I’ve been blogging before about my effort to ride my bike to work, and my commitment to “going green” for a little while now. This entails riding my bike to work, and while I’ve been doing that I mentioned the amount of transients that litter my 15 mile path. I have my bike in my backseat of my car today, in order to get a couple of repairs done and get myself back to riding again but I came across this story which illustrates how pervasive this homeless problem is on this path.

VAN NUYS - Vinnie Niland walks along the Metro Orange Line bike path scouring the bushes for chucked cans and bottles.

But if there’s one thing the recently homeless man can’t stand, it’s the other garbage, homeless camps and drinking hideaways that line the 14-mile bikeway.

“They just trash the place,” said Niland, 46, who had walked the bus route for years before becoming homeless two months ago after being laid off from his job as an auto parts clerk. “It’s becoming a dump.

“I love this bike path. I would like to see ‘em come out here and do something about it.”

Niland is not alone. Police, civic activists, cyclists and pedestrians all want to reverse the growing blight along the four-year-old bikeway.

The Orange Line busway opened in October 2005 as a dedicated transit route between North Hollywood and Woodland Hills. The $350 million line, which included the bike path, was flanked by 800,000 exotic plants.

But as Los Angeles County volunteers completed the largest homeless count in the nation last week, many pointed out the trail of refuse left by transients between Sepulveda Boulevard and Hazeltine Avenue and beyond.

A warren of sleeping holes littered with soggy clothes, weathered blankets, excrement and condoms dot chest-high brush along the path.

In plain view lay a mattress and 50 feet of trash where some say homeless immigrants like to party after finishing their day-labor jobs.

Plastic bags and other refuse line the trans-San Fernando Valley route. In spots, weeds eat up the pedestrian portion of the path.

“For the past few years, we’ve been trying to take care of the issue of the homeless and all their stuff. It’s an uphill battle,” said Zach Behrens, 28, of Sherman Oaks, editor of LAist.com, who on his blog last week called attention to the detritus.

Behrens also serves on a police committee on transients looking into cleaning up the bikeway and opening a check-in facility for homeless belongings.

“The problem is, we were never able to accomplish anything,” he said, “because it was a monumental task.”

This summarization is pretty much my view of things, as well. I start on my path in Van Nuys and end up in Burbank where I work. Along that path are a plethora of bums, illegal aliens, winos, and scalleywags that call the Metro bike path’s shrubbery home. It’s actually pretty a pretty dangerous ride between damn near getting run over by oblivious drivers, and worrying about getting shanked by a drunken bum along the way. I ride both directions pretty much in the dark, so it can get down right ugly sometimes.

Los Angeles police Officer Tony Cabunoc, a senior lead officer at Van Nuys Division and a member of its Transient Committee, said: “We have homeless and transient encampments in the landscape areas and they’re there 24-7. Our concern is the safety of the bike path and those who use it.”

The Los Angeles Department of Transportation administers the bikeway and maintains it under contract with a private firm. An LADOT spokesman referred questions about bikeway blight to Paul Meshkin, head of the department’s Bikeways Engineering Group, who did not return calls Friday.

“The Orange Line is (devoid) of any leadership to execute the basic support we pay for,” said Stephen Box, a bicyclist activist who has peddled the bikeway en route to jobs in Woodland Hills and Chatsworth.

“It needs to be a safe, clean and effective bike path.”

Niland walked the bikeway Thursday along an industrial swath of Van Nuys, eyeballing encampments he says are used primarily by Mexican and Guatemalan immigrants.(Emphasis - mine)

In the past year, he’s seen many city graffiti-removal crews, but not one to clear the trash or trim the weeds.

“This has been back here for a while, for about a year,” he said. “I’ve seen bike cops ride through here, but they don’t do anything about it. They just go right by.

“Nothin’ seems to get done.”

I seriously had to have a chuckle after reading the part that I put in bold, because it illustrates everything that is wrong with the liberal mindset, and the delicious irony of a conservative leaning person trying to advance a typically liberal agenda meeting peril at the hands of yet another liberal agenda. The sacred cow of liberals, the illegal immigrant. I can tell you first hand that this homeless problem is an extension of illegal immigration, and I could write for months following these bums from a mattress on the Orange Line to construction sites, Uhaul rentals, and Home Depots all over the San Fernando Valley.

With a majority Latino population in Van Nuys, the people will, no doubt shoot down any measure to rid ourselves of illegal immigrants and see just how many other problems clear up from the process. this isn’t a case of Skid Row being emptied from the downtown area, or a comment on the economy, but a crosshair placed right on the fact that a majority of this epidemic is due to illegal aliens and havoc they wreak on the city. For anyone else, like myself, who is trying to dovetail nicely with rich liberals and make the world a better place by ditching the car for a bike, a dilemma has arisen with two sacred cows conflicting with one another.

The piss lined avenue to a greener tomorrow needs a little cleaning, so this will undoubtedly force a decision in these hard times. Does a city on the verge of bankruptcy try to squeeze in a bloated task force of cleaning crews, an Orange line Czar, and an entire government arm as a sort of bum maid service, or will they decide that the source of the problem is that scumbags from other countries who come here illegally need to be fleeced from our society? I’ll keep you posted, but the spirit of the article already should let you know what we’re leaning towards.