Originally Posted by
Stealthammer
Lets see. I often rode down from Claremont through Azuza, then down to PCH, so in fact it is near South Coast Plaza to me. I would then ride up PCH through Willmington, Long Beach, Redondo Beach and Santa Monica to Malibu, and then over the hills on Latigo Canyon, Decker, or Malibu Canyon to Mulholland, and then down into the San Fernando Valley, then across the foothills in Glendale and Pasadena, and then up GMR and down Mt. Baldy Road before returning home in Claremont..... Maybe you just don't ride the distances I did. South Coast Plaza was simply a landmark that I used to gauge how close I was to PCH and used as a feeding station.
Also, this incident occured around the time of the LA riots and I am sure there were a lot of cops there. I may be wrong about the cop being from SAPD, but I believe that the officer who took my statement was. However, it was around twenty years ago, and I had just been shot at, so I could be wrong about the agency. Either way though, the shootings did take place along that trail, and I refused to ride the south end of it because of it.
I regularly rode through Inglewood, Hawthorne, South Central, Long Beach, and many other cities and neighborhoods that you wouldn't drive through, and the gangs never gave me any trouble. But one teenage crackhead who thought it was fun to take shots out of his bedroom window changed my route and I never enjoyed that trail again.
It sounds from the reports of homeless encampments and outright attacks on normal SART users that thing haven't gotten any better.
Edit: Fixed spelling...
Distances you rode don't mean anything - you don't know the area along the lower reach of the SART and all you're doing is scaring folks away from a great bicycling resource. The SART has areas where it goes through gang turf (like where the OP got attacked), but just avoid those areas in the low light and nighttime hours and your risks of being assaulted are minimal (Minimal, not zero). In over 20 years I've had no problem riding along it. Never had a probelm with the homeless either; they are there, but they sleep up under the overpasses at night then leave in the morning before the place gets crowded, and I've never been threatened by them. FWIW: South Coast Plaza isn't visible from the SART, so don't know how you'd use that as a 'landmark'.
End of my posting on this thread. . .