Except that LA is a sprawl and almost nothing is close together. Maybe if you live at the beach its nice.
Also, a bicycle can serve as a last-mile connector to the transit system - imagine someone who lives at Wilshire and La Brea but works in West Hollywood, and would like to take the Red Line, but doesn't want to lose an hour to walking.
Isn't LA like, the single place on earth where this is least true?
I have never heard this before? Do you a citation for this? More likely in LA is that people simply "limit their tether to 5 miles."
but you gotta get over that perception of sprawl to realize how great LA is for multi-modal transport.
multi-modal transport? You mean the bus? The bus in LA is a joke. Nobody wants to take the bus in LA - it takes way to long to get anywhere. The metro is notable in how little area it covesr. I think this map illustrates this well:
https://media.timeout.com/images/103334943/image.jpg
So what does that leave? Cars. You yourself even mentioned ""Lyft and renting a car." Owning a car, renting a car and calling a car are all car-centric modes of transport.
And LA doesn't have a perception of sprawl it is actually sprawl.
but as a resident i almost never do that kind of ping-ponging around town. you can find good food, drinks, and entertainment in each neighborhood so i typically hit up only one area of town on a given evening, depending on which friends i'm with (or visiting).
berkeley is nice and chill and bike-friendly, but it's also tiny compared to LA (18 vs 500 sq. miles).
the biggest challenge is bike security (not getting it stolen). bike racks and locks are a poor solution if unattended. if we could put bike racks right in front of the gate attendant booths that most public parking garages have, it would be a much better deterrent to theft. and for residential buildings, you could have lockers or a locked bike storage room (possibly with security cameras too).