In simplest terms, the goal of my “All of LA” project is to ride every mile of legally bikeable street in the City of Los Angeles. But, simple descriptions have a way of hiding complicated technicalities. So, let me break that down piece by piece to give an idea of what exactly it is that I am doing.

What does it mean to “ride”?

Simplest definition here is “ride a bike across the distance of road on bike”. But, if something isn’t ridable (e.g.) like a steep unpaved trail, or a sandy road on on my gravel bike) I will try to walk my bike. And if I can’t walk my bike (e.g. a very steep trail) I will carry it. And if I can’t even carry my bike up it, then I’ll reclassify if it should even count as “bikeable”.

What is “The City of Los Angeles”?

For the purposes of this project, what is explicitly included is the city of Los Angeles proper. i.e. every bikeable road within the city limits. This comes out to around 7500 miles of streets. And in terms of my reported percent completion it will be based on LA City. The reason for this strict definition here is if someone says “Los Angeles”, what they are talking about can range from a small subset of neighborhoods of the actual city all the way to including suburbs and exurbs of the city, and riding everything within the city limits is unarguable.

As a caveat, I have been biking many of areas surrounding the City limits of LA too, because there are so many places which are effectively seamlessly integrated into the grid of the city, or which are “spiritually” part of LA which would feel strange to leave out.

The former includes the likes of the cities Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, Inglewood, San Fernando, and unincorporated areas such as View Park-Windsor Hills, Westmont, Florence-Firestone, La Rambla, and many more. These are what I called “Tier 2” to the project.

The latter includes places which are a bit more far flung. Cities like, Pasadena, Burbank, Glendale, South Pasadena, and San Marino, Compton, and El Segundo. These are what I would call “Tier 3”.

I do not consider these as much explicitly part of the project. But they are still places I am looking to explore and see. Because I don’t think one can fully understand Los Angeles while ignoring these places which are in some cases right across the city limits.

There are debates to be had on all sides though of what I do and do not include.

What is “Every Mile of Legally Bikeable Road”?

For reason I don’t need to elaborate, I want to limit myself to what is legal. So, legally bikeable excludes freeways, gated communities, and anywhere that is explicitly labeled as private property. But, where am I getting the ~7500 miles from? This is based on the meta data of street segments on OpenStreetMap (OSM), an open source mapping software, and how it defines the bike ability of roads. My maps I follow are determined based on that information.

And something interesting about OSM is that if I find errors or inaccuracies in what the map says when I explore the territory, well, I can just correct it by editing the metadata.

Something this definition doesn’t necessitate though is paved roads. There are some unpaved roads and trails which OSM users have defined as “bikeable”, so they are included at my discretion. I debated excluding all of these and limiting myself to paved roads. But, I opted to include them because I have found these have induced me to explore more areas I otherwise would never have visited, and I think it helps to highlight how bikes are able to travel to some places that would otherwise be unreachable by car. While I have managed some of these on my road bike, but some of these will necessitate something more purpose made to handle to trails (like a mountain or gravel bike).

Beyond the Grid

I want to go beyond just riding all the roads of the city. Because a large motivation for this project has been to understand the city as well as I can, and traversing it only gets you so far. So, in action beyond the simple statement of the project I have made a goal to add experiences and learning to what I am doing. I do my best to spend time off the bike in the areas I’m biking, walking around, sitting in community spots, eating at local restaurants, and getting a feel for complex this place is. I’ve been reading books on the history of the city, looking up the origins of the neighborhood names, and trying to understand how each of these places came to be the way they presently are. What I have found through those learnings in combination with what I’ve seen while riding and my experience existing within the city is what I am aiming to highlight on this blog.