Streetsblog Los Angeles

Another side effect of the film and television industry’s abuse of Los Angeles as their personal backlots is what happens when television shows hold “open auditions” without taking the time or effort to insure that the auditions don’t negatively impact the community.

Take what happens when ABC’s Shark Tank, a show where a handful of billionaires decide whether or not to take over invest in one’s life work  and dreams. Maybe the person will become a millionaire. Maybe not.  When Shark Tank rolls into the Beverly Garland’s Holiday Inn in North Hollywood, the sidewalks surrounding the site become impassable.

Despite the above video showing several Municipal Code violations (see below for more), neither the LAPD, the hotel, Shark Tank, or anyone else seem interested in providing public or private security or obtaining a sidewalk closure permit. As the above video shows, passing the line of hopeful entrepreneurs is a daunting task, even the cameraman spends most of the video on the sidewalk.

A reader, who wished to remain anonymous, sends along a first-hand review of the Shark Tank audition line.

A couple times a year auditions are held at a hotel in my neighborhood (Studio City/North Hollywood.) Usually a day before these auditions, people begin lining up for the auditions on the sidewalk outside of the property. They often bring chairs, lounge chairs, tents, sometimes even mattresses. I use this sidewalk nearly every day when moving around my neighborhood, so I’ve experienced the direct impact of these situations as a pedestrian and bicyclist. Read more…

The pedestrian bridge that crosses the 10 freeway at 4th Ave. Sahra Sulaiman/LA Streetsblog

“We’ve all stopped and wondered, ‘What kind of poop is this?’” a man said of the surprises the 4th Ave. pedestrian bridge sometimes holds for residents of Jefferson Park and Arlington Heights.

That wasn’t reason enough to close the bridge, however, he told the crowd of concerned neighbors and homeowners that had gathered at Herb Wesson’s District Office Monday night to discuss the fate of the area’s lone remaining pedestrian walkway over the 10 freeway.

Take the case of his disabled son, he argued.

The boy was able to walk from the north side of the 10 to the park (located two blocks form the bridge) every day because of the bridge. Closing it would force his son to walk several extra blocks and likely leave him too exhausted to go regularly or play once he got there.

The benefits to keeping the bridge open far outweighed the risks, he said.

He would be one of many that night who would suggest that neighbors needed to come together to take ownership of the bridge to discourage the kinds detrimental behaviors a semi-secluded and not-particularly-well-lit pedestrian bridge often invites.

Just what kind of behaviors are those?

According to some, prostitution, gang activity, crime (where the bridge serves as an “escape route”), drug use, graffiti, and urination and/or defecation.

“Close it!” muttered a gentleman who lives next to the bridge.

He was tired of the criminal activity and of people using his driveway (there are no curb cuts on the south entrance to the bridge). And, law enforcement was completely disinterested in dealing with the problems the bridge generated, he said, leaving him and other neighbors vulnerable.

People sympathized with his and others’ concerns and acknowledged the area had seen its share of problems.

What wasn’t clear, however, was the frequency with which these problems occurred or their relationship to the bridge. Read more…

The Department of DIY takes things into their own hands to make streets safer for bikes and pedestrians at Hyperion and Effie in Silverlake. Unfortunately, I did not have my camera with me on the day the sign read: "Are you Tracy Chapman? No? Then, no fast car!" (sahra/LA Streetsblog)

I am not a planner.

This will not come as a surprise to those of you who are familiar with my writing.

I am not ashamed of that or the fact that it means I have a lot of catch-up to do with regard to figuring out how to decipher what the city’s intentions for South L.A. are.

But it does mean I often find myself feeling very stupid when confronted with seemingly simple questions.

Framed too narrowly or in a way that differs from the way I experience or process the world, queries as basic as, “What are the unique transit needs of a particular group?” can leave me stuttering and struggling to weave together what I understand to be very complex and conditional threads into a simplified conceptual package, as it did while I was speaking at the Women, Transit, and Los Angeles: Claiming a Safer Multi-modal Community event held at UCLA last night.

Even though I had had a few days to think about it, and spend a lot of time dedicated to writing about why current planning approaches are not always a good fit for the needs of South L.A., I found myself tripping up when it came to figuring out what kind of answers the organizers (graduate students in planning) were looking for.

In the end, I walked away feeling like I hadn’t said much of value or been able to communicate the things I had wanted to in a way that felt true to my experience or the needs of the communities I cover.

Which kinda sucked.

But it happens a lot. And not just to me.

I’ve got a number of planning meetings and hearings under my belt now and, the truth is, they generally tend to be wholly unsatisfactory experiences for many of the community members who, like me, have ideas about things they desperately want to see happen in their communities but have no clue as to how to relate their ideas to the maps, charts, feedback expectations, and frames of reference of the Planning Department.

This was most recently true at Monday’s Environmental Impact Report (EIR) scoping meetings for LA/2B.

LA/2B, a project of the Los Angeles Departments of City Planning and Transportation, is the effort to revise the Mobility Element of the General Plan for the city. The goal is to create a vision for a new way of moving vehicles, bikes, and pedestrians around the city that allows for streets to be as much about community, health, safety, and access as about mobility.

A year and a half into the update process, the LA/2B team is now looking to solicit feedback from the public regarding the kinds of questions they would like to see addressed in the EIR. The EIR will analyze the environmental (traffic, air quality, noise, etc.) impacts of the updates to the Mobility Element, identify ways to lessen impacts, and clarify environmental issues and choices. It also serves as a resource for the planners, who use it when making decisions about whether or not to approve, deny or amend projects to mitigate any negative impacts.

Gathering feedback about the corridors and districts selected to be part of the Vehicle-Enhanced Networks (VENs), Bicycle-Enhanced Networks (BENs), Transit-Enhanced Networks (TENs) and Pedestrian-Enhanced Districts (PEDs) (see docs/maps here) is the last participatory stage before the presentation of the Draft EIR and Draft Plan, scheduled for this fall.

Although the process seems logical, looking at the maps of the districts and networks posted up around the room at Monday’s sparsely attended scoping meeting, it was hard to know what feedback to offer that would fall within the category of environmental impacts.

I looked at the maps and thought, “I got nothin.’” Read more…

"Heads Up! Watch for Trains!" is seen on the train passing the memorial for Gilberto Reynaga, struck down by a Blue Line train at age 13 in 1999 (photo: sahra)

“Nobody uses it,” Liz told me. “There’s dookies in there!”

She was referring to the 53rd St. pedestrian bridge connecting the two halves of the Pueblo del Rio housing development split by the four sets of Blue Line and Pacific Rail train tracks.

Dookies, piss, and people waiting to relieve you of your possessions — the pedestrian bridge unfortunately appears to have it all.

The pedestrian bridge at 53rd St. Click for larger view. (photo: sahra)

The fact that it sits largely unused — although perhaps unsurprising, given the fact that it is both fully enclosed and very long (favoring ramps over stairs) — is disheartening to say the least. The bridge was constructed in 2001 with the intention of making the community safer.

The project had originally been proposed in 1996, but didn’t move forward until middle-schooler Gilberto Reynaga was killed in 1999 by a passing train. Reynaga and his friend were returning home from playing basketball on a mid-summer’s afternoon when they came across a stopped freight train blocking the intersection at 55th St. and Long Beach Blvd. Apparently thinking that the flashing lights were for the stopped train only, they clambered over it and made their way toward the Blue Line tracks (which run parallel with the Union Pacific tracks for much of their trajectory through South L.A.). They didn’t see the southbound Metro train until they were already on the tracks.

With neighbors screaming at them to get out of the way, they panicked and ran for it. Reynaga didn’t make it, and was subsequently dragged under the train.

The whole community mourned, Liz, whose family runs a mini-market at that intersection, told me. “The funeral was huge — so many people came. It was the biggest funeral ever.”

“The Deadliest Rail Line in the Country” or “The Greatest Concentration of Traffic-Sign-Disobeying People with Death Wishes”?

We’ve all heard the Blue Line called the “deadliest rail line in the country.”

Streetsblog has even done some of that name calling and railed against Metro for suggesting that some of the fault lies with us because “people have a responsibility to obey both the active and passive warning devices.”

Although Metro acknowledges that the deaths of 70+ pedestrians and 28 motorists over the past two decades isn’t something to brag about, it isn’t a title they are willing to accept without some qualification. Read more…

photo: sahra

Authorities are searching for the driver of a dark-colored, older model Lexus that ran down 50-year old Tracy Louis Walker this past Wednesday. He was struck at 3:25 p.m. while crossing in the crosswalk at Western and Vernon by a vehicle traveling north along Western. Walker sustained life-threatening injuries from the impact and was taken to the hospital where he later died.

The driver fled the scene and apparently no description is available. Nor is it clear if the driver ran a red light or Walker was crossing against the light. A call to the LAPD for more information about the incident yielded no further insight. The detective in charge of the case is out of the office until Monday.

The crosswalks at Western and Vernon are among the 50 slated to be zebra-striped in the coming months.

While the striping effort is laudable (although a source of debate among our audience), it is not clear that stripes would have been helpful in this case, either to slow down someone determined to run a red light or to keep a pedestrian from crossing against the light. Read more…

Birds eye view of the Continental Crosswalk at 5th and Spring in Downtown Los Angeles

No pedestrian left behind?

At a just concluded press conference at the newly installed continental crosswalk, commonly known as a zebra crosswalk, at 5th and Spring in Downtown Los Angeles, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced a new program to replace traditional pedestrian crossings with the more visible crosswalk pictured above.

The world's most famous continental crosswalk.

Continental crosswalks feature two-foot wide yellow or white painted stripes paired with a limit (stop) line setback from the crosswalk to reduce vehicular encroachment into the crosswalk. The crosswalks alert motorists that they are approaching a pedestrian zone and are widely considered more safe than pedestrian crossings marked by two thin lines connecting two corners of an intersection.

“Los Angeles is in the midst of a transportation renaissance,” said Villaraigosa. “We are doubling the size of our rail network, making improvements to traffic flow and adding new bikeways. But we need to ensure that no one gets left behind. This focus on pedestrian safety is part of our efforts to create a 21^st century transportation network that works for everyone.”

The new design is not just for new crosswalks or high-traffic intersections. Villaraigosa wants to see every crosswalk in the city replaced, but for now announced a plan to replace 53 crosswalks by the end of March. The replacement areas were selected based on traffic safety, with the fifty most dangerous intersections getting priority. The other three high-danger crossings are in Council Districts that are fortunate enough to have no crossings on the “top fifty” list.

You can see a list of the crosswalks scheduled for improvement, at this document provided by LADOT.

Read more…

The Manchester and Sepulveda Zebra Crosswalk in 2009. Photo: Kent Strumpell. To see the new one at Fifth and Spring in DTLA, visit Downtown Rising

If you live, work, shop or play Downtown, you may have already seen it.  Brand new “zebra crosswalks,” known in the planning world as “continental crosswalks,” have been installed at the intersection of 5th and Spring, creating a safer and more visible crossing at one of L.A.’s busiest intersections. This is the first zebra installed since December of 2009, when LADOT initiated a “pilot program” at the intersection of Manchester and Sepulveda on the Westside.

A continental crosswalk is better described by its unofficial “zebra” moniker  Instead of straight lines connecting corners of an intersection, this design has a row of stripes spanning the area between the sidewalks, almost as though one was climbing a ladder and crossing the street. The Federal Highway Administration recommends using this design at intersections because, “Use of the continental design for crosswalk markings also improves crosswalk detection for people with low vision and cognitive impairments. It is recommended that the continental design be used consistently to mark all crosswalks; otherwise the impact of less visible markings may be weakened by comparison.”

For years, LADOT resisted the zebra design in party because they are more expensive to paint and maintain. However, following the aforementioned pilot program at Manchester and Sepulveda, resistance has all but vanished. In fact, the department is hinting that there is more zebra news coming soon. Read more…

Despite improving conditions on the street for cyclists, the city stil has to use ticketing to keep cyclists from riding on sidewalks in pedestrian oriented business districts. Photo: Damien Newton

It is a pester in all business districts alike, from Retro Row to East Village Arts District: bicyclists on the sidewalk. The concern is not just annoyance; there are clearly safety issues at hand.

Popular website has a whole section on sidewalk laws in the city.

The city and its business owners are trying to find a way to get cyclists either off their bikes or off the sidewalk. Long Beach enacted several campaigns to curb the excessive riders. 4th Street businesses spray painted guerilla-style “Walk Your Bike” stencils. However, as Allan Crawford, bike coordinator for the city, pointed out: “The only real way to curb it is by enforcing it. Three years ago we had a huge problem on 2nd Street with people riding on sidewalks and all it took was a few tickets to get people to think, ‘Oh, they’re actually serious about this.’”

Though slightly Draconian in nature, there is a larger point to be addressed with regards to increased ticketing: Long Beach, bluntly put, has bicyclists who aren’t respectful of pedestrians. This trend is exemplified by two recent crashes including a 90-year-old woman  breaking her hip after being run down by a bicycle near 4th and Alamitos outside her nursing home due to riding on a sidewalk, and a child being hit near 4th and Junipero near Retro Row by a bicyclist.

“As a deaf person with dogs,” explained resident Joe Ascheman, “I sometimes get dirty looks from some–most are diplomatic in my experience–bicycle riders when I do not move out of the way. I love the idea of making more bike friendly lanes, spaces, et cetera. But also, I wish [for] more education for drivers, riders, and peds so we call all be happy and safe.”

So far, the strict enforcement has proved legally fruitful. According to Bike Long Beach statistics, Long Beach Police officers ticketed over 50 bicyclists for riding on a sidewalk downtown within the past 30 days.

Just be respectful and have common sense,” said Crawford. Read more…

As part of a personal re-visioning process, Friedman looked at 15 sections of Hollywood area streets to see what LA. could look like. You can see all the images in a much larger size after the jump.

Tourists arriving in Hollywood from all over the world are fascinated, at first. The Walk of Fame, historic Hollywood and Vine, glamorous Hollywood & Highland shopping center and Grauman’s theater – all of these attractions make an impression…

…Unless you deviate a block or two. Once you accidentally leave the tourist area, real Los Angeles opens-up: utilitarian low-rise buildings & warehouses, auto body shops & pawn shops, tattoo and smoke stores, old box-type apartment structures, blighted development, and an endless parade of empty concrete sidewalks. In addition, there are countless numbers of creepy individuals and drug addicts, smoking pot as though it’s Amsterdam!

“Why are there no public areas or plazas?” “What about parks?” “Where can I safely walk with my family?” “Who created those naked concrete sidewalks?” Those are some of the issues unsuspecting newcomers immediately face.

Welcome to City of Angels! You’re now in a car-centric town where pedestrians are treated like second-class citizens, and where car dominates our life. Except for a handful of small pedestrian spots in parts of Hollywood, Downtown Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, the Santa Monica civic center, and artificial outdoor malls the Grove and Americana, the “Nobody Walks in L.A.” notion is still in place. Sidewalks exist in most areas, but their anti-pedestrian design – or rather, lack of any proper urban design – makes walking in L.A. extremely unappealing.

In this case, we’re talking about middle of Hollywood! All of the surrounding streets – Sunset Blvd, La Brea Ave, Highland Avenue, Vine Street (south of Sunset) – offer nothing but primitive utilitarian automobile corridors. Lack of crosswalks and pedestrian-oriented intersections frustrates even further.

Anyone who travels beyond Greater Los Angeles will notice how much more other cities offer: wider, decorative (not concrete) sidewalks, plenty of plantings and trees, large buffer zones, public areas and plazas. Embarrassingly, L.A. does not yet offer its visitors (let alone residents) normal conditions for a family outing, unless long driving and parking hassles are involved.

After being stagnant for decades, Los Angeles is finally starting to improve. Buses and trains are returning. Density is slowly flourishing. Downtown L.A. is transitioning from a high-crime area to a safe family-friendly district. Various regions now offer improved pedestrian conditions, though as a whole L.A. lags  behind other world-class cities. Read more…

photo (c) sahra

Fountain Ave. seemed unusually crushed, even at rush hour.

As I rode up the hill towards Hyperion, the cars parted and I saw a woman lying on the ground in front of a white compact car.

She was clutching her leg and crying.

And she was all alone.

Lying in the street.

It was bizarre.

How was it that a handful of people were standing around and no one was talking to her or trying to help her?

I got off my bike next to her and asked if someone had called 911.

They had.

“Do you speak Spanish?” asked a woman.

The woman on the ground was crying on the phone in Spanish to her father.

I was hit by a car, dad, and it hurts so much. I was hit by a car. It hurts. It hurts…

Her ankle was absurdly swollen and her foot flopped awkwardly in the wrong direction.

A Sheriff came up with a blanket that he tried putting under her thigh.

“It’s her ankle,” I said, moving the blanket to a position that supported her leg better.

He got up and walked away, talked to some guys at the scene, and then moved off to wave sporadically at traffic.

I put my hand on the woman’s good leg, hoping it was comforting.

The heavyset bald guy leaned up against his car continued to stare down at her.

He was distraught.

He hadn’t seen her, he said.

She came out of nowhere.

He didn’t know how it happened.

Actually, I think it was pretty easy to see how it happened. Read more…