DOT sez LA isn't White Enough

My buddy and fellow Bike Writers Collective member Alex Thompson broke a story involving some colorful comments made by LA Department of Transportation's bicycle coordinator Michelle Mowerey about Portland being ahead of LA cuz they're whiter. Even Bike Snob NYC is talking about it:

At this point, we do not know for sure who the idiot was, but either way it's hard to expect drivers and cyclists in Los Angeles to interact comfortably. On the spectrum of bike friendliness, cities like Copenhagen and Portland lie on the "very friendly" end, while Los Angeles lies more on the "hostile" end, just next to the surface of the planet Mercury. Consequently, drivers don't know how to share the road with cyclists, and cyclists are so marginalized they're not sure how to behave. It's an unfortunate situation, but rest assured the city of Los Angeles is planning to do something about it by increasing the number of white people there:

Yes, once Los Angeles can reduce the pesky racial diversity that somehow prevents them from being bike friendly, they can finally start developing a bikeway. From the sound of things, this whitewashing of the population should take about 20 years, though Mowery does not specify if this will involve importing more white people or else simply asking all the non-white people to leave.

Wow!