Streetsblog Los Angeles

One of the key concerns of Neighbors for Smart Rail is that cars trying to access the 405 will get backed up along Sepulveda Boulevard causing paralysis for motorized traffic throughout the Westside. The Expo Construction Authority says these claims are overstated.

The Expo Construction Authority is anxious to stop history from repeating itself.

When clearances for the first phase of the Expo Line appeared all but certain, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), a regulatory agency which regulates privately owned public utilities in the state of California, including electric power, telecommunications, natural gas and water companies, threw them a curve ball.  The last government body to look over the environmental documents for Phase I, CPUC ordered substantial new reviews of two rail crossings which led to an additional rail station at Farmdale Avenue near Dorsey High School and a pedestrian bridge elsewhere.  The new studies were championed by the Fix Expo campaign which compiled a large technical comments document and produced hundreds of letters of concern.

“The Westside of Los Angeles has waited too long for the arrival of mass transit and the community wants an alternative to the gridlock and congestion of the I-10 freeway,” writes Gabriela Collins of the Expo Construction Authority.   “CPUC approval of the Resolution on November 10, 2011 is an important step in keeping this project on track.”

As Expo Phase II heads towards its date with CPUC on November 10, the Expo Construction Authority has set up a website for people to easily send comments to the Commission.  Comments are due on Friday of this week, but supporters of the project won’t have to comb through the environmental documents themselves, the Expo Construction Authority has already written the support letter outlining the clearances that the rail crossings have already earned and the outreach that Expo has done on Phase II.  You can read the letter and submit it to CPUC if you wish by clicking here.

For it’s part, the Authority believes that Expo Phase II deserves quick apporval from CPUC.   Read more…

Photos: Jonathan Weiss

When Jonathan Weiss emailed me two weeks ago announcing that Sharrows placeholders appeared on Motor Avenue, I didn’t think too much of it. After all, stencils marking a place for bike racks have been on the ground next to my Big Blue Bus stop for almost five months.

However, apparently LADOT contractors were working overtime again, because yesterday morning Weiss grabbed the above pictures while out on a Sunday morning Constitutional. He was greeted by these views cycling Southbound on Motor Avenue.  New Sharrows have already been spotted on Arden Ave.,  Fountain Avenue, Yucca Street and Vine Street in the Mid-/K-/Downtown areas.  If you see more Sharrows on the street, drop us a line and let us know.

I'm really getting good use out of this photo shoot of NFSR signs I did last August.

As promised, Neighbors for Smart Rail (NFSR) is appealing the decision of Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Thomas McKnew to dismiss their lawsuit alleging that the Expo Construction Authority violated state environmental law when doing their studies of the future light rail lines route.  The appeal was filed nearly two weeks ago, on September 15, to the California Court of Appeals

“NFSR is looking to prevent West L.A. gridlock by protecting access to the 10 freeway through West L.A.,” writes president Terri Tippett in a press statement.  ”Trains blocking Overland and Westwood 24 times per hour will have a devastating impact on the existing area traffic, and all evidence shows that Expo didn’t properly study it.”

At first glance, their legal filings don’t appear to be much different in substance than the arguments McKnew rejected earlier this year so NFSR isn’t arguing anything new, just that McKnew erred in ordering the case dismissed last year.   Their main point is that the recently decided  Sunnyvale West Neighborhood Association v. City of Sunnyvale City Council shows that traffic studies should examine the impact a new project will have on current conditions, not on conditions at the end of the “life of the project.”   In Sunnyvale, a state superior court ruled that the city’s environmental review of a road extension violated state law because it based it’s review on traffic projections for 2020 instead of current conditions. Read more…

Sharrows will appear on Motor Ave. right where that little arrow is...Photo: Jonathan Weiss

Earlier this week, Joe Linton noticed that marking were appearing on mid-town streets to mark the spot where Sharrows would be placed.  Linton is one of the harshest critics of the city’s attempts to jump off the Bike Plan to add Sharrows to city streets to reach the Mayor’s stated promise of 40 miles of bike projects every year for the next five.

Linton’s fellow Los Angeles Bicycle Advisory Committee Member Jonathan Weiss spotted Sharrows markings (the x and arrow designating where a Sharrow should go) along Motor Avenue on the Westside.  The quick takeaway is that LADOT is serious about getting these 20 miles of new Sharrowed streets on the ground as quickly as possible.

We should note that the same section of Motor Avenue that is going to receive the Sharrows is due to receive bike lanes in the Bike Plan that was passed in March of this year.  There is no timeline on when the Sharrows will be converted to Bike Lanes.  But in the meantime, the city that took almost eight years to implement its first Sharrows now seems to be embracing them with gusto.

Some Neighborhood Council Members wanted separated bike lanes, similar to the ones pictured here, for Main Street in Venice. LADOT wouldn't commit to that design, and the NC gave a conditional go ahead to go forward with standard bike lanes.

Last night, the Venice Neighborhood Council agreed  to the Main Street Road Diet/Bike Lanes plan proposed by LADOT.  The new road striping ought to be on the ground “in the next couple of weeks.”  Despite its approval, the Neighborhood Council had some concerns with the project and wanted LADOT to return with more safety measures to protect cyclists and calm traffic.  The Road Diet will run on Main Street from Navy St. to Windward Circle, and will extend the Santa Monica bike lanes and road diet into Venice.

There was a minor change from the original plan.  Currently, Main Street has four eleven foot through travel lanes with seven feet on each side of the street for car parking.  The original road diet changed the configuration to two eleven foot travel lanes, one eleven foot turn lane, two 5 foot bike lanes and two seven foot car parking areas.  Some cyclists, notably Alex Thompson at Bikeside, complained the new configuration had cyclists planted squarely in the door zone, especially since many vehicles in today’s world are larger than seven feet wide.

LADOT  responded that eleven feet was the minimum for the car travel lanes because Main Street is a regularly traveled route for both the Santa Monica Big Blue Bus and Metro buses.  However, the new design does take a foot out of the turning lane to make the bike lanes five and a half feet larger.  This 10% increase will give cyclists more room to maneuver when car doors are (illegally) opened in their path, but doesn’t completely solve the problem of door zone bicycle lanes.

As we saw back in January, the debate over the plan was because members of the Neighborhood Council wanted a more progressive plan for Main Street than LADOT was willing to provide.  Questions about extending the lanes all the way south to the Venice Street Bike Lane or separating the lanes as they did on 3rd Street and Broadway in Long Beach and in Portland were dismissed.  The Main Street Road Diet is designed to link up with the three lane with bike lanes configuration of the road north on Main Street. Read more…

Some Expo supporters thought this webpagemeant the legal challenges to Phase II were over. It doesn't.

(Update: Bart Reed of the Transit Coalition reports from the Metro Board Committee hearings that “pre-revenue testing” has not started yet, but other tests continue. Metro staff also confirmed the long-standing rumor that the Expo Line Phase I will open in early 2012.)

The past 24 hours brought mixed news for backers of the Expo Line. On the Transit Coalition message boards, Gökhan Esirgen reports that “prerevenue operations” for Phase I of the Expo Line has begun Testing for Phase I of the Expo Line continues. But while Phase I moves forward, Phase II remains mired in legal challenges, despite this week’s ground breaking.

Last December,  Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Thomas McKnew issued a preliminary ruling to dismiss the lawsuit brought by a coalition of Westside homeowner and community groups challenging the environmental documents issues for the Expo Line Phase II.  One month later, McKnew issued a final ruling affirming his initial view.

The plaintiffs, Neighbors for Smart Rail (NFSR), vowed they would appeal and have confirmed to me that their appeal would be filed later today.  Yesterday, rumors swirled that the lawsuit had been dismissed based on the above screen capture from the California Apellate Courts page, but the line saying the case would be dismissed later today only states what would happen if NFSR didn’t get their filing in. Read more…

A "bicycle freeway" probably won't look like this turn of the 20th Century wooden highway connecting Los Angeles and Pasadena. Photo: Wikimedia

When people try to describe the future Expo Bikeway that will provide a bike connection from Downtown Los Angeles to Downtown Santa Monica they reference the Orange Line Bike Path as the example. The Orange Line Path runs parallel to the Bus Rapid Transit Line in the Valley and many people are at least aware of it, even on the other side of hills.

As currently planned, the future bike path runs onto the street in several places most notably at major intersections such as Sepulveda, Sawtelle, Pico/Gateway and Barrington.  The problem of the bike path running on and off the congested Westside roads is well put in blogger/activist Gary Kavanagh’s Raise Some Red Flags Bike Advocates, Expo Line Bike Path/Route Not Looking So Good.

But the city’s Bicycle Advisory Committee (BAC) has a different vision for the Bike Path, a vision first described by BAC Planning Subcommittee chair Kent Strumpell (previously, a 10-year LACBC board member).  Another BAC member, Jonathan Weiss, who led the surprisingly successful campaign to create additional green space at the Westwood Blvd. Station, is going to Neighborhood Councils on the Westside asking them to support a study of a “bicycle freeway” design to elevate the bikeway at the intersections of Sepulveda, Sawtelle, Pico-Gateway and Barrington, roughly three quarters of a mile.

In a letter to the Westside Neighborhood Council, who ultimately voted to ask the Expo Construction Authority to study elevating the listed Westside intersections, Weiss make that a mini-bicycle freeway will keep cyclists safe, and car traffic moving.   Read more…

The full poster from the LAPD can be viewed by clicking here.

At nearly 3:00 A.M. on the morning of June 16, a man was crossing Venice Boulevard heading North when he was struck by a black late-model Volkswagon Jetta heading west. The victims wife tells the story:

The accident occurred around 3am on June 16th. My husband was crossing the street (heading North) at Venice and Hughes. He had the signal to walk and once he was just past the median, he was struck by a car that ran a red light while headed West on Venice blvd. Two officers where in the area and after the accident, one of the officers took off after the car but lost him around Venice and Motor. The driver has still not been found.

Despite the media’s obsession with reporting on traffic crashes and other forms of homicide, this report has gone largely un-mentioned in the news, perhaps because of the spectacular crash involving Christine Dahab and the Koreatown Cyclists just a mile and a quarter away that happened earlier in the evening. While I don’t mean to sound as though I’m excusing Dahab’s carelessness, the driver in this case is far more dangerous.  It takes a special breed of criminal to leave a man dieing in the street because of your negligence and then speed away.

The LAPD is still looking for information related to this crime.  If you know anything, please call the West L.A. Traffic Division Officer O. Osbourne at 213-473-0234.  If you’re calling after-hours or on the weekend, please call 1-877-LAPD-24-7.

This banner appeared over the I-10 briefly on Saturday morning. L.A. without cars? It was kind of nice. Photo: Jonathan Weiss

There are two theories to transportation engineering and traffic.  One theory is that traffic is like a raging river.  If you block it in one place, it will flow someplace else.  If you add more space for it to flow, it will flow more smoothly.  This theory has dominated traffic and transportation plans for years.

This theory got kicked in the shins over the last weekend.

The other theory is that people make choices based on what they believe makes the most sense at the time.  Under that theory, if you spend a disproportionate amount of resources building and expanding highways, people will drive, even for short trips that could easily be completed on bike or foot.

If you believe the first theory, this weekend’s temporary closure of the I-405, “the most driven highway in the country,” should have been a disaster.  There should have been drivers everywhere stuck on surface streets and gridlock should have clogged up all the freeways as people used their high-tech Waze application to “Beat Carmageddon” by exercising their God-given right to drive wherever they want to.  If you believe the second, then everything should have been fine.

The sad thing is, most transportation planners, especially ones working in Greater Los Angeles, still seem to believe the first theory.  After all, while the city and surrounding area benefitted tremendously from the closure of the 405, the reason the project was closed was so that they could expand the freeway, creating another pipe to flush our car traffic through.

Sig alert.com at 3:47 P.M. on Saturday

Read more…

Good use of the Bike Lane. For the record, this bus was stopped for at least a couple of minutes.

Yesterday, while plotting out my Bike to Work Day route that would allow me to see the most booths as possible, I got a phone call from my Mom.  She was biking to work, and wanted to know if I wanted to join her.  Longtime Streetsblog readers will note that Mom and I have had several bike adventures together in L.A. at Tour de Ballona’s, the 2009 River Ride, and a pair of CicLAvia.  Now we’re rounding out our experience with a Bike to Work Day Ride.

We met at the corner of McLaughlin and Venice, and had to travel to the corner of San Vicente Boulevard and Crescent Heights.  As one might expect when a couple of people are taking a ride on a route for the first time, there were some ups and downs.

Mom, post ride.

The good: For half the route, we had well marked and respected bike lanes.  Since we stayed to the left side of the lane, we were out of the door zone where there was car parking.  The first half of the ride was easy.

The bad: Not everyone respects the sanctity of the bike lane.  This Culver City Bus was the tip of the iceberg.  Twice along the route in Culver City we were forced to choose between slipping into the mixed use travel lane or on to the sidewalk.  In front of the above pictured bus was a row of trucks.  Later, a similar row of trucks was parked in front of “Crank Mob Park.”  When asked about the trip, Mom brought up the “large construction trucks in the bike lanes.” Read more…