Streetsblog Los Angeles

Noting a lack of large, publicly owned, land still available, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced a plan to develop 50 pocket parks scattered throughout the city over the next year and a half.

Most parks will be larger, but pocket parks can be as small as a parking space. Photo from Park(ing) Day LA in 2008 from Waltarr/Flickr

“Neighborhoods – especially those in the most park-poor areas of the City – will be greener, more beautiful and more livable, explained Villaraigosa in a speech yesterday to the Los Angeles Business Council. “And residents will have a new resource and a new reason to enjoy their community.”

The Mayor’s plan was short on details as to where the new parks would be, but the mayor’s press office provided some details on when a final plan would roll out.  A formal announcement, including the 50 park locations, will come in March upon the completion of the city’s current pocket park projects: Wilbur Park and two at the 49th Street School. The design of these parks is similar to the pocket parks at Bellair Ave. Park, Rockwood and Westood Parks.

Currently, Los Angeles has 15,717 acres of public parkland. The city’s standards, which mirror those for other cities in L.A. County and throughout the country call for 10 acres of parkland for every 1,000 residents.   The 2010 Census counts 3,792,621 Angelenos.  To meet its standard, the city would need almost 38,000 acres of open space.

Using pocket parks to increase greenspace has become a hot issue in Los Angles.  On Park(ing) Day earlier this year, Council Members Jose Huizar and Jan Perry called for a “pocket park demonstration project” in Downtown Los Angeles.  Their plan called for the city to experiment by basically making permanent some of the Park(ing) Day demonstration projects.  Downtown L.A. Neighborhood Council Member Valerie Watson commented at the time, “We want people flocking to, not speeding through, Downtown Los Angeles.” Read more…

This photo is looking west on Zoo Drive from Riverside Drive. If the City follows through on the proposed closure for west-bound road users, these cyclists will not be able to ride as pictured. Photo: Colin Bogart/LACBC

Visitors to Griffith Park over the last year have noted that there is some major construction going on near the Silver Lake Resevoir.  In order to protect Angelenos from any future plans to poison the water, the federal government is ordering that all open air resevoirs be taken offline and replaced with below ground ones.  That edict is creating constrcution projects in parks across the country, but in in Griffith Park it might alwo seal off parts of the park to bicyclists.

The city’s Department of Water and Power is currently working in Griffith Park to create a new underground reservoir so they can take the Silver Lake reservoir off-line. Roughly one year from now, DWP will be working in the northern tip of Griffith Park. That work will result in the partial closure of Zoo Drive from Riverside Drive to the west entrance at Forest Lawn.

During construction, which could last for at least a year, the street will be kept open for cars and other road users traveling eastbound into the park from Forest Lawn. However, cyclists will face a longer and more inconvenient route traveling west.

Westbound motorists, cyclists, and other road users will not be allowed to proceed past the intersection of Zoo Drive and Riverside Drive. Any motorist or cyclist traveling in the park westbound from the Zoo/Autry area will be forced to detour out of the park and across the 134 Freeway on Riverside Drive. Many cyclists use the stretch of road in Griffith Park from the intersection of Zoo Drive and Riverside to the west park entrance near Travel Town.

Instead of forcing a detour for west-bound cyclists, one solution that could ensure two-way access for cyclists and other park users (joggers, walkers, etc.) without requiring a significant detour for motorists AND maintaining motorist access to the Zoo and the Autry. Zoo Drive could be completely closed to cars and left open for cyclists, pedestrians, and joggers as though it were a multi-use path (or a street closure a la CicLAvia or like the weekend street closures in Golden Gate Park in SF.)  It certainly wouldn’t be the first time a park opened up some street space for bicycle and pedestrian usage.

Here's the intersection of Zoo Drive and Riverside Drive, looking north at Riverside as it goes over the 134 Freeway. You can see the eastbound freeway exit in the foreground and the on-ramp westbound in the distance. Photo: Colin Bogart/LACBC

Motorists could easily detour onto the 134 freeway in both directions. There are entrances and exits at Riverside Drive and at Forest Lawn Drive. Motorists traveling west-bound can easily get on the freeway, go to the next exit at Forest Lawn and get off. This will enable access to Travel Town, Forest Lawn Cemetery, or enable continued travel towards Warner Brothers studio parking and Barham Blvd.   Read more…

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For a larger image of the Greenway, and more information about the project, click here.

As part of every Policies for Livable Active Communities and the Environment (PLACE) Grants awarded by L.A. County Department of Public Health in 2008, each community had to complete a sample project that demonstrated the types of street improvements that could spread throughout their city as a result of improved planning.  The City of Culver City completed the Downtown Connector project that provides a Sharrowed street connection between the Downtown and the future Expo Station while linking residents to local schools.  Long Beach spent their money on the Green Sharrowed Lane in Belmont Shore.

Glendale’s project is completed yet, the contractor just got approval to begin construction, but it is similar to the other two projects we’ve reviewed.  The Riverdale-Maple Greenway will connect three parks in Glendale: Pacific Park and School, Maple Park and Community Center and Carr Park.  When completed the Greenway will have 124 new trees along the corridor, repaired and widened sidewalks, wayfinding and promotional signage and bike lanes on Riverdale (the western portion of the Greenway) and Sharrows along the rest of the route on Maple Street, Rock Glen Avenue and Lincoln Avenue.

PLACE Coordinator Colin Bogart explains the thinking behind the project.  ”By making it easier to access the park and the areas around the park, you’re going to get more people in the park and more people walking and biking in the neighborhoods.”

While none of the treatments considered for the Greenway are new to Glendale, this is the first time the city is coordinating a group of different designs and additions to create a special corridor friendly to all road users.  “The idea of consolidating it in one place, and to use all these funding sources to create a corridor, that was the leap,” explains Marc Stirdivant with the city’s Parks Department and one of the authors of the PLACE Grant.

Many of the new trees are already in, and what a difference they make for pedestrians. Image via the Los Angeles County Bike Coalition's special webpage for this project.

From a public health standpoint, PLACE is a public health grant after all, it’s a great low-cost investment to provide bicycle and pedestrian access to parks.  Not only does the project, spanning almost the entire east-west portion of the city, connect neighborhoods but it makes it easier for people to get to their local park without having to get into a car.  This will actually increase the physical activity of adults more than kids, as personal experience has taught me that kids have no trouble exercising at parks, and parents can get into the action mostly by exercising on the way to and from the park.

The project is a strong example of the city’s commitment to creating a walkable and bikable transportation grid.  Only $20,000 of the $320,000 from the PLACE Grant is going to cover the physical projects.  The total cost of the Greenway is roughly $500,000.  Also, the original proposal didn’t include the last two segments of the Greenway that connect to Carr Park in the Northeast corner of the map on Rock Glen and Lincoln.  After Alta Planning and Design reviewed the city’s initial plan, they urged Glendale to consider adding the spur to include the third park, and the city embraced the additional project.

At first, it seemed the main barrier to completing the project would be the intersection of Central and Maple.  The intersection was one of the most dangerous crossings, especially for pedestrians, and required Greenway users (riders and walkers) to make a pair of turns to stay on the Greenway.

“If you were a pedestrian and you wanted to cross here, you were essentially out of luck,” Bogart remarked of the road configuration.

Fixing the intersection was going to be a daunting and expensive task, until city staff noted that there was an improvement project already on the books.  Using federal stimulus funds, the city not only added new crossings to the street, but also a series of bump outs to both slow traffic and decrease the length of the crossing for pedestrians.  In addition, the city put in bike detectors connected to the traffic signal and marked their location on the street to make bike crossings easier.

Gunpowder and I rest at the intersection of Riverdale and Central and admire the new bump out.

Glendale was actually a somewhat controversial selection when the PLACE grants were first announced.  According to the census, the city is white (over 71%), middle class (median household income approaches $70,000) and suburban.  Yet, the Greenway demonstrates not just a commitment to creating livable streets where people can walk and bike where they’re going or just be outside without being harassed by traffic, but also a commitment to equity.

Read more…

(We’re kicking off a new series where transportation professionals write about some of the best practices in their city and how they could work in L.A.  Who better to start with than our favorite Occidental College Board Member? The NYC Plaza Program is a popular topic on our sister-site in New York.  – DN)

New York is the city that never seats.

With more than eight million residents and millions more commuters and visitors sharing just over 300 square miles, New Yorkers have long tried to squeeze everything they can out of every day and every inch of the city, but there’s just not enough places to sit and enjoy it all.

Plans for a plaza at Fulton Street and Marcy Avenue, in the first phase of the plaza program. Image: NYC DOT

While New York’s landmark buildings, parks and cultural institutions get a lot of attention, there’s less consideration given to the city’s most important real estate: the streets and sidewalks themselves, which make up 80 percent of the city’s public space.

With another one million people expected to move to New York over the next 20 years, every inch of this shared space will have to count. Our streets must be designed to be safer for everyone and, critically, they must be designed to invite people to walk outside and linger—to stop and take in everything the city has to offer.

Whenever we lay down traffic cones for a plaza project in New York, and long before the benches are installed, pedestrians immediately move in and take up the most New York of rituals: They sit down, even right on the street.
Los Angeles has 6,500 miles of streets—just as many miles as New York, and just as many opportunities to think about how its streets are being used. But just as most Angelinos aren’t lucky enough to live walking distance of Venice Beach, not everyone in New York is lucky enough to live near Central Park. Read more…

The park behind a fence, open space behind bars. Photo: LA Streetsblog/Flickr

(Last week week, Carter Rubin filmed a couple of videos with Joel Epstein at the corner of Santa Monica and Bundy, in the area that would be the “Bundy Triangle Park” as proposed by Epstein.  Watch all four of his short interview videos at the Streetsblog YouTube page. – DN)

Nestled in the northeast corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and Bundy Drive is a rare piece of open space on the Westside.  Benches dot a brick pathway and a dozen trees sprout up from grass lawns.  This could be a nice pocket park for the people of West L.A., but because of a rampant homeless problem and a dead body found in the lot in the 1990′s, the park is behind a fence.  Open space behind bars.

When people discuss “West L.A.,” the picture that comes to mind is of a Caucasian middle and upper class community.  However, the census data for the zip code surrounding the park paints a different picture.  Sixteen percent of the population is Latino, and nearly twenty percent are Asian.  Just under sixty percent of residents are Caucasian with African- and Native- Americans making up the rest of the population.

Recently, Huffington Post writer Joel Epstein has begun a crusade reopen “Bundy Triangle,” arguing that open-space starved West Los Angeles can’t afford not to figure out  a way to make the park work for the public without it becoming a homeless encampment.

Noting the ground breaking for the Cahuenga Alley project in Hollywood last week, Epstein argues that this project is even more of a no-brainer.

“That cost the CRA nearly $800,000.  Here, you can see we have mature trees.  We have benches.  We have an existing park and yet it’s been shuttered.  I hope we get a chance to reopen it and address the homeless problem.” Epstein says in the video after the jump. Read more…

Rendering of Westwood Station without car parking. Image via presentation by Expo Authority posted online by Gökhan Esirgen.

Now that the Expo Construction Authority has the legal green light to begin construction of Phase II of the Expo Line, it can move on to other issues.  Responding to a motion at the February 5, 2010 meeting of the Expo Construction Authority by Zev Yaroslavsky, Expo staff have put together a presentation listing the pros and cons of having station parking at the Expo Station at Westwood and Exposition.  The “no-parking” option has been endorsed by many of the groups backing the Expo Line such as Light Rail for Cheviot and Friends 4 Expo Transit.  The Construction Authority Board is expected to vote on whether to provide commuter parking  at their March 18 meeting.

By removing commuter parking from the design, the Westwood/Exposition Station is surrounded by open space.  At the north side of the station, an additional 54,000 square feet would be created.  As staff notes, that is roughly the same size as a football field.  The south side would have “only” 23,750 square feet and a “kiss and ride” drop off area.  While the above rendering shows a gigantic brown squares, this space could be filled with amenities such as coffee shops, food trucks or other features one associates with first class transit station.

There would be some parking with the station.  20 spaces would be reserved for people visiting or living in the community, to replace some of the street parking lost by the station.  Very short-term parking will be allowed in the Kiss-and-Ride area for people waiting to pick up an Expo passenger.

By comparison, the option with parking wouldn’t have space for any of those things.  But, it will have lots of low cost car parking. Read more…

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…

A rendering of the plans for the Central Plaza of Balboa Park

San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders and Qualcomm co-founder Irwin Jacobs unveiled a visionary $33 million plan to remove cars from the central square of San Diego's historic Balboa Park.  They hope to raise the funds to complete the plan by the park's 100th birthday in 2015.  The plan would open up the heart of the park to a pedestrian friendly climate where children could play free of fear of passing vehicles in a clean and inviting atmosphere.  To bring this vision to reality, the city would have to remove sixty seven spaces of free parking.

As you would expect, the media is very concerned about those sixty seven parking spaces.

To make matters "worse," if Sanders and Jacobs are unable to raise the $33 million from private interests, they might have to charge for parking in the planned 900 space parking garage.  Can you imagine?  Charging people to use a public parking garage and re-investing in the area that will be effected by the thousands of cars using that garage on a daily basis.

Let the freak out begin.

Read more...

In San Francisco, the Pavement to Parks
program has launched an initiative that may someday alter the way many
dense U.S. cities decide to treat the streets of their commercial
strips.

Taking the PARK(ing) Day concept to a more permanent, logical level, the Parklets
Program has begun experimenting with trial spaces allowing businesses
to convert parking spaces into outdoor public spaces and cafes.  The
first was installed in March outside the Mojo Bicycle Café
on Divisdero Street where two parking spaces were reallocated to
people-space; now cafe tables & chairs, benches, bike parking, and
plants sit over a raised platform over the asphalt.  If all goes well
thru the evaluation period, the idea is to eventually turn the process
into a regular permitting process that business groups and communities
can apply for.  It looks good: owners of Mojo say business is up 30%
and they have had to hire more staff.

The Pavement to Parks program has already transformed a number of
community spaces in the Castro, Showplace Triangle and Guerrero Park.
We briefly look at those at well in this video.

Interested folks can see Park 101 project plans, ask questions, and
give input at a meeting preceding the monthly downtown Art Walk this
Thursday. It takes place between 4 and 6 P.M. at Caltrans
Headquarters, at 200 S. Main Street.

There are quite a few places where highway lids have been used to create park space. Successful examples include Memorial Park in La Canada and Freeway Park in Seattle. The lid idea is being explored for lots of locations in Southern California, including:

• Over the 101 Freeway from just west of Vermont Avenue to nearly Virgil Avenue - approved in the city’s Station Neighborhood Area Plan
• Over the 5 Freeway near the Lincoln/Cypress Metro Gold Line Station – shown in Metro’s and Livable Places’ Making the Connections study.
• Hollywood Central Park over the 101 Freeway from just west of Hollywood Blvd to Santa Monica Blvd
• Over the 10 Freeway from 14th to 17th Street in Santa Monica

Read more…