Streetsblog Los Angeles

Tom LaBonge (white shirt) leads a ride down the Spring Street Green Buffered Bike Lane as part of Tour LaBonge.

(An earlier version of this story featured a picture we believed showed an image from a film shot in New York that had a green bike lane removed. The location did not include a bike lane, we fell for a twitter joke. Sorry. – DN)

For awhile, it seemed as though everyone had something to say about the Spring Street Green Buffered Bike Lane. The pilot project became a hotly debated item around town after the Film and Television Industry’s lobbying group decried the lane’s impact on local filming.

But tomorrow, the City Council will decide the fate of the green painted lane. The Council will hear, and vote on, a motion by Council Member Jose Huizar, who represents the area that the lane runs through. And after a year of non-stop chatter, Los Angeles Times editorials calling for compromise, and an ongoing debate that happened in public and private; all of a sudden nobody is talking.

Huizar’s office has delayed commenting. Council Member and Mayor-Elect Garcetti, who is partially responsible for the lane not being repainted, has refused to comment. Streetsblog didn’t reach out to Council Member Tom LaBonge, who also opposes the lanes, because he is the only person who is commenting…and commenting to anyone who will listen. He still thinks the lane should lose all its color. In fact, he’s starting to question this whole bike-lane thing in a more fundamental way.

Even advocacy and community groups are being shy. The Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition pointed me to their letter to the City Council. Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council President Patti Berman pointed me to an April resolution by the Neighborhood Council stating succinctly,

“NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council (DLANC) re-iterates is support for retaining the Green Bike Lane on Spring Street, and urges the City work with DLANC, FilmLA, and the cycling community to find a solution to any complaints whilst retaining the integrity of the Green Lane program.”

One reason for the public silence is that nobody is completely sure where Film L.A. stands anymore. Industry representatives reportedly “walked away” from the most recent “compromise” the same day the Los Angeles Times patted itself on the back for supporting it.

So, with perhaps the final showdown occurring tomorrow morning, here is a primer of what you need to know about the Spring Street Green Buffered Bike Lane controversy.

1) The Spring Street Green Buffered Bike Lane was a pilot project, and ultimately a very successful one. Spring and Main were chosen for a buffered bike lane pilot program because they are streets bustling with multi-modal and pedestrian activity, and perfect candidates for more than just green highlights at designated conflict zones. Ridership alone indicates this was a successful application of this traffic control device. Collision data over time should also prove similar results.

The green bike lane has become part of the cultural fabric of Downtown Los Angeles.

Read more…

(Note: Between now and July 1, Streetsblog will host a series of discussions with suggestions to help guide the new Mayor’s transition team on transportation issues and appointments. Have a better idea than we do? Let us know in the comments section. First up, is the Metro Board of Directors.)

There are thirteen members on the Metro Board of Directors. Five of the directos are the L.A. County Supervisors. Another four come from areas of Los Angeles County through local nominating boards and a weighted vote of L.A. County cities (excluding los Angeles). Last, the Mayor of Los Angeles is automatically on the Board, and he appoints three other positions.

When Streetsblog asked Eric Garcetti, both on video and in a questionnaire, what he will look for in a Metro Board appointee, his answers were vague. We know that he is looking for “at least one person who rides transit” and people that are “independent.”

These answers were not very revealing.

Over the last couple of years, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s appointees included former Assemblyman Richard Katz, Mel Wilson, and Los Angeles City Council Member Jose Huizar. Huizar and Katz both publicly and actively backed the candidacy of Wendy Greuel, who lost to Garcetti last week.

For the sake of discussion, we’re assuming that Garcetti will replace Katz and Huizar with campaign supporters. We’re also assuming that Wilson, a steady vote for Villaraigosa’s priorities, will probably be replaced as well. So who do I think would make a good team for Mayor Garcetti on the Metro Board? My picks, which take into account politics, experience, and competence, come after the jump. A note, these are not who I would pick if I were Mayor nor who I necessarily think he’ll pick. They are more like people I would pick if I were Eric Garcetti.

Being on the Metro Board doesn’t come with large salary, but it does come with prestige, power and a platform to angle for other elected office.

If I were Garcetti, I would pick: Council Member Mike Bonin, Former Council Woman Jan Perry and Jaime De La Vega. Read more…

Newly elected Mayor Eric Garcetti campaigning at the recent CicLAvia-to-the-Sea

So what does it all mean?

Former City Council President and outgoing CD13 Councilperson Eric Garcetti will be our new mayor for at least the next four years.

Unlike the city council, where carefully carved districts and big money campaign donations mean even the most unloved council person can be almost impossible to turn out, Los Angeles has a history of running unpopular mayors out of office.

Most recently, it was a young Antonio Villaraigosa who handily defeated incumbent James Hahn, after losing to him in their first match-up in 2001. Then again, Villaraigosa was also one of the few candidates to defeat a sitting council member in recent memory, beating Nick Pacheco to represent the 14th District in 2003.

Not that anyone should expect the new mayor to be unpopular.

In fact, Eric Garcetti has proven to be very personable and able to connect with a wide range of people. It helps that he has an exceptionally wide range of experiences, from his multi-ethnic background to his skill on the piano and work as an intelligence officer in the naval reserve.

Though not everyone trusts that smile or the promises that come with it; that hasn’t been my own experience with Garcetti, however. Read more…

The next Cory Booker, or just a nice guy?

Paula Jai Parker attends the Martin Luther King Jr. Parade on Crenshaw Blvd in Los Angeles. Photo:Eric Garcetti

Social media’s been buzzing with news that City Council Member Eric Garcetti is using his mayoral campaign to help out pedestrians in need. Chris Cruse reports on Facebook, in a story that has been confirmed on background by two people in the Garcetti campaign, that the mayoral candidate can still find time to help the little guy. Cruse reports, in a post originally picked up by Venice for Change:

I walked down my street to pick up some food, and came across a young guy laying on the sidewalk. His friend was yelling at him, slapping his face to wake up. The guy on the ground had a big gash and was bleeding out of his head. Not moving. I asked his friend if he was ok, but it was clear he needed help.

Right then, a black car pulled up on Silver Lake Blvd and a handsome businessman-looking guy rolled down the window. Asked if everything was ok. I told him this guy hit his head real bad. The car pulled over and 2 guys got out. They seemed to know exactly what to do. One brought a shirt and rolled it up and stuck it under the guy’s head. Asked a bunch of questions. The other called the paramedics. The friend was worried that they’d be in trouble, and asked us to just leave them there. The handsome one said they work for the city, they can’t just leave someone hurt on the ground. He hit his head, he needs to be checked out. The friend nodded ok. Read more…

The election is still a year away and already the campaign promises are flying!

This past friday evening, Mayoral Candidate Eric Garcetti joined Bill Roschen, President of LA’s Planning Commission, and Christopher Hawthorne, Architecture Critic for the LA Times, in a fast-paced conversation that was full of poetry, philosophy, and campaign promises.

Hawthorne, Roschen, Garcetti. Photo by Stephen Box

When asked what it would take to make CicLAvia a regular event, Garcetti went where no other candidate had gone, he offered a commitment.

“The easiest way to make CicLAvia permanent is to elect me Mayor, ‘cause I’m going to make it permanent,” Garcetti said, “I want to see it regularized, at least once a month. I want to see roving CicLAvias in other parts of the city.”

Garcetti acknowledged that “There’s something happening out there!” and pointed at Silver Lake’s Sunset Triangle Plaza, LA’s first street-to-plaza conversion, as evidence that little projects can have a big impact on a community.

“I want to be the sort of Mayor who is going to partner with communities,” Garcetti explained, “ to find out the individual needs and logic of any neighborhood and to make those dreams possible.”

Garcetti wasn’t shy about embracing the legacy of others. He addressed the need to look at the built environment by looking at the human experience and quoted Dostoevsky, “It’s easy to love humanity, the difficult part is learning to embrace your neighbor.”

When pointing at the need for reform within City Hall, he embraced his inner Dr. Seuss and said “The main mode of politics is to say ‘No, Slow, Make it Low and we have an opportunity to Go!’”

Garcetti pointed to the auto-centric Los Angeles that he experienced while growing up,  one that was based on private spaces, backyards, cars, schools with kids on buses, and a private sector that served the needs of the community.

“It no longer works,” he charges, pointing to his densely populated district with few parks, gang activity, disconnected residents, empty storefronts as the embodiment of this principle. “We’re confronting this failure by emerging from our private space. This a snapshot of what our city will look like.” Read more…

(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.

Villaraigosa at the L.A. Auto Show in 2010. It's ok, we know you're only smiling because you're daydreaming about the CicLAvia you had ridden in the month before. Photo:Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images North America via zimbio

Picture this.  One day one of the most important political figures in the city stands in front of a major Downtown attraction and announces that train service to this attraction will be increased dramatically in the coming weeks.  The next day, a major political figure, flanked by an up-and-coming political star and the City Council President, stands with the head of the local automotive dealer lobbying group and announces a political proposal to end business taxes for car dealerships.

In most parts of the world, that would be a sign of a hot political campaign with two candidates offering competing visions for a city’s transportation  future.  In Los Angeles, it’s just two days in the life of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.  While car dealerships are praising the Mayor’s proposal, supporters of green transportation options are puzzled by today’s announcement.

“This city can’t take too many more of Mayor Villaraigosa’s ‘business friendly’ policies,” writes Alex Thompson, President of Bikeside. “The guy extends Metro hours one minute, and decides he wants more car dealerships the next.”

Earlier today, Villaraigosa, Council President Eric Garcetti and Councilman Mitch Englander stood toe-to-toe with the car dealership lobby and announced a plan to end local business taxes for car dealerships operating in the City of Los Angeles.  The plan makes sense from a short-term economic point of view.  Auto dealers produce substantially more sales tax than business tax. In 2010, auto dealers accounted for only $3.6 million in business tax revenue but $29 million in sales tax revenue.

But the three pols see a potential sales tax boom if they can convince the car dealerships that have fled the city for Glendale, Pasadena, and Beverly Hills to come back.  Since 1986, the City of Los Angeles has lost 95 auto dealers. If those 95 dealers were still operating within the City limits, Los Angeles would have an additional $57 million per year in sales tax revenue.  In addition to the new tax proposal, Villaraigosa also announced that Beverly Hills Porsche is moving from Beverly Hills to Los Angeles.  The Mayor’s Office of Economic and Business Policy helped to persuade Beverly Hills Porsche to come to Los Angeles by pulling department directors together and speeding the permitting process.

“For too long, LA’s business tax has driven auto dealers outside the City limits,” said Villaraigosa.  ”It’s time to reform the way we tax auto dealers so that we can bring more jobs and more sales tax to our City.” Read more…

Photo: Eric Garcetti

(Update: We're getting word that these racks have also popped up on Flower Street and Ventura Boulevard.  One person was so excited he wants to know where to send a "thank you" note to LADOT.  If you're the first to send in a picture of meters in an area there's a Streetfilms T-Shirt in it for you.  We'll post a composite series on Friday)

In my first post of 2009, I asked readers what they wanted me to cover and discuss in the new year.  One reader pointed out that with the city's change to meterless parking, a lot of bike parking was removed.  It may have taken half a year, but the LADOT has installed fifty-two of what their calling "meter hitches" on former parking meter polls on Hollywood Boulevard between LaBrea and Vine to create new bike parking. 

These new "hitches" have been used in other cities as they modernize their street parking so cyclists have as many places to park their bikes as before.  LADOT implied at last week's Transportation Committee meeting that hundreds more of these "hitches" are just waiting to be put up.

A statement from Garcetti's office is available after the jump.  If you see more of these racks pop up around the city please, let us know.

Read more...