and from any and all city business affairs, including but not limited to meetings, events, festivals, ribbon-cuttings, etc., that occur within West Hollywood city limits.

They should instead limit themselves to the manual modes of transportation – cycling, walking, skating, et. al. – they insist are necessary to achieve the climate and mobility goals they themselves enshrined in West Hollywood’s strategic plans for the future. 

We also encourage City Manager David Wilson, City Attorney Lauren Langer, the executive staff at City Hall and everyone in our urban planning and economic development departments to show their commitment to this vision for WeHo’s future by doing the same.

We realize many of them are not West Hollywood residents, but by commuting from their homes in other cities, they will prove to naysayers that it is absolutely possible not just to survive but to thrive in Los Angeles County without a vehicle. 

Now, let's be realistic. 

We understand that not everyone is capable of walking or riding upwards of 5 or 10 or 20 miles per day, that inclement weather makes such restrictions infinitely more complicated, that people have a need to arrive on time and that people will inevitably suffer injuries or fall ill, and that there will be instances where it is just not possible to not take a vehicle – so we will grant our city councilmembers, commissioners, boardmembers and senior staff the luxury of traveling on our vaunted Metro buses when (and only when) extenuating circumstances necessitate it. 

We have full faith in our city leaders’ ability to rise to the occasion and to meet or even exceed the high bar they are setting for all of us. We wish them godspeed.