Streetsblog Los Angeles

Councilman Tom LaBonge directs traffic at the 2008 Tour LaBonge "Positively 4th Street" Ride. Photo:Ingrid Peterson/Flickr

(The LACBC’s 4th Street Campaign has an open meeting tonight at the Halal Indian restaurant at 4th and Highland at 7:00 P.M. Just got word that the location has moved to Larchmont Bungalow, 107 Larchmont Blvd. Sorry for the last minute change.)

As a city that has for so long embraced car culture in its personality and planning, a change to pushing for bicycle and pedestrian projects is bound to create confusion and anger in some quarters and provoke a backlash from communities. After the battle on Wilbur Avenue in the Valley, where angry car drivers lobbied their City Councilman to remove a chunk of a road diet that proved popular with cyclists and the residents who lived on Wilbur itself.

LADOT expected to be on friendlier ground when pushing its concept for a Bicycle Friendly Street on 4th Street. Not only has the concept of a 4th Street Bike Boulevard has been a sort of holy grail for many cyclists, there are many more bike commuters on and near 4th Street than there are on or near Wilbur Avenue. The Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition has a campaign centered around making 4th Street safe haven for cyclists and Neighborhood Councils along the route have backed the concept of a bike friendly 4th Street.

A safe and attractive route off major streets connecting Downtown to the Park La Brea development in Fairfax would be a game changer for thousands of cyclists who would use part of the route or would use it to connect to other locales north or south of the route.  4th Street has even been home to one of Councilman Tom LaBonge’s annual summer rides named “Positively 4th Street.”

But the movement to create a Bike Boulevard on 4th Street, or Bicycle Friendly Street as LADOT prefers to call them, hit a major snag last month. An organized homeowner’s group in well-to-do Hancock Park put together a survey with some pretty slanted misinformation and followed up with a petition that attracted over 200 signatures in an effort to beat off bicycle and pedestrian signal lights at two dangerous intersections, 4th and Highland and 4th and Rossmore. Their combined effort spooked Councilman LaBonge’s office who pulled their support for the proposed signal changes and LADOT has dropped the proposal.

The difficulty in explaining new infrastructure is perhaps best exemplified by an article on the controversy between LADOT and the homeowners in the Larchmont Chronicle.  Everything from the title to the text creates more confusion about what LADOT is proposing.  Crossing signals for bicyclists and pedestrians are not traffic lights and they’re certainly not stop signs.

Some proponents of the concept of a completed Bicycle Friendly Street claim the Hancock Park Homeowner’s Association is against the project because of some sort of Not-In-My-Back-Yard syndrome. Others have speculated that the group was spooked that LADOT had only one plan, instead of a variety of options, for the signals and that the residents were reacting to a “design and defend” approach to transportation planning. The Homeowners Association didn’t respond to requests to comment for this story so all we have is speculation. 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.

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Honestly, how the heck does anyone get a ticket when there's signs such as these up? Photo: Zach Behrens/LAist

On Monday, the Los Angeles Times printed an eye-rolling article about the use of stop sign cameras to enforce safe street laws in the state parks surrounding the Santa Monica Mountains.  In response, the Mountains Recreation & Conservation Authority’s executive director, Joseph T. Edmiston wrote the following letter to the staff and board of the Authority.  It’s an instructive read, especially if the traffic scofflaw community decides this is their next battleground.

One of Edmiston’s main points is most interesting.  The cameras are set to only record people blowing through the signs, someone making a “rolling stop” wouldn’t be ticketed based on the cameras settings.

So the people complaining in the Times article are really complaining that they’re really bad drivers. – DN

Dear all,

Two things to report:

1. On the good news side, Friday we got notice that the Appellate Division certified for publication the decision in MRCA vs. Kaufman. That means this decision UPHOLDING ALL ASPECTS OF THE PROGRAM is binding precedent for the Los Angeles County Superior Court. Attached is a copy of the opinion. (We got a copy of the decision and posted it here. – DN)

2. On the other hand, the Los Angeles Times this morning had this really one-sided story. What the Times felt was newsworthy was violators getting angry when they are videoed blowing through stop signs (and who isn’t miffed at getting caught).

My favorite quote in this story is the guy who takes umbrage at getting 8 violations before he noticed the program. How about noticing the stop sign buddy?

This is a good opportunity to recap the program and the rationale for it.

First of all, for those who think the California rolling-stop is a basic civil right, we aren’t impinging thereon. The cameras are set so they don’t record anything under a certain speed. (For obvious reasons I can’t reveal that speed outside of closed session, but it is well below what most people would consider a good faith effort to “stop.”) Issuing a citation isn’t automatic. The citation is issued on an individual basis by a specially trained park ranger who is also a California peace officer. The standard is: If it were your eyes instead of the camera, would you have issued the citation? Ambiguities are resolved in favor of the driver. Moreover, there are no improper incentives. The camera company gets a fixed monthly fee, irrespective of the number of violations, and the park rangers are paid from an entirely separate fund. Read more…

(Update: The L.A. Times reports there was more chicanery at City Council today and the motion has been sent back to the Finance and Budget Committee, Chaired by red light camera backer Bernard Parks.  Streetsblog still believes that it is wildly unlikely the program should be saved and the Council should focus on what to do with the the money “saved” by killing the program.)

While the Los Angeles City Council didn’t formally vote to end the city’s red-light camera program, the writing is clearly on the wall.  Of the twelve members present, seven voted to end the program, and of the three absent at least Greig Smith has voiced opposition to the program.  To raise the bar even higher, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is backing the Police Commission’s unanimous vote to end the program.

Richard Alarcon and Telfair Elementary School children try out the new Smart Crosswalk in 2007. With the city ending its red light camera program, some of the

While we thank Council Members Richard Alarcon, Tony Cardenas, Tom LaBonge, Bernard Parks and Jan Perry for their leadership, it’s time to turn the page and ask the City Council how they plan to make streets safer for all users if cameras aren’t the answer.  In opposing the motion to continue the program, Councilman Bill Rosendahl claimed the program cost the city $2.6 million a year and Councilman Paul Krekorian argued that “Every cent we spend on this is a cent we’re not spending on something else.”

This implies that the City Council is planning on spending the $2.6 million on something else, and not just using it to fix a small part of the City’s budget deficit.  The question should now be, how can the city most effectively spend those funds.

Obviously, none of the Council stated opposition to safe traffic crossings, although Councilman Dennis Zine is urging motorists not to pay traffic camera tickets after they break the law, and thus the Council ordered a study of whether or not extended yellow lights or short “all red” times in cycles can reduce crashes.  A study is a good first step, but as the city moves farther from the recent debate over cameras, the urgency to fund innovative projects is diminished.

So what can be done? Read more…

Last week the Los Angeles Police Commission, the citizen panel that oversees the LAPD, unanimously voted to reject the LAPD’s recommendation to extend the city’s contract with an Arizona based group that provides, maintains, and utilizes “red light cameras” at 32 Los Angeles intersections.  The move came as a shock to the LAPD, but has been widely praised, including two editorials in the city’s two largest newspapers.

The City Council can override the Police Commission with a two-thirds vote.  And while it is unlikely they will do so, it’s too bad that the program is going down without a whimper.

Red light cameras have always been a political hot potato.  Privacy advocates have long argued against the government’s right to place cameras at intersections.  Others have argued that those ticketed by the cameras don’t have the right to face their accuser as guaranteed by the Constitution.  But most people just don’t like getting ticketed when they break the law and are caught doing it.  There’s even an Orwellianly named group of “local activists” called “Safer Streets L.A.” that lobbied against the cameras by arguing that cars making right turns on red lights without stopping isn’t really that big of a deal.  Nearly two-thirds of tickets given by red light cameras are for cars making illegal right hand turns.

As we n0ted three years ago, cars making right hand turns without yielding is a major traffic safety concern.

When the Federal Highway Administration discusses the conflict between pedestrians and automobiles it ranks “right on red” as the top concern.  A look at crash fatality statistics nationwide shows that in Los Angeles, almost one quarter of all crash fatalities are pedestrians.

And as the L.A. Times noted in their editorial burying the camera program, the red light cameras are working. Read more…

The Sylmar Business Improvement District (BID) is seeking to improve and re-imagine a just-over-half-mile section of San Fernando Boulevard through the power of greenspace creation and landscaping.  The BID isn’t seeking to change the use of the road, all changes will happen on existing medians.  Instead, they just want to make San Fernando Boulevard a more pleasant place to be.

For more images of the Sylmar Vista Project, click here.

Last week, the BID, Councilman Richard Alarcón and the Community Redevelopment Association celebrated the groundbreaking for an interesting and colorful project that will replace concrete medians with plants, flowers, trees, benches and waste stations.  The stated goal of the project is  to beautify an ugly piece of road and create an attractive place for people to walk and bike between Hubbard Street and Polk Street, the entire jurisdiction of the BID.

The commercial property owners within this district pay a self-imposed annual assessment to improve the economic vitality.  In this case, businesses aren’t just committing to maintain the investment in a beautified Sylmar, they’re also putting their own skin in the game by paying for part of the construction.  The CRA has granted another $350,000 towards improving the roadway making the project a true public/private partnership.  The BID already paid for the planting of 36 trees and an entryway to the area announcing “The Vista at Sylmar” and will add the benches and other street decorations. 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…

Let the backlash against sustainable transportation practices begin!

Throughout the summer Streetsblog has reported on the Road Diet the LADOT has placed on Wilbur Avenue in the Valley community of Northridge and the backlash the Diet has caused.  City Councilman Greig Smith was so incensed that the Diet was placed without community input that he’s proposing legislation that would require local Neighborhood Council approval before any transportation project moves forward.  Recently, the project has attracted more high-profile coverage in the Los Angeles Times, on KNBC (above) and in City Watch.

Throughout 2009, one of the hottest topics amongst transportation reformers and neighborhood groups was the disturbing trend of speed limits being increased on local and arterial streets throughout the Valley.  Then Assemblyman Paul Krekorian tried to change the state law which was causing the speed limits to increase, but many reformers argued that a better remedy would be to change the design and striping of streets to encourage slower, safer driving.

Of course, now that the LADOT is actually redesigning and striping streets to encourage safer driving, the backlash has begun.

Unfortunately, the debate is being presented in the media as a “car v bicyclist” debate as Wilbur Avenue received two bike lanes after the street was narrowed from four lanes of car traffic to two lanes with a turn lane.  However, there’s a lot of other, more accurate ways, to view the conflict caused by the Diet.  After the jump, we’ll take a look at the framing of the debate, and how it will effect the way people will react to the debate. Read more…

These humps appeared on Selby Avenue.  For more images of the removed traffic calming, visit our Flickr page.

Yesterday, Judge Robert O'Brien of the Los Angeles Superior Court issued a tentative ruling that traffic calming measures in the Holmby-Westood community that were removed by the LADOT and City Council in the summer of 2009 be returned.  The traffic calming was first put in as part of a Neighborhood Protection Plan (NPP) when the Palazzo development was constructed on the west side of the community.  The measures were "only temporary" pending a vote of the neighborhood six months after installation.  However, when LADOT surveyed the community, they surveyed a different and larger area than the one agreed to in the plan.  The vote to keep the traffic calming was approved by "only" 60% of residents who responded to the survey, which was short of the two-thirds needed to keep the calming in place.

O'Brien was as confused by the city's rationale for changing the survey area as project supporters and chided the LADOT and the City for utterly failing to live up to the Neighborhood Protection Plan. Because the agreement between community, developers and city was a condition for the construction of Palazzo, the NPP has the force of law.  By distributing a ballot to areas that were not deemed "effected areas" in the NPP, the City broke the law:

The result?  The city has to put the traffic calming back, and put it in permanently.  No lobbying by the City Council office, or maneuvering by the LADOT can change that simple fact.

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Overhead shot of the calmed streets in Pacific Palisades.  No, those aren't apartment buildings.

It's a common complaint of community groups that they are powerless to slow down speeding traffic in their neighborhoods.  While there are many barriers to reducing average traffic speeds in L.A., state law and the LADOT to name a few, two relatively well-off communities may be on their way to slower cars on their local streets.

In a well-to-do section of Pacific Palisades, residents on two streets, Corona Del Mar and Alma Real Drive thought the speed limit of thirty miles per hour was too high.  After discussing the issue with their Councilman, Transportation Committee Chair Bill Rosendahl, a motion was created to lower the speed limit to 25 miles per hour.  The Calfironia Vehicle Code allows for residential streets to have 25 m.p.h. limits, but if an engineering survey determines that more than fifteen percent of drivers drive faster than that limit, then police can't use radar to enforce the limit.

The survey for this street shows that the speed should be 30 m.p.h.  The residents didn't care about radar enforcement.  After all, this is hardly a street that sees a lot of traffic cops.  The motion passed Committee unanimously, and can be read here.

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