Streetsblog Los Angeles

At Ease, Soldier: A young member of the East Side Riders proudly poses with his bike at the Watts Towers.

Several years ago, I spent a week photographing a stretch of 37th St. as part of a neighborhood documentation project of the area around USC. Where other photographers had diligently snapped structures and streets, I had cajoled residents into participating in the project and later gave them copies of the photos so they could see the final product. The soul of a neighborhood is its people, I had argued in defending my approach at the time. Without them, the structures are just a shell.

I was reminded of this while surveying the scene at Augustus Hawkins Natural Park on a chilly Sunday morning in late January. About 60 riders had shown up to participate in the CicLAvia South L.A. Exploration Ride through Watts. Each had a different motivation for being there. Some simply enjoyed participating in exploratory group rides. Those unfamiliar with the area came to check out our landmark destination, the Watts Towers. Others were linked to the CicLAvia South L.A. Host Committee, TRUST South L.A., C.I.C.L.E., or the BikeRoWave, the groups facilitating the ride. Still others were from the Watts-based East Side Riders (ESR), eager to make the case for Watts to be included in the CicLAvia expansion route.

Finally, a sizable contingent—at least 20%—came to document the ride, including the L.A. Times, KPCC’s OnCentral, the Annenberg Innovation Lab, filmmakers from Ride: In Living Color, folks from ParTour (a USC initiative harnessing new media and mobile technology to advance positive social change), and, of course, Streetsblog. The apparent newsworthiness of this crossing of socio-economic boundaries served to underscore how infrequently it occurs, even in a city as diverse as ours.

The ride was a continuation of the Committee’s efforts to host monthly rides into South LA. The larger purpose was to promote cycling and show the value of livable streets in communities, bridge gaps between communities by helping people explore new areas, demonstrate proper riding techniques and the rules of the road, and, in the case of ParTour, to engage participants in the creation of a crowd-sourced map of the route to showcase South L.A. as a rideable destination. Read more…

Vea el Streetfilm sin subtítulos, aqui.

After sponsoring two Streetfilms of the first two CicLAvias, Los Angeles’ version of the open streets festival based on Bogota’s Ciclovia, Los Angeles Streetsblog faced a dilemma: How can we continue to cover the event that draws over a hundred thousand Angelenos to the streets?  The Answer? Make a Streetfilm that was accessible to Southern California’s large Spanish-speaking population.

¡Viva CicLAvia! consists of two parts.  First, narrator Mara Corina Arellano Colin explains the history and concept of Los Angeles’ amazing open streets party, including footage and photos from similar festivals in Bogota, Guadalajara, Mexico City, Brussels and Miami.  While the narration is a great explanation of the benefits and culture of CicLAvia, the soul of Social Impact Consulting’s efforts are the interviews with participants.

The next five minutes is a parade of Spanish speakers professing their love of CicLAvia.  Whether it’s the team from South Central’s Mendez Bike Shop, the traffic officer spreading his arms while explaining Viva CicLAvia, or Hollywood’s City Councilman Eric Garcetti; the broad smiles in the Southern California sun give a message in any language.  Giving people more chances to play in the sun is good for Los Angeles.

This Streetfilm marked another first for Streetfilms, a directly reader supported video.  L.A. Streetsblog asked its readers if they wanted a Spanish language film on CicLAvia, and when they said yes, the readers were challenged through a Kick Starter campaign to fund the film.  Needless to say, the readers came through.

Watch here without English subtitles.

A South LA Filmmaker Captures the Stories of African-American Cyclists on Film

Filmmaker, South LA native, and long-time rider Yolanda Davis-Overstreet on her bike in eighth grade.

WHAT STAYED WITH HER were the stories, said Yolanda Davis-Overstreet, South LA native and director of “Ride: In Living Color,” a documentary currently being filmed on African-American cyclists.

The stories started flowing from the moment she walked into City of Bicycles in Inglewood in 1996, and they didn’t stop coming over the hours spent on 50-80 mile group training rides around Los Angeles. The riders’ mutual enthusiasm for cycling made it easier for people from different walks of life to get to know each other as individuals and share their histories more openly, she said.

It would be almost 15 years before Davis-Overstreet started to gather those stories more formally. Beginning with the 2011 Tour de Palm Springs, she documented the voices of participating riders of color. She then moved on to interview cyclists from Los Angeles and around the US, including Olympians Giddeon Massie and Nelson Vails, and local professional racer and mentor to inner-city cyclists, Rahsaan Bahati. Read more…

Today is the day Los Angeles Streetsblog has been waiting for since our first launch in March of 2008.  Today, we’re expanding.  Everyone give a warm welcome to our two newest writers, Kris Fortin and Sahra Sulaiman.

Kris Fortin, photo:Rafael Cardenas

Streetsblog is happy to announce that thanks to a generous grant from the California Endowment, today we are opening two “local bureaus” in South Los Angeles and Boyle Heights.  These bureaus will each feature new writers who will bring us stories on how decisions on transportation planning, development, transit oriented development and open space impact the health and character of these communities.

There’s also a lot that everyone can learn from these communities.  Fortin and Sulaiman will be exploring how the culture of these communities impacts their streetscapes, architecture and local culture.  As we explored in-depth during our 2011 series on L.A. County Department of Public Health PLACE Grants, how a community is built has a dramatic impact on the health, well-being and life expectancy of the people living there.

In addition to publishing their stories on the front page of Streetsblog, all of the South L.A. stories and Boyle Heights stories will be published on special community sites at http://eastsidestreetsblog.org and http://southlastreetsblog.org .

Sahra Sulaiman

In Boyle Heights, Kris Fortin will be leading our local coverage efforts.  Fortin has been freelance writing about the Latino community for the past four years at the Los Angeles Times, the former Café Magazine, and currently at Boyle Heights Beat and Mis Neighbors. After getting his bachelor’s degree in journalism and urban studies and planning, Fortin wedded the two areas through an internship at Planetizen and hopes to continue to delve deeper into urban issues through journalism.

In South L.A., our lead writer is Sahra Sulaiman.  Sulaiman is a documentary photographer and researcher who has been 99.5% car-free since buying a road bike and riding it across Spain on a dare in 1996. A well-travelled M.A. and A.B.D. in International Relations, she also is deeply invested in LA as a regular volunteer with at-risk teens in local-area high schools and is currently working on a year-long photography project documenting the difficult circumstances which many of them endure. She seeks to use her skills for gathering unique stories to bring a more human dimension to discussions about the future of transit in Los Angeles.

Each writer will be publishing a story later today.  I won’t ruin the surprise for you, but they’re both great reads.

Carlos Morales PhotoFlying Pigeon

Speaking of surprises, we’re also proud to announce the addition of Carlos Morales to our team.  You may know Morales through his writing at The Voice/La Voz papers in East L.A. or you might recognize him as the founder of the Eastside Bike Club.  Morales will be writing a weekly column for us about his observations and views of life while pedaling through Los Angeles.  His first piece will run a little later this week.

But don’t worry, just because new writers are joining the team doesn’t mean that our original writer, Damien Newton, is going anywhere.  You might see his byline a little less frequently than several times a day, but the tradeoff is that you’ll also see longer stories and more original reporting.

I’m sure some of you are reading this and wondering, “Why does Boyle Heights and South L.A. get local coverage and not my community?  The good news is that we plan on continuing to expand over the next couple of years to provide more community reporting.  If you can help us find a source of local funds, we’ll be happy to provide regular local coverage in your community as well.

Supporters and friends of artist Patrick Henry Johnson gathered on 1/22/12 to celebrate the dedication of the mural, Elixir, to the community.

Although the pilgrimage route along Crenshaw Blvd. was short—0.8 miles, to be exact, it was rich in meaning.

The mission was the dedication of Patrick Henry Johnson’s 40×40 ft. mural, Elixir, to the community.

Led by the artist, approximately 25 “pilgrims” made their way from Starbucks towards the group of supporters and artists already waiting at the base of the resplendent African American woman he had painted, just as the day was coming to a close.

The colors generated by the setting sun mirrored those depicting her as a transcendent body, rising to occupy her rightful place in the heavens as her own, self-contained universe.

Johnson had decided to make the event a pilgrimage, he said to the supporters crowded around him in front of the work, because of his desire to bring the community together “in a collective agreement to make the mural sacred.” Although Johnson had done the entire painting himself, an effort requiring just under 3 full months of work, he acknowledged he couldn’t have done it without the support of the community. When he needed funds to rent a lift so he could reach the top of the wall, he said, friends came together to contribute the $270 that allowed him to finish the piece.

Friends and community members also lent moral support for him while he was painting, with one even calling to make sure he was ok when she heard him screaming and crying in front of the wall from across the boulevard. His screaming wasn’t madness, he explained to us. “On the second to last day [of painting], I had this incredible surge of energy…I discovered the reason I had to do the painting myself…I couldn’t have had another artist on the painting because of the love that I have for the subject matter.” And because, he realized, he needed to let her go. Read more…

As the second trickled away on the 2011 work year, the Federal Transit Administration issued its Record of Decision approving the environmental documents for the Crenshaw Light Rail Line.  The approval allows Metro to go forward with preliminary acquisitions and work needed to construct the line. It also makes the project able to receive federal funds, although most of the project is paid for with funds from the Measure R sales tax.

While both Metro Staff and staff for Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas have hailed the FTA’s decision as a “milestone,” one would expect the Crenshaw Subway Coalition (CSC) which is suing the project under environmental justice concerns to have an opposite reaction.

Instead, CSC President Damien Goodmon sees an opportunity for Metro and CSC to work together even as the community group’s lawsuit against the line moves forward.

While the FTA’s decision wasn’t popular with proponents of a grade-separated rail line, instead of railing against the decision, a decision that could be overturned by a federal judge, opens an opportunity for Metro to begin studying the proposed “subway option” for Crenshaw where the twelve blocks.

Now that Metro has its Record of Decision, it can continue on its current track while beginning a second track to integrate the tunnel Goodmon argues.  Assuming the tunnel is cleared, it would allow contractors to include the tunnel in construction bids, an option they currently have for “optional stations” in Westchester and Leimert Park.

“At the end of the day, it cost Expo Construction Authority more to fight us than it would have to put an overpass or underpass at Farmdale,” said Goodmon referencing his past battles over the Expo Line.  ”Metro shouldn’t repeat that mistake.”

Read more…

A look at the current (top) and planned (bottom) Jefferson Boulevard from a presentation prepared by Fehr & Pehrs

The Village at USC, a 5.23 million square foot mixed use development being programmed by the University of Southern California, is back in the news. Yesterday, Blog Downtown examined how the retail plans for the project could impact the Downtown. But the project could also have a major impact on the car parking in the area both in the garages that will be developed and on Jefferson Boulevard.

As you can see on the design above, a ten foot sidewalk and twelve foot parking lane will be replaced with a seventeen foot sidewalk and six foot bicycle lane. The new configuration would run for about a mile on Jefferson between Figueroa Street and Vermont Avenue. There are now bike lanes in the area, the new Expo Bike Lanes just south of Jefferson on Exposition Boulevard.  The Jefferson lanes promise improvement.  They are planned to be both wider and better placed on the street.

There is a benefit to pedestrians in the project area as well. The current road configuration has 80′ of asphalt between the sidewalks creating a wide barrier for anyone looking to cross the street. By widening the sidewalk, the crossing distance by fourteen feet and twelve of the remaining 66 feet are bike lanes which are a lot easier to cross and have much lower crash rates than mixed use travel lanes. Read more…

Exactly what it looks like. Photo: Gökhan Esirgen

By now, many of you have seen the pictures that Gökhan Esirgen took of a car sitting on the Expo tracks at the station of Exposition Boulevard and Vermont Avenue that appeared on the Transit Coalition forum Tuesday evening.  A quick call to the Expo Construction Authority confirmed that the picture shows exactly what people thought it showed, a distracted driver actually took a left onto the Expo tracks.

The Authority was quick to point out the signs and other markings which clearly state that cars do not belong on train tracks, perhaps spooked by all the attention given to the on-street crossings for Expo. While my photo library for the station doesn’t show the signs, I was mostly looking at the bike lanes which ran parallel to the station not crossing it, I do remember the signage being pretty clear about what was happening.

But in the end, all the signage, gates and safety devices in the world don’t amount to much if a negligent driver is determined to cause havoc.  In this case, the damage was minimal.  The car stopped before it could do any real damage to the tracks and testing resumed later on Tuesday afternoon.

This image, taken in South L.A., is used around the world to demonstrate how you can have lots of options, and still be in a food desert. Photo: David McNew/Getty Images

(Mark Vallianatos is Policy Director of UEPI and an Adjunct Professor at Occidental College, where he currently teaches the Environmental Stewards class. Mark is co-author of The Next Los Angeles: the Struggle for a Livable City and a number of publications on food access, transportation, and goods movement.)

Several years ago, our institute collaborated with community groups on a food assessment of three neighborhoods in South and Central Los Angeles. Residents, many of them students and parents at local schools, mapped over a thousand locations where food could be bought  and conducted surveys of food selection inside a random sampling of these stores. Project CAFE (Community Action on Food Environment) captured valuable data on the distribution of food retail establishments and the availability, price and quality of healthy foods in different types of food stores. These findings, which you can check out in a short report  and a peer reviewed article, are consistent with other research on food access in low income areas of Los Angeles (and other places). Fast food is pervasive. Supermarkets and farmers markets are scarce. Corner stores and liquor stores – the most common place to buy ingredients for cooking – have a worse selection, higher prices, and lower quality than full service grocery stores.

When we talked with residents about the challenges of accessing a healthy meal and ideas to improve the food environment in their neighborhoods, one of the themes that they came back to again and again was transportation. Mothers described the difficulty of using transit to reach stores with better selection when they had to transfer lines and carry bags and manage children on crowded buses.  We heard that some drivers wouldn’t let riders bring hand carts onto buses. The difficulties of getting around to shop for food meant that many people who don’t own a car end up walking to the closest store- which, as we have seen, probably doesn’t have a great selection of fruits, vegetables, lean meats, etc.

Struck by this input, we looked for opportunities to do more work on the ways that transportation impacts food and health. With funding from a Caltrans environmental justice grant, we partnered with the Community Redevelopment Agency / LA and Esperanza Community Housing Corporation on a follow-up study on transportation and food access in South Los Angeles. This recently completed project looked at a variety of ways to get good food to people and take people to good food. Read more…

The Crenshaw Subway Coalition has two major issues with the Crenshaw Line as it's current planned: the lack of a Leimert Park Station and a need for grade separation along Crenshaw Blvd. But their legal testimony focused almost soley on the grade-separation. Foreshadowing?

The Source had barely published its story highlighting the Metro Board’s decision to approve the environmental certification of a Crenshaw Light Rail line that may or may not have a Leimert Park Station and definately runs at-grade through the Crenshaw communities’ top retail corridor when I caught up to Damien Goodmon, the head of the Crenshaw Subway Coalition. His reaction was concise and clear, “The Metro board has had its say, now it is time for the community to have its say through the courts.”

And just like that, the countdown for a lawsuit on the Crenshaw line began.

The Crenshaw line would be 8.5-mile light rail project that will run along and under Crenshaw Boulevard, Florence Avenue and Aviation Boulevard. The line will connect the Expo and Green Lines and will pass through South L.A. and Inglewood. The budget for the project is over $1.7 billion, almost all of which is coming from the 2008 Measure R sales tax. It is scheduled to open in 2018.

The Crenshaw Subway Coalition worked closely with Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas to try and get the light rail grade separated for twelve blocks through Crenshaw’s downtown business district and a station to serve the Leimert Park Community earlier this year.  The Coalition was completely rebuffed on the first front, and got a strange “we’ll build the station if we can afford it” answer on the station.  However, there was not a unified front between the Coalition and Ridley-Thomas yesterday.  While Goodmon was threatening legal action against the EIR, Ridley-Thomas was waxing poetic about the struggle to bring world class transit to South L.A.

From The Source:

“This is a historic moment,” said Los Angeles County Supervisor and Metro Board member Mark Ridley-Thomas. “For 25 years, community leaders have worked to make a high-quality light rail line a reality. This was the dream of Julian Dixon, of Diane Watson, of Mayor Tom Bradley and many, many others. Today’s vote means we’re ready to start right away — not 15 years from now as originally was slated to happen…”

Meanwhile, the Crenshaw Subway Coalition is working with Raymond Johnson Esq.  The principal at Johnson & Sedlack, Johnson has a reputation as an accomplished environmental lawyer who doesn’t shy away from fighting the goliaths of the world whether the defendent was WalMart or local governments such as Orange County or and the San Bernadino Water District.

Read more…