Streetsblog Los Angeles

The past few months has literally been a battle as the LADOT readies to begin implementing the 2010 Bike Plan by adding bike lanes to a Northeast neighborhood in LA.

After reading the Boulevard Sentinel’s (a local weekly paper) opinion on the negative impact bike lanes would have on this small community, I wanted to show what the positive impact would be. When I heard that Josef Bray-Ali, owner of  Flying Pigeon Bike Shop, was having a friendly bike ride to support local businesses and bring positive cycling awareness to the area, I decided to see it for myself. 

Photo: Hal Bergman Photography

Passionate and energetic, Josef Bray-Ali is cycling a enthusiast, a father and fellow neighbor to not only the residents in the area but also the businesses. He and his brother opened Flying Pigeon in HIghland Park in 2008. In 2012 they moved the shop down the street to Cypress Park.  He describes Figueroa as an “old streetcar suburb arterial road” which used to have two street cars running up and down. 

Photo: Hal Bergman Photography

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All images via York Boulevard: The Economics of a Road Diet. A poster presentation made at Pro Walk Pro Bike is available at Scribd.

A recent report by Cullen McCormick uses a road diet in Northeast Los Angeles as a case study to examine the economic impacts of reducing mixed-use travel lanes and increasing bicycle lanes. Despite the traditional opposition of local businesses when diets are proposed in front of their stores, McCormick’s case study finds there was little difference in the hyper local economies after a portion of York Boulevard underwent a road diet in 2006.

Click on the image to go to the full report.

McCormick chose a 2.2 mile stretch of York Boulevard between Eagle Rock Boulevard and Figueroa Street because of the on the ground conditions. “”The socio economics are the same between Eagle Rock Boulevard and Figueroa Street,” McCormick explains, “except part of it has a bike lane and road diet, and part of it doesn’t.”

In 2006, the City of Los Angeles put 1.1 miles of York Boulevard on a road diet. They narrowed the street from four mixed-use travel lanes to two mixed-use lanes, a turn lane, and two bicycle lanes between Eagle Rock Boulevard and Avenue 52, dividing in half the corridor McCormick would study in 2011 and 2012.

McCormick is aware of two competing ideologies when it comes to the issue of bikes, bike lanes and retail profit. On one hand, retailers around the world fear a change in the status quo and often fight against changes to the existing transportation infrastructure. On the other “bikes are good for business” has been a mantra for bike advocates, especially with the launch of the Bike Friendly Business District model in Long Beach that is catching on around the country.

“I wanted to come into it with as neutral a stance as possible,” McCormick explains.  ”I was curious to see what the data had to show.” Read more…

A packed house at a June public meeting on I-710 alternatives in Pasadena. Photo:Dan McGuire/Metro

Last week, Metro finished its most recent public meetings outlining twelve proposals to fill the so-called 4.5 mile “gap” on the I-710 between Alhambra and Pasadena at the I-210. The public response to the twelve alternatives presented was near-uniformly negative. Anger was particularly high at new proposals to connect the I-710 to the I-210 including, a tunnel connecting the 10 Freeway to the 134 Freeway, a surface route that would widen Avenue 64 and a highway route along Huntington Drive, Fair Oaks Avenue and Pasadena Avenue.

The newer proposals were viewed by many communities, including Alhambra, East Los Angeles, La Canada Flintridge and Pasadena as so ludicrous that it pushed the proposal to build a tunnel underneath several San Gabriel Valley Communities off the front pages.

Maybe that was the point. No media coverage of the Big Dig option. No media coverage of the flood of trucks that would dominate San Gabriel Valley Streets. Little mention of that any expansion of the I-710 or surrounding freeways is a giant subsidy to the port and shipping industries.

On August 29, a Metro Technical Advisory Committee will meet to pair down the list of twelve alternatives to just a “handful.” The smaller list could be presented to the full Metro Board of Directors next month or the month after. Assemblyman Anthony Portantino (D-Pasadena) firmly believes that the fix is already in for a certain route, despite protests from Metro that it’s totally not. He tells the Daily News, “I think the folks in downtown L.A. are going to try to put on a show to justify a predetermined conclusion…Fundamentally, this is a flawed process.”

If the agency wishes people to believe that the short list of projects that will be studied in a full environmental impact report hasn’t been pre-determined, it would do well to not present the alternatives next month. Read more…

Proposed York Boulevard Street Porch, Highland Park. Click on the image for a high resolution pdf of the image.

Move over Sunset Triangle Plaza, a pair of street reclamation projects on the Eastside are threatening to steal your thunder as the most progressive street reclamation project in Los Angeles. Living Streets L.A.and Councilman Jose Huizar unveiled new designs for a “street porch” on York Boulevard in Highland Park and a “street plaza” on Huntington Drive in El Sereno.  Both designs are completely unique as they arrived as a result of an extensive community process that started with a simple question, “How would you like to improve your street?”  Nearly a dozen sessions later, each community devised surprisingly similar plans. “Ryan [Living Streets' Ryan Lehman] and I were pleasantly surprised that when given the option to choose any street improvement, the project both people chose were in one case a street porch and another case a street plaza,” explains Steve Rassmussen Cancian, the architect for the project. Rasmussen Cancian prefers to avoid the term “parklets” which confuses people by leaving the impression that the city is planning something bigger, such as a soccer field, for the middle of the street.  He prefers the more descriptive “street porch” for the above pictured design for York Boulevard which is actually resembles an urban porch.  For El Sereno, pictured below, he prefers the term “street plaza.”

The El Sereno Street Plaza. Click on the image for a high resolution pdf of the image.

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(Update: I’m leaving the text below unchanged so that peoples notes in the comments section makes sense.  Both LADOT and the Office of Councilman Reyes report that there has been contact between the Councilman and LADOT and that lanes will be built “next year.” – DN)

Two weeks ago, Streetsblog reported on efforts by middle school students at Nightingale Middle School in Cypress Park to encourage the city to build bike lanes on two streets connecting the community to the school.  While their efforts received something of a brush off from LADOT and Councilman Ed Reyes, the students are showing some tenacity.  B.I.K.A.S., a new advocacy website for bike advocates published more letters from students and the above video is starting to make the rounds with students and administrators making the case for safer bicycling.

In the video Jackson Huang, interviewed by another student who’s name I can’t make out, talks about his love of riding his bike and how it can be a dangerous experience.  Huang also addresses his comments directly to Councilman Reyes, whom LADOT claims could push the bike lane projects to a higher priority level.

“Ed Reyes, if we don’t get those bike lanes, people will get hurt and people will get more flats.  The United States is one of the most obese countries in the world.”

The video goes on to interview Mr. Summer, the Dean of Students, and Enrique Gonzalez, the principal.  Both are regular bike riders. Summer recounts a story of when he was hit by a bike while Gonzalez makes the case for a safer community.

The students aren’t asking for anything that requires a major lift from the city, just a mile of bike lanes to make their commutes safer.  The lanes would be on Cypress Avenue – from Pepper Avenue to Arroyo Seco Avenue (0.48 miles – immediately alongside NMS) and Avenue 28 – from Pepper Avenue to Figueroa Street (0.48 miles – one block from NMS).  Both lanes appear in the city’s bike plan and the city’s 5 year-implementation plan.

LADOT has said they would “love” to accelerate the projects but is waiting for leadership from the Councilman.

When students first approached Nancy Chou about creating a bike program at Nightengale Middle School, the school had a bike cage for one or two cyclists that was opened and closed once a day by school administrators. Today they have both the above pictured "Bike Zone" and an active advocacy scene. Photo: Josef Bray Ali/Flying Pigeon

Dream It.  Design It. Do It.

The 3 D’s are the ethos of the D3 Lab of Nightingale Middle School in Cypress Park in Northeast Los Angeles.  The program is designed to help students learn to create change in their community.  Recently, the students waded into the world of bike advocacy in a campaign to create safe passages to their school along just less than a mile of road around their school.  Advocacy for school students is usually confined to Bike to School Days and bringing in bike rodeos, but the D3′ers in Nightingale want to take their advocacy on the street.

Specifically two streets that surround Nightingale: Cypress Avenue – from Pepper Avenue to Arroyo Seco Avenue (0.48 miles – immediately alongside NMS) and Avenue 28 – from Pepper Avenue to Figueroa Street (0.48 miles – one block from NMS).  The good news, both streets appear in the city’s Bike Plan and the five year bike implementation plan.  The bad news, there’s no plan to finish the streets in the near-term and the kids at Nightingale won’t be there forever.

After students expressed interest in a bike program, Nancy Chou, who heads the D3 Lab program at Nightingale reached out to the local bicycle co-op, the Bike Oven and local bike shop the Flying Pigeon Bike Shop to come talk to students about bike safety and advocacy.   Bike Oven founder and Flying Pigeon owner Josef Bray-Ali responded, and he brought CicLAvia consultant (and Streetsblog Board Member) Joe Linton to a student workshop on bicycling.

“I was really surprised to see all the interest in this.  There were a lot of kids at the bike rally and they’re interested in bicycling and making things better for their friends, for their school,” Bray-Ali said of the meeting. Read more…

Mikey, Jonathan and George after being frisked on Ave. 50 and York Blvd. in Highland Park.

Mikey, Jonathan, and George were waiting for a friend just a few feet from the corner of Ave. 50 and York Blvd. in Highland Park when a police car pulled up. Two cops got out and told them to turn around, spread their legs, and put their hands behind their backs.

The police proceeded to give them a very thorough pat-down, including reaching their hands into the boys’ pants and turning their pockets inside out. They rifled through the boys’ wallets for ID and then ran their information. They poked around in the truck the boys had been standing next to, even though it wasn’t theirs.

The boys were clean — something the kids had told the police themselves, to no avail. Without an apology or even a “Have a nice day,” the police were gone. The whole incident had taken only a few minutes.

“What was that all about?” I asked.

The police had been looking for weapons, they said. It happens to them a lot. It happens to all their friends, too.

It was normal, they shrugged.

While it might be the “norm,” it shouldn’t be “normal” for minority and lower/lower-middle class youth to feel they could be treated to public TSA-style pat-downs any and every time they strike out into their neighborhood streets. Besides being unlawful, such incidents are demoralizing, dehumanizing, and disempowering. Because these incidents generally happen in view of everyone, they also have the unfortunate effect of communicating to the more recent arrivals that the minority youth are trouble, while effectively telling these youth that they are not welcome in the very neighborhoods they grew up in.

Jonathan, George and Mikey are searched by police while they wait for a friend.

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Nowhere else in LA area are individual street routes as important than in the Northeast. Because of the area’s hills there is no grid.  Streets wind their way up hills and cut through valleys creating public space and connecting the community to places beyond.

Photo:Latino Urban Forum/Flickr

Sixteen Occidental College students are rethinking designs for York Boulevard in Highland Park and Colorado Boulevard in Eagle Rock as part of Urban and Environmental Policy Institute transportation class.

I facilitated a workshop to have the students to approach transportation planning from a non-traditional approach. Rather than ask the students the typical question. “How would you improve transportation on Colorado and York Boulevards?” I asked a different question.

Usually, the first question would have created answers such as wider sidewalks, bike lanes, bus service, more parking or faster traffic speeds. These are all great but they fail to understand how people want to use the street as public space.

Instead we took a comprehensive approach to the street design. I asked the students how would they envision these streets in 50 years?  From this point we can plan backwards and find create the right mobility and land use patterns for the streets.

By having the students investigate how they envision the role of streets in their lives in 50 years we received creative, innovated, in-depth comprehensive answers.  Read more…

When two Streetsblog sponsors get together, the world is our oyster. For more on the meeting, read this first hand review at g4do-g4do

Earlier this year, when the designs for South Figueroa’s My Figueroa project were released, Josef Bray-Ali wasn’t happy.  While many advocates celebrated designs that would, if implemented, result in segregated bike paths, transit-only lanes, pedestrian plazas (at a minimum), Bray-Ali saw another major investment in the Downtown and area around L.A. Live. Meanwhile, the portion of Figueroa where he worked and that he loved remained a traffic sewer, with five lanes of concrete and curbside parking blighting the area.

Now, with the city considering bike improvements for North Figueroa, Bray-Ali sees an opportunity to bring My Figueroa to North Figueroa.  Last week, a group of thirty community activists gathered in the Flying Pigeon Bike Shop to create an organization to do just that.  At the Flying Pigeon blog, Bray-Ali notes that the event expanded beyond the usual suspects with local businesses sponsoring the meeting by donating the chairs, tables, food, and other supplies.

“The city sees North Figueroa as a cut through for people that don’t want to drive on the 110,” Bray-Ali explains.  ”As a result, cars cut through the neighborhood without stopping, businesses suffer and the middle-class moves farther away.”

In other words, this is about more than a bike lane.

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