Behind the wheels: Marissa Christiansen steers the South Bay Bike Coalition to success
Marissa Christiansen. Photo When Marissa Christiansen was completing her master’s degree in urban planning at USC in 2008, she and five classmates drafted a campus bike plan. “There’re thousands of bikes roaming campus at any given moment, and there are no bike lanes, very few bike racks, and pedestrians getting mowed down by cyclists all the time,” she said. “Just chaos.” The team of students worked with USC real estate developers to recommend a bike infrastructure for the campus. “Who knew that a few years later, it would actually serve me well in some capacity,” she said. When the South Bay and Los Angeles County bicycle coalitions received a $240,000 grant from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health Renewing Environments for Nutrition, Exercise and Wellness initiative to create a master bicycle plan, Christiansen was hired to manage the project. As the South Bay initiative director of the Los Angeles County Bike Coalition, Christiansen was instrumental in drafting, editing and helping pass the South Bay Bicycle Master Plan. The two-year project resulted in seven cities – Manhattan Beach, El Segundo, Hermosa Beach, Gardena, Lawndale, Redondo Beach and Torrance…
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