Streetsblog Los Angeles

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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…

The Leimert Park model is a thought provoking interactive diorama of this community that the public can use as tool to facilitate their urban planning ideas and fantasies for transportation, open space, housing, architecture and design.

Crenshaw Boulevard gets the Rojas Treatment. To see more pics from the Leimert Park model, visit the Latino Urban Forum Flickr Page.

Through creating this model I was able to explore the unique topography, vide, and urban form of Leimert Park, which is located in South L.A., nestled at the base of Baldwin Hills and located at the intersection of two diagonal streets Crenshaw and Leimert Boulevards.

The model captures the community’s majestic topography, and street pattern laid out by the Olmstead Sons whose father built Central Park in New York in the 1920’s. The diagonal streets crisscross with the grid to give a very unique pattern not found in many L.A. neighborhoods.

I highlighted the streets, landmarks, and the median islands with their tall trees, and other geographical features that visually define and create Leimert Park.

As an art piece I added some urban design interventions for creative thinking and provoke a response from the community. This also establishes the diorama as an art piece and not just a replica of the community. Read more…

Obviously, Tijuana could use some help with their planning. For more images from Rojas' workshop, visit the Latino Urban Forum Flickr Page.

On August 5^th and 6^th I facilitated a high-energy, successful community visioning activity for Camino Verde, a colonia in Tijuana organized by Reacciona Tijuana. This project started as a collaboration between Giacomo Castagnola, architect/artist and myself as part of an urban planning art exhibition being organized in October for the Museum of Latin American Art.

I wanted Castagnola to experience the new method of community engagement for urban planning I developed. Castagnola, based in Tijuana has many colleagues working in the realm of art and social change.  He identified Gabriela Posada del Real as a partner and she identified the project area. The Tijuana colonias are an ideal venue to implement this hands on method of community engagement.

Del Real identified Camino Verde as the project site. She is currently working there with Luis Garzón an artist painting houses and fences. She also has a strong relationships with the women of this community. Camio Verde is an informal neighborhood or colonia in Tijuana that developed along a dry creek similar to LA’s Arroyo Seco.  This creek forms a valley. On both sides of the valley homes and small business have developed along the hillsides.  The roads and houses developed organically embracing the topography shaping a unique landscape.

In the middle of the informal development is the dry river bed which creates a strong sense of place in the community since it proves both physical and visual open space. The major road with buses run along it and commercial business have developed along it.  On the weekend a weekend swapmeet has developed on this road and river bed.

The creek has been channalized with concrete similar to the LA River.  Garbage and graffettii fill the concrete channel, however many children play in it because it provides the only centrally located, flat open space in the hilly landscape.

Tijuana city officials want to cover the concrete river bed and create a much needed park and open space.

Our process was two fold. It was to engage the community in the urban planning process and hear their ideas about the place they live.

Our workshop took place outside on a small concrete soccer field adjacent to the river bed. The women of the community set up tables, chairs and a tarp for shade that was attached to fences on either side.  Four tables were set up in a square with color consruction paper placed on it. The building materials were placed in the middle of the square to allow for easy access.

A participant explains her model.

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Not everyone at the conference got the memo that it wasn't about encouraging speed. Photo: Michael Cahn

The Office of Traffic Safety (OTS) is like a daughter of Caltrans. The mothership builds the roads, then Traffic Safety comes on the scene, addressing the safety deficits with education and enforcement efforts. The OTS conference, scheduled every other year, is a forum which unites local government, safety advocates, and a whole lot of police officers. MADD, Mothers against Drunk Driving, set the tone. The 2011 Leadership Seminar was held last week in San Diego. The agency offers a number of scholarships covering tuition, travel and accommodation. I attended the Bicycle and Pedestrian track, other tracks covered DUI, drug impairment, collision investigation, engineering and leadership.

The good news is that California fatality rates are low, the lowest since 1949. The bad news is that pedestrians and cyclists are greatly over-represented in these crashes. Simply put: Speed and distracted driving kills.

In California we call it Complete Streets, on the federal level it is called Sustainable Communities (DOT, FHWA, HUD, EPA), the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health have PLACE and RENEW programs: They all describe broad policy goals that have grown together over the last few years. Together they offer a new framework to work for more transportation choices, improved air quality and public health. Traditionally, traffic safety tries to compensate for the defects of an infrastructure that is designed for unsafe speeds. Historically, OTS moves into action after the roads are built and drivers have yielded to the temptations of overbuilt infrastructure and high performance machinery. Attempting to move away from this position of the latecomer, OTS is now spending time on educating planners on street designs where safety standards for vulnerable users are not an afterthought, but included from the outset. The attempt to educate engineers and advocates on new engineering standards for streets that serve all users is part of a broad wave of new handbooks and guidelines such as Smart Mobility Framework, Complete Streets Manual, Model Streets Manual etc. They all try to encroach upon the hegemony of Caltrans Highway Design Manual, which is no longer considered sufficient in accommodating non-motorized road users. Read more…

Urbanists are celebrating the results of the National Association of Realtors’ 2011 Community Preference Survey, which, according to the NAR, shows a clear preference for mixed uses, shorter commutes, and transportation options. The survey shows that people are asking for more walkable amenities and shorter commutes: a good sign.

But the survey is also rife with contradictions. It reveals, for instance, that Americans retain their affinity for certain characteristics found mainly in suburbia: more than anything, they prize privacy, and they overwhelmingly prefer single-family detached housing.

Wading through the survey, it can be difficult to draw any hard and fast conclusions. Respondents said community characteristics are more important than the size of the home, with 88 percent saying location mattered more than size. And walkability was one of the traits people seek the most, with 66 percent saying the ability to walk to places in their community is important. High-quality public schools, the Achilles’ heel of many big cities and a primary driver of families to the suburbs, are also highly sought after. Meanwhile, “easy access to the highway” ranks just under good schools on the list of people’s preferences. And 53 percent want to be “away from it all” (as opposed to 34 percent that want to be at the “center of it all”). Slightly more people want a big house than a diverse set of neighbors.

Only 19 percent of respondents said they wanted to live in cities, with another 28 percent wanting “a suburban neighborhood with a mix of houses, shops, and businesses.” That means more than half prefer rural living, traditional suburbs and small towns. Those numbers might show that more people want mixed-use places than the market currently provides, but they also suggest more ambiguity than the claims coming from NAR and some urbanist circles — that the survey is proof that smart growth is the new standard.

Another way to read the survey is to compare this year’s results to past ones and see what’s changing. But the trends don’t all point in the same direction. The 2011 survey shows a modest increase in support for some smart growth principles over 2004 — for example, five percent more people this year said their community needed more public transportation (51 percent in 2011 versus 46 percent in 2004) and four percent more wanted more walkable amenities. On the other hand, two percent fewer said their community needed more low-income housing and one percent fewer wanted more places to bike. The most dramatic change, however, was that in 2004 only 19 percent wanted more big-box stores in their communities, and now, 28 percent do.

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The National Association of City Transportation Officials’ Urban Bikeway Design Guide was 20 years in the making, and already it’s having an impact, says the organization’s Mia Birk.

Bringing together transportation officials from 20 major cities to discuss progress on bikeway designs in the U.S. produced quite a few “aha moments,” said Birk. For one, transportation officials learned that many of the bikeway innovations they had been adopting from Europe aren’t as innovative as they had thought.

The protected bike lane on New York City's Ninth Avenue.

For example, Birk said, 20 American cities use bike boxes, one of the design features that isn’t specifically endorsed by the Federal Highway Administration’s Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices and the American Association of Highway Transportation Officials’ design guide.

“It’s not like it’s some fringe thing anymore,” Birk said.

She added: “There’s a comfort in knowing that your colleagues are on the same wavelength.”

Conversations throughout the course of the NACTO guide development process also revealed that federal officials aren’t as unfriendly to new bike treatments as many city-level transportation officials had expected. Federal transportation officials have indicated that many of the 20 bike treatments recommended by NACTO are allowable within federal guidelines — while not explicitly endorsed — and therefore eligible for federal funding, Birk said.

“They’ve basically green-lighted a few of them a yellow-lighted a few others,” she said.

Birk described the conversations with federal transportation officials as “really effective and positive.”

Read more…

(ed. note – I know a lot of you already know Jessica Meaney with the Safe Routes to Schools National Partnership. But did you also know she’s also on our local Board of Directors for Streetsblog? This editorial will be the first of many you’ll see from our Board Members going forward. – DN)

Photo Credit: Madness Rivera

Many opportunities and challenges await Los Angeles, an amazing city.  At the forefront of these issues is transportation planning, or more specifically a lack thereof.

SB 375, the Sustainable Communities and Climate Protect Act, is a great opportunity to elicit and collaborate among the many voices working and supporting livable communities throughout California.

As Los Angeles steps up its investments in public transit and high-speed rail, it is critical that these bus stops, stations and the roads that get your there, are accessible to everyone irrespective to demographics. To achieve significant mode split change, better public health and so on, we need bold leadership and commitment, leadership that uses our transit systems, walks and bikes. Having people drive to catch a train or bus is not the goal.

Transportation planning has revolved around two trips a day – home to work and work to home.  People, especially mom’s, tend to make 4-5 trips a day.  With strategic and coordinated efforts to sync up transportation and land use investments – many of these trips could be done by walking and/or bicycling, frequently trips that are under 3 miles.

12% of all trips in Southern California are done walking and/or bicycling – the majority walking.  If we want to get mother’s, grandparents, and kids out walking and bicycling we will need better infrastructure (such as cycletracks, bike boulevards, wide landscaped sidewalks, outdoor seating at cafes, great public spaces and so on).  Most people are not comfortable riding their bike next to heavy traffic.

Walking and bicycling needs to become a part of everyone’s lifestyle, not just the brave or hardcore but by regular people of all ages and abilities.  These trips could be fun and a way to bring physical activity back into our daily lives. 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…

It always amazes me how artists can capture new ways of walking in the existing built environment.  The boring streets of South Park became a world of physical and sensual discovery through Being Pedestrian facilitated by Sara Wooky and Sara Daleiden last Saturday.

Sara Daleiden gives direction at L.A. Live at Being Pedestrian last Saturday. Photo: Fred Camino/Flickr. Fred will have his own review of Saturday's event at The Source later today.

I also re-learned how to be a pedestrian by simply completing some warm up exercises for feet, hands, eyes and body.  The group learned walking etiquette such as passing oncoming pedestrians, crossing streets, and examining buildings.

As a transportation planner, I know we sometimes fail to discuss the experience of mobility. Mobility is always a number, time, destination, or formula. Yet mobility is a physical experience that we see, hear, tour and even feel.

This human experience is too often lacking in transportation planning today. That must be why it can be an unfulfilling experience.

Being Pedestrian taught us how our body experiences mobility as a physical action.

By walking backwards on a familiar street my world was turned upside down.  With the help of a partner who guided me through this process, every step became a conscientious movement. It felt like walking into oblivion as small cracks became big cracks and the slightest grade changes were jarring. Read more…

A future San Jose Diridon Station with high-speed rail. Image: CHSRA

Editor’s note: Starting last week, and continuing through this one, we’re presenting a 5-part series of excerpts from Peter Calthorpe’s book, “Urbanism in the Age of Climate Change.” This is installment number two. Thanks to Island Press, a few lucky Streetsblog readers will be selected to receive a free copy of the book. To enter the contest, fill out this form.

California’s effort to implement its new greenhouse gas reduction laws has provided a comprehensive look at urbanism and its potential in relation to a range of conservation and clean energy policies. The Vision California study, developed for the California High Speed Rail Authority and the California Strategic Growth Council, measured the results of several statewide land use futures coupled with conservation policies through the year 2050.⁵ The results make concrete the choices before us, the feedback loops, and the scale of both benefits and costs.

California is projected to grow by 7 million new households and 20 million people, to a population of nearly 60 million, by 2050.⁶ It is currently the eighth-largest economy in the world and therefore provides an important model of what is possible. The study compared a “Trend” future dominated by the state’s now typical low-density suburban growth and conservative conservation policies to a “Green Urban” alternative. This Green Urban alternative assumed that 35 percent of growth would be urban infill; 55 percent would be formed from a more compact, mixed-use, and walkable form of suburban expansion; and only 10 percent would be standard low-density development. In addition, the Green Urban alternative would push the auto fleet to an average 55 miles per gallon (MPG), its fuel would contain one third less carbon, and all new buildings would be 80 percent more efficient than today’s norm. It does not represent a green utopia, but it is heading in that direction. The results of this comparison highlight just how much is at stake and what the costs will be.

Remarkably, the quantity of land needed to accommodate the next two generations was reduced 67 percent by the Green Urban scenario, from more than 5,600 square miles in the Trend future to only 1,850 square miles. By comparison, the state’s current developed area is 5,300 square miles.⁷ This difference would save vast areas (up to 900 square miles) of farmland in the Central Valley along with key open space and habitat in the coastal regions of the state. The more compact future means smaller yards to irrigate and fewer parking lots to landscape, saving an average of 3.4 million acre-feet of water per year—enough to fill the San Francisco Bay annually or to irrigate 5 million acres of farmland.⁸ Less developed land also translates to fewer miles of infrastructure to build and maintain. The annual savings would be around $194 billion for the state, or $24,300 for each new household—not including the costs of ongoing maintenance. In addition, the Trend future would cost more in police and fire services as coverage areas increase.

Read more…