Photo by Gary Rides Bikes via Flickr Creative Commons

Santa Monica is a bicycle-friendly town.

In case you missed it, today (May 17) is Bike to Work Day in Los Angeles (the day is celebrated nationally tomorrow by the League of American Bicyclists). In recognition of the day, L.A. County MTA is offering free rides on trains and busses to riders with their bikes and/or bike helmets.

With May being National Bike Month and all, website Walkscore has upgraded their services to include "Bike Score," rankings of the 10 most bike-friendly cities in America and Canada.

A review of the ranked American cities finds that only San Francisco made the top 10 to represent California, coming in a very respectable third in the rankings.

As reported by Treehugger, scores were “based on the availability of bike infrastructure (lanes and trails), the hilliness of the area, destinations and road connectivity, and the number of bike commuters.”

“Bicycling saves money on gas and fosters better health and a cleaner environment. But the best part about it is not being trapped in traffic. Biking can turn your commute into the best part of your day,” said Josh Herst, CEO of Walk Score in a press release. “Across the country, biking is growing in popularity and we’re excited to celebrate Bike to Work Week by introducing Bike Score to help more people find bicycle friendly places to live."

While only the top 10 cities were rated, the website asks viewers to vote for which city they’d most like to see ranked (like, say, Los Angeles). The ten cities that receive the most votes will each get rated.

Kevin Ferguson/KPCC

The Exposition Line train at the La Cienega/Jefferson station after finishing a test run.

According to a new report, five California locales placed among the top 25 American cities for public transportation.

The rankings were determined by exceedingly useful website Walk Score through a series of calculations resulting in a “Transit Score” which “measures how well a location is served by public transportation, and is based on data released in a standard open format by public transit agencies.”

In California, San Francisco rated the highest, coming in second overall with a transit score of 80, just one point behind the top-rated city of New York. Los Angeles just missed the top ten, scoring the 11^th spot just behind Portland, OR and ahead of Milwaukee, WI. Walks Score considers L.A. the 13^th most “walkable” city in America, citing downtown L.A., Koreatown and Mid-City as the best neighborhoods for getting around on foot. Los Angeles is sure to rank even higher on the site’s next survey, given the completion of the new L.A. Metro Expo Line that recently opened for service.

San Jose (15), San Diego (18) and Sacramento (22) were the other California cities that made the list.

As reported by Think Progress, while there are plenty of positive trends to be gleaned from their information (and demand continues to grow), a 2009 report found that citizens of almost every other country in the world use public transportation more than Americans.

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Taking a cue from the current battle being waged in San Francisco over plastic bags, San Mateo Country is arranging for an outside firm to conduct a full environmental impact report before moving forward on their own bag-banning legislation.

As we reported earlier this week, a coalition of plastic bag manufacturers filed suit against San Francisco for adopting an ordinance outlawing the use of plastic bags at most retail establishments. The Save The Plastic Bag Coalition is suing on the grounds that the city did so without conducting an environmental study and claiming exemption.

According to the Mercury News, the initial San Mateo draft ban would only apply to establishments in unincorporated areas, but a wide range of cities in the county have already said they would be open to considering similar bans.

“We’re very pleased,” said Dean Peterson, San Mateo County’s environmental health director. “It is a regional issue, so doing this regionally is the only way we can really envision a world with less plastic."

Peterson also said that the study could get started before the end of this month, and shouldn’t cost the county more than $50,000.

jamelah/Flickr

In 2007, San Francisco was the first city in America to ban those pesky (and ubiquitous) plastic bags. Targeting large supermarkets and chain drugstores, the ban was expanded earlier this year to include a wider range of retailers and impose a 10-cent tax on all outgoing single bags. Plastic bag manufacturers have had enough.

As reported by Courthouse News Service, the Plastic Bag Coalition (made up of big plastic bag producers like Crown Poly) is asking the city of San Francisco to invalidate the entire law banning single-use plastic bags, claiming that it violates the California Environmental Quality Act and the California Retail Food Code, among other complaints.

“A 10-cent fee is, or may be, far too low to act as an effective incentive to promote the use of reusable bags,” argued attorney Steve Joseph in the motion filed last week on behalf of the Save The Plastic Bag Coalition and reported in Huffington Post. “No one will carry a reusable bag with them for unplanned impulse buying. Very few people will carry a reusable bag to Macy’s or other department stores to save a dime.”

According to the Mercury News, area consumers are adjusting to the changes just fine.

"I've been surprised; acceptance has been amazing," explains Mario Alvarado, a supermarket store director in San Jose. “Most people understand the ordinance. If they forget and buy paper bags, they tell us they won't forget the next time. A very few will just ask to have the groceries put back in the basket. We were expecting the worst; most customers say the ban is long overdue.”

With so many great reusable bags on the market, there’s really no reason anyone should be caught without a stylish tote on hand. User’s tip: get two, so one is always stashed on your preferred mode of transportation.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

File: A sign reads "one less car" on the back of a bicycle at an "energizer station" at San Francisco city hall where bicycle advocates handed out food and drink on Bike to Work Day May 14, 2009 in San Francisco.

Biking in Los Angeles is a precarious business. Given our city’s legendary traffic congestion, maneuvering L.A. on two wheels is definitely not for the faint of heart. Even our own Mayor Villaraigosa felt the unforgiving wrath of street traffic when a short-stopping taxi sent him crashing from his bike to the pavement and ultimately to the hospital with a broken elbow back in 2010.

Up north in San Francisco, biking is additionally challenging given the famously mountainous landscapes. A simple errand to the grocery store at the bottom of the hill can quickly become a much trickier return trip. But what if that bike was electric? It’s the question being asked a new federal grant that will introduce shared electric bikes to the city by the Bay to see if they could potentially help ease traffic congestion and have an environmentally positive impact.

According to the New York Times, the nonprofit organization City CarShare will receive $760,000 of a $1.5 million grant from the Federal Highway Administration to integrate 90 electric bikes to their fleet of shared vehicles over the next two years.

“In 2001, City CarShare was launched by transportation visionaries as a Bay Area nonprofit with the goal to make our community a more livable place,” extols their website. “Carsharing means fewer cars on the road, less congestion, and less pollution.”

The overall goal of assessing the aforementioned impact of making the bikes available will be handled by the Transportation Sustainability Research Center at UC-Berkeley.