Wouldn’t that extension of the L.A. River bikeway that NBC is fighting help mitigate vehicular traffic, too?

“But someone might toss a screenplay over our fence”

(Yes, that is the reason the bikepath is stalled)

What universal city should have is a light rail (or streetcar, or yes, even monorail) system to connect people from the subway stops to the destinations. You could probably do it for under 100m too.

I grew up on the Hollywood side of Barham blvd near cahuenga east.. Over the years Universal Studios and the DOT rammed their plans right through our neighborhood transforming our front porch into a smoggy traffic jam snarled adjacent chunk of real estate. I saw quite a few car crashes over the years from unsafe street design and light timing. As a kid I just thought it was just a normal part of life to be in a car crash. Several times I’ve seen people die, and I even witnessed a crash take out our front porch entirely. This all could have largely been prevented had universal given up that little tip of land in the north by the 101 / 134 connection back in the 60’s when the freeway was being built. Notice how there is no 101 north to 134 east transfer? That was the lobbiests from Universal who helped block it. Our neighborhood had no chance against the corporate giant and today Barham is the defacto freeway connection It looks like it’s going to be widened yet again to 6 lanes.

This “evolution” plan is just a continuance of the Universal tradition that doesn’t give a EFF about surrounding communities it just facilitates more cars loaded with consumers to file into their money circus.

One of the principal consultants for this project spoke in my Transportation Engineering class at UCLA yesterday, and I was horrified at the flawed, dated methodology they used to predict how this project will impact the communities around it. It is this flawed, morally bankrupt methodology that produces the $100 millon in road projects Damien catalogues above.

They use the 50-year-old “trip generation” 4-step model to predict how many trips the project will generate, and where those trips will go.

One of the huge assumptions this model requires is the mode split. They assume that mode split at the project will be the mode split we observe today.

That sounds reasonable, on the surface, but here’s the problem with it:

The way people travel is a function of the infrastructure that is provided to them. Give people wide, free roads, and plentiful free parking, and guess what they do? They drive. If we assume that today’s mode split will be tomorrow’s mode split when we made these predictions, we create a self-fulfilling prophecy, and we spend our money to keep the driving status quo going strong.

Say it again with me: THE WAY PEOPLE TRAVEL DEPENDS UPON THE INFRASTRUCTURE THAT IS PROVIDED TO THEM.

NBC Evolution, LADOT, and the County completely neglect this fact, so of course they predict that their project is going to cause automobile traffic, and that the natural course of action is to widen roads. They don’t bother to account for the fact that widening roads (to the tune of a $100 Million dollar subsidy) will just cause more people to drive.

Come on, LA! We need to demand that our government spend its transportation money in proportion to the travel behavior we want to see IN THE FUTURE. The LA Bike Plan sets a goal of 10% of trips being taken by bike. We should spend at least 10% of our transportation budget on bicycle infrastructure until that happens. Analogously, we’re spending tons of money on transit as part of an ambitious 30/10 project. Why would we undercut that investment by at the same time spending enormous sums of money on freeway widening?

LADOT and NBC Universal operate with traffic models and assumptions that will keep this city driving forever, if we don’t stop them.