Streetsblog Los Angeles

(Update: I got a little confused by the motion.  It will shut down through traffic on Yucca Street in Hollywood, between Las Palmas Ave. and Whitley Ave.   Cars are permitted, through traffic is blocked.  Curbed found me out. – DN)

In 1995, the City of Los Angeles installed some temporary traffic diverters at three intersections along Yucca Street to keep vehicular traffic and discourage other illegal activities that were too common-place such as drug dealing.  They closed the intersections with concrete bollards and later with attachable plastic traffic bollards.  Over the years, the experiment has been a success.  Crime rates on Yucca have dropped off while people-powered transportation has flourished.

View Yucca Street in a larger map

Seventeen years later, Councilmen Eric Garcetti and Tom LaBonge want to finally make the closures permanent while creating a more inviting place for cyclists and pedestrians.  The concrete bollards at the intersections of Yucca and Las Palmas, Cherokee, and Whitley Avenues has degraded creating a community eye sore and the temporary plastic ones are so beat up that in some cases drivers go right over them without even realizing that they are there.

The Councilmen hope that making the closure permanent, and working with the LADOT they can create more attractive and permanent ways to keep car traffic from using Yucca.  When pressed as to why they’re proposing to make the “temporary” closure permanent now, after 17 years of “temporary,” staff pointed to the poor shape of the bollards, a desire to improve the look of the three intersections, and a chance to make sure the intersections and Yucca Street work as a bicycle corridor.

For cyclists, Yucca Street already includes sharrows from Cahuenga Boulevard to Vine Street as part of a north-south bikeway connector. LADOT plans to create an east-west arm of this connector on Yucca Street by extending the Sharrows west to Highland Avenue. Staff for Garcetti believe this will create a comfortable corridor for bicyclists who wish to avoid busy Hollywood Boulevard and Franklin Avenue.

The City Council Transportation Committee will hear this motion as part of the regular meeting on Wednesday.  Streetsblog will follow-up on this story as it moves forward.

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.

Read more…

Sibelius Park, a housing complex in Copenhagen, has cooperated with the Danish Crime Prevention Council to carefully define private, semiprivate, semipublic and public territories in the complex. Subsequent studies have shown that there is less crime and greater security than in other similar developments. Photos: Jan Gehl

Editor’s note: Streetsblog  is thrilled to launch a three-part series today by renowned Danish architect and livable streets luminary Jan Gehl. The pieces are excerpts are from his book, “Cities for People” published by Island Press. Donate to LA Streetsblog and you’ll qualify to win a copy of the book, courtesy of Island Press. Visit the Island Press website to find many more great titles by the nation’s leading publisher of books on environmental issues.

Feeling safe is crucial if we hope to have people embrace city space. In general, life and people themselves make the city more inviting and safe in terms of both experienced and perceived security.

In this section we deal with the safe city issue with the goal of ensuring good cities by inviting walking, biking and staying. Our discussion will focus on two important sectors where targeted efforts can satisfy the requirement for safety in city space: traffic safety and crime prevention.

Throughout the entire period of car encroachment, cities have tried to remove bicycle traffic from their streets. The risk of accident to pedestrians and bicyclists has been great throughout the rise in car traffic, and the fear of accident even greater.

Many European countries and North America experienced the car invasion early on and have watched city quality deteriorate year by year. There have been numerous counter reactions and an incipient development of new traffic planning principles in response. In other countries whose economies have developed more slowly and modestly, cars have only begun to invade cities more recently. In every case the result is a dramatic worsening of conditions for pedestrians and bicycle traffic.

Read more…

Turning This...

Its no secret that outside of Griffith Park, Los Angeles is a city starving for open space.  There is nowhere this is more true than Hollywood, where even a weekly farmer’s market is under attack because it blocks access to a parking lot.  Thus, while Hollywood waits for projects such as the Hollywood Freeway Central Park, it’s important to try and create pockets of places where people can be outside in a safe and welcoming environment.

To that end, yesterday the embattled Community Redevelopment Agency, City Council President Eric Garcetti and Hollywood-area business leaders gathered to break ground on the “Cahuenga Alley” project which will turn the currently hideous alley into a clean, protected, pedestrian walkway.  The first-of-its-kind project is a sort of public-private partnership where the city will create the pedestrian plaza and local businesses will will install landscaping and decorative lighting, set up outdoor dining and patio space.  Maintenance and security will be maintained by the businesses.

...Into this. Image one: Office of Eric Garcetti. Image two: CRA

“Today we begin the Cahuenga alley’s transformation into a thriving pedestrian environment where locals and tourists alike can come to relax and enjoy our beautiful weather.  It’s going to be great for business and great for Hollywood,” said Council President Garcetti through a press release.

This project is reminiscent of outdoor mall projects such as The Grove or The Promenade in Santa Monica, but the here the alley itself will remain a publicly owned street.  Businesses will create the atmosphere, but the street will be open for public use and as a thoroughfare regardless of people’s dinner plans. Read more…

Earlier this year, urban planner and Streetsblog Board Member James Rojas wrote about a harrowing experience he had while trying to cross the street in his home town of Alhambra.  While the cause of the experience was some poor driving, the urban planner in Rojas couldn’t help but believe that with better design, Alhambra could be made a better, cleaner and safer city for pedestrians.

Yesterday, Rojas announced the formation of a new organization, Alhambra Beyond Cars (ABC) through social media on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.  The purpose of ABC is to, in Rojas’ words from the above video, “If you look at mobility issues in Alhambra, walking, biking, and health, we need to increase the mobility of residents without driving.”

We usually don’t list calendar events from outside the city in our calendar, but we’ll make an exception for the first couple of organizational meetings for ABC.  Stay tuned.

Complete Streets are multi-use environments that enable safe and comfortable access for all users on both roadways and sidewalks in a way that promotes vibrant, healthy and active neighborhoods.  Pedestrians, bicyclists, motorists and public transportation users of all ages and abilities, including older people, children and people with disabilities, are able to safely move along and across a Complete Street environment.”  (Definition from Conference Program)

Strong examples are noticeably lacking in Los Angeles, but this conference was designed to inspire people to action!

Packed room at Complete Streets conference

Held at the Japanese American National Museum in downtown LA, it was a treat to go to a conference on one of my favorite topics: making streets more people friendly. You might say I’m a radical “streets for people” person, my attempt to be more positive than saying I’m a radical anti-carist, not wanting my car owning friends to be offended by my passions.

The unusually long day (8am to 7 pm) was supported with lots of fabulous food.  Though I don’t want to appear unappreciative of the many culinary delights, probably we could do with less eating and more movement a la Japanese style.  Seems like tai chi breaks are more common than coffee breaks in that part of the world, and there’s a lot less obesity and degenerative diseases there as well, so no time like the present to start eating less and moving ourselves more, much easier once our streets become more complete, the main subject here, after all.

For the rest of the article, click here to go to the L.A. Eco-Village blog.

The South Figueroa Corridor Plan proposes changes for more than just Figueroa Street.

A standing room only audience descended on the Fashion Institute of Design on South Grand Street to listen to a presentation from the embattled Community Redevelopment Agency for a ground breaking and popular proposal to transform the South Figueroa Corridor.  When people discuss Los Angeles’ streets, they usually use terms such as “car-oriented” or “ugly.”  The new South Figueroa, aka My Figueroa, would be a truly beautiful street designed for people to walk, bike wait for transit or just enjoy life outside as well as a way to shuffle cars from one area to another.

The South Figueroa Corridor Project covers three miles of South Figueroa from 41st Street to Seventh Street as well as a half mile of 11st Street between Figueroa and Broadway, a half mile of Martin Luther King (MLK) Boulevard just south of Exposition Park, and a half mile of Bill Robertson Boulevard from into Exposition Park starting at MLK Boulevard.  While there are different proposals being studied for each part of the corridor, Oliver Schultze, from the world-renowned Gehl Architects in Copenhagen, promised that every part of the corridor would see some sort of improvement.

Good.

The project team offered three proposals for different sections of Figueroa, a “good,” “better,” and “best” options.  Whether a segment qualifies for good, better, or best depends on the amount of funding available and the current level of street life in the segment.  The good option consisted of an eight foot separated bike lane traveling the length of the corridor in each direction, an eighteen inch separator, car parking and bus bump outs, and a transit only lane for buses and streetcars.  In addition to creating a safe place for cyclists, removing them from car traffic and the sidewalk, it also created a 22 foot buffer between the sidewalk and the first regular vehicle travel lane.

As Joe Linton noted from the audience, “I love that protected bike lanes are the base proposal.”  Figueroa street would be the first street in Los Angeles to feature protected bike lanes.  In fact, no city in Los Angeles County has these special bike lanes, although Long Beach is adding some as we speak. Read more…

For a copy of the flyer announcing their February meetings, click here.

I have to be honest.  If the My Figueroa project ends up fulfilling its mission of designing a people-friendly Figueroa Street from the southwest corner of Exposition Park to Downtown Los Angeles only by adding a couple of trees and repainting the crosswalks, I’ll be extremely disappointed.

The project team raised expectations by encouraging participants to last September’s community meetings to consider improvements to the corridor such as separated bike lanes and scramble crosswalks.  Then, in addition to partnering with Streetsblog Board Member Deborah Murphy, they announced that the architects for the project were the world renowned Gehl Architects out of Copenhagen.

Now, via a flier announcing February’s outreach meetings, they’ve released their first proposed sketches for the corridor.  Instead of five through traffic lanes, a planted median and some street parking, let’s look at the street that’s proposed in the picture above.  Instead of five lanes of yuck and some trees, I see two lanes of through traffic, a dedicated transit lane, a pedestrian plaza, a lane for local and bicycle traffic and then restaurant seating.  What a change that would be… Read more…

To see a full-size version of this image, click here.

I have been saying for years that Pasadena needs to give Fair Oaks Ave an extreme pedestrian-cyclist make-over along the street from at least the South Pasadena border (by the Raymond Restaurant) to Old Pasadena. The need for this make-over seems obvious when you consider: 1) Fair Oaks Ave looks like a mini-highway as you drive or, god forbid, walk down it, and 2) that the Huntington Hospital (a huge employer) adds a substantial presence to the built environment in Downtown Pasadena, but is tenuously connected at best to the area for pedestrians and cyclists, diluting if not completely negating its potential positive effects on the urban environment. In other words, the synergy is lost.

That’s why I am particularly excited to learn that South Pasadena (actually a separate municipality but closely tied to Pasadena both historically and culturally) will hopefully jump start the process for Pasadena (by giving us an inspirational nudge) as construction begins this week on a major revamp project along Fair Oaks Ave, called the “Fair Oaks Corridor Improvement Project,” that goes right through South Pasadena’s downtown district. The improvement plans entail the following: Read more…