Streetsblog Los Angeles

The Streetsblog Fundraiser Series Is Back at the Eco-Village on May 11.

In what has become an right of Spring, Streetsblog returns to the los Angeles Eco-Village (116 Bimini Place) for our Third Annual Spring fundraiser on May 11 from 6:00 P.M. until late in the evening.  The event will feature food and drinks, the debut of a new Streetfilm, a raffle and the best darned company and conversation that can be found anywhere.  The Eco-Village fundraisers have been one of our most important fundraisers raising needed funds as the Streetsblogs push our combined fundraising campaign.

Tickets are $30 per head on a sliding scale.  As always, we don’t deny anyone admittance if they don’t have the recommended donation.  You can reserve tickets through our donation page.  Make sure to select “Los Angeles” from the drop down bar to “direct your donation” and put “Eco-Village” in the “why you support” text bar.  Or, you can just pay at the door.  There is no entrance fee for any “subscribers.”  You can also RSVP on Facebook.

If you work for a company or organization that is interested in sponsoring the event with a larger donation in exchange for entrence tickets, raffle tickets and visibility please contact me at damien@streetsblog.org

We’re still putting together some of the details on the catering and auction, but we can already announce some highlights.  New Belgium Brewing is back as both a raffle sponsor and as donating 120 bottles of New Belgium’s finest.  We will have news on food sponsors and catering in the next week.  However, we already have lots of good prizes in our raffle.

Weekend at Eco-Village – The winner wins a weekend for two at the Eco-Village.  Included in the weekend is a full featured apartment unit with kitchen and bathroom, a 2-1/2 hour tour of L.A. Eco-Village, a vegetarian dinner on Sunday night and use of Eco-Village bicycles during the weekend.

Bike Tour for Six – Bikes and Hikes L.A. offers a bike tour for six people through some of L.A.’s premier sites.  Get all the details on this flyer they helpfully provided

CicLAvia and Streetsblog Grab Bags – You have to win to find out what’s inside

New Belgium Brewing Prize Pack – T-shirts, chalices, hats, bells and more

Livable Streets Library - We get a lot of books donated and sent to us over the year.

Raffle tickets are $5 each and can be bought on May 11.

The Host Committee for the event includes, Joe Anthony, Lois Arkin, Alfredo Hernandez, Herbie Huff, Elson Trinidad, Stephen Villavaso, and Don “Roadblock” Ward.  Of course, the Streetsblog Board will also be pitching in: Joel Epstein, Joe Linton, Deborah Murphy, James Rojas, Carter Rubin, Juan Matute, Sirinya Matute and Jocelyn Vivar.

Thanks to our sponsors and see you on 5/11.

In New York, there’s a tradition to do yearly transit races where a cyclist, a car driver and a transit rider race from a common starting point to jobs in Manhattan. Streetfilms captured several of those races on films one of the more dramatic ones is above.

Now it’s our turn. Next Wednesday, eight days from now, we’re going to shoot our own transit race. Our race is going to cover the future Westside Bus Rapid Transit route on Wilshire Boulevard. We have a cyclist, a bus rider and a car driver all ready to go but we need both some volunteers to run cameras and someone to volunteer to walk the route as part of the race. If someone is really interested in being the bus rider, we can switch as right now I’m the bus rider in the race.

If you’re interested in volunteering, please email damien@streetsblog.org. The race begins at 5:00 P.M., but we’ll need you to get to the starting line a little earlier. We will provide further directions via email to those interested.

How can CicLAvia help the city get moving on fully implementing the Bike Plan? Photo:Josef/Flying Pigeon

The week after Ciclavia I find it hard to settle my mind from the sights and sounds and motion of magical urbanism on the streets of Los Angeles.  But, alas, the mundane world of traffic, work, and policy beckons. To ease the transition, I’m trying to focus in on what the key policy lessons of Ciclavia are for the region’s transportation system. For me, the overwhelming ‘meaning’ of Ciclavia is that a wide range of people will throng to streets if they can bike and walk without having to share space with cars.

So how can the freedom and inclusion of an open streets event be cultivated as the norm in our city, rather than the exception?

Sunday afternoon, after Ciclavia was over, people were playing basketball and sitting out in the recently-opened Sunset Triangle Plaza in Silverlake, which transformed approximately 250 feet of driving lanes on Griffith Park Boulevard into public space.  How can we make more than .00065 percent of the 7303 miles of streets in the City of Los Angeles into good places?

Municipalities throughout the world employ a range of designs and policies to keep cars out of portions of cities, reduce driving speeds and reassign space in public rights of ways from cars and trucks to people. The City’s revision of the mobility element of its general plan could be a good process to try to shift away from car dominated streets in Los Angeles.

In this piece I mainly want to focus on lessons for the City’s 2010 Bicycle Plan.  The plan will add up to 1683 miles of bikeways, consisting of a 719 mile backbone bikeway network of bike lanes on major streets; an 825 mile neighborhood bikeway network on less-trafficked streets; and a 139 mile green bikeway network of bike paths.

It turns out that the obvious experiential takeaway from an event like Ciclavia – separating cars from cyclists boosts the number and types of people willing to ride bikes – is strongly supported by cycling trends between different countries and between different cities in the same country. Comparing developed nations, residents of Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden make five to ten times more of their trips by bike than do people in Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Women, the elderly, and children also make up a higher percentage of cyclists in these bike friendly countries.

The main cause of these disparities is that bike-friendly places design infrastructure for cycling differently than do bike-unfriendly places like Los Angeles. As Peter Furth summarizes the evidence in the forthcoming book City Cycling, edited by John Pucher and Ralph Buelher:   Read more…

We’re going to experiment in the coming weeks with a new weekly series highlighting a couple of stories that we weren’t able to build into full Streetsblog stories, but deserve more than just a mention in Today’s Headlines.

Wal Mart Traffic Study - A lot has been said in the press and City Hall about a new Wal Mart Grocery Store going in at the corner of Caeser Chavez and Grand Avenue.  However, few have discussed how out of date the traffic study is for the plan.  In 1989, developers received a “negative declaration” for their retail plans for the site.  This means that as long as plans for the 100,000 sq. foot of retail conform to the dimensions in that original traffic study the city believes there will be no impact on the local and regional traffic patterns.

I was in 7th grade in 1989.  Magic Johnson was still a perennial MVP candidate.  George H.W. Bush was President.  Streetsblog doesn’t take a position on Wal Marts in and of themself, but we do worry about laws that make it so easy to develop without knowing what the transportation impacts are.

And if you wanted to measure the impacts for yourself based on this study, good luck.  The documents aren’t online and are only available by actually visiting City Planning.

Two Tales in Beverly Hills – As news of the Shannon & Wilson study commissioned by the City of Beverly Hills, first announced on Streetsblog on Monday, everyone focused on the portion of the study that basically said that with proper mitigation one can tunnel under Beverly Hills High School without impacting the school or its rebuilding plans.  Advocates all pounced on this as the silver bullet that would slay opposition in Beverly Hills, especially when one considers that the tax that is paying for the professional opposition funded by the Beverly Hills Unified School District is under-performing.

But when L.A. Weekly covered the story, or when the Beverly Hills Courier put it on the front page today, there was scant mention of this part of the study.  L.A. Weekly ignored it altogether.  The Courier put one paragraph in a nearly 1,000 word article as though it were a bar.  The Couier also put together a ten minute highlight reel of Shannon & Wilson’s ninety minute presentation to the Beverly Hills City Council this week.  Absent was any mention of their findings about tunneling under the high school.

The narrative in Beverly Hills is that the City Council and School District are doing the due diligence that Metro didn’t, and that the upcoming reports on the BHUSD’s will be the definitive report.  The narrative outside is that the people of Beverly Hills are being led around by manipulative leaders who are fighting the subway for political gain.  When the two sides can’t even get the same news, it’s no wonder they remain so far apart.

Parking reformers, this is one you’re going to want to bookmark.

The announcement that Seattle would be raising parking rates in certain neighborhoods was greeted with a good bit of teeth gnashing — and that continues, especially among some business owners. But the data just doesn’t bear out all the concern, according to an analysis by the Sightline Institute, a Northwest policy think tank.

Gross receipts for downtown restaurants have actually risen since the parking meter hikes went into effect.

Image: Sightline

According to Sightline’s Eric de Place:

It may sound counter-intuitive at first, but on inspection it turns about to be totally sensible. By increasing turnover in on-street parking and ensuring that spaces are available for customers, well-calibrated parking policies really can increase patronage. (After all, would you rather grind through congested downtown streets in the rain while hunting for a parking space or pay a few bucks to stash the car curbside until 8?) In fact, boosting business is exactly what Seattle set out to do when officials adjusted meter rates and extended paid hours downtown.

Read more…

Metro used this picture to illustrate what construction could look like at Beverly Hills High. "We don't have to put one shovel in the ground or even think about going under the high school."

(Note: The following article was this year’s April Fool’s article.  We’ve done this every year (save 2009 when the regular stories were about people killed in car crashes…it just didn’t seem right.  For past stabs at comedy see 2008′s article on a new P.S.A. campaign from LADOT as part of the “B Safe of B Roadkill” campaign, 2010′s article on the speech given by then LADOT General Manager Rita Robinson in New York or 2011′s announcement that Robinson’s successor would be none other than Ed Begley Jr.)

A recent article published at Beverly Hills Weekly posed a question to Metro asking whether or not all of the activism against a Westside Subway route that tunnels under a small part of Beverly Hills High School Campus will matter?  Is Metro considering changing the project route?

Streetsblog has learned that the answer, to be announced officially on The Source tomorrow, is an unequivocal yes.  To avoid having to tunnel under the high school, Metro is now planning a completely at-grade route for the subway except for the portion that slopes up to 500 feet above ground before cutting through the high school campus.

“It looks like we won’t have to touch the buildings or put one shovel in the ground,” explains Metro spokesman David Meiger.  “True, we have to completely demolish the track field and parking structure, but the above-grade giant cement wall dissecting the campus will insure that the train and students don’t mix.”

Some other changes to the design and route were added just to make Beverly Hills Residents happier with the project.  “Adding eight stops in Beverly Hills, that was my idea,” Meiger beams.  “To make certain the train has maximum visibility, we will be putting the stations along Robertson and Santa Monica Boulevards.”  Renderings of the new route were completed by Broad Architects and are available after the jump.

Metro is also moving the Westside Heavy Rail rail yard to a residential part of Beverly Hills, “bringing solid middle income jobs to the community.”  A last touch is that Metro vows to run the heavy rail “24 hours a day” between the Beverly Hills’ stops so that all residents can use the rail whenever they need.

Read more…

The Library Alehouse, fun for the whole family

Just because I’ll be away from office the rest of the day does not mean that Streetsblog is done posting. We’re expecting to post two more unique stories plus the latest from Capitol Hill. Of course, I look forward to seeing you all at the Alehouse today. I’ll be the one with the big sign that says, “buy raffle tickets here.”

If you’re young, and smart, and motivated, and interested in promoting the idea that “Streets Are for People,” then L.A. Streetsblog is looking for you.  We have three different types of internships available designed for people of different skill sets…just because you’re not a writer doesn’t mean we can’t work together.  While we don’t have the funding to offer a stipend, we will work with the winning candidates to help them earn credit with their school and understand they will require a flexible schedule.

We’re offering three types of Internships: Writing, Research and “Help Us Create a Tumblr” Read more…

While some members of the Ovarian-Psycos Bicycle Brigade have left the group (two current members are not shown), the women come from similar backgrounds and have been able to support each other throughout the growth of the group. Photo courtesy of the Ovarian-Pscyos Bicycle Brigade

(This is the second of a two-part series. To read the first part how the Ovarian Psycos started, click here.)

Whether they are charras on bikes like Ova Andrea Ramirez says they are, they work hard to make Ovarian-Psyco Bicycle Brigade work. Though the all-female Latina bicycle collective turned out mostly Latina, the group is open to inviting people into the core as long as they are willing to work, and step up when the time calls.

The following post features brief biographies on the current roster of the Ovarian-Psycos (a photo isn’t provided for two members). The women chose to conceal their face not for fashions sake, Xela de la X says, but to signify that the group is not just about each of them as an individual, but it’s about the collective. Wearing the paño, or bandana, conceals their identity, but it’s also represents the forgotten female victims from war torn regions, and from those that disappear in Los Angeles, she adds.

(While they are not included in this post, past active members include Yolanda Posada, Mayra Aguilar, Monica Perez, Eyerie Zenzele and Elizabeth Piedra. Also, the Ovarian-Psyco’s newest edition, Cinthia Garcia, was brought into the group yesterday.)

Photos courtesy of Maryann Aguirre, and shot by Rafael Cardenas (eastsiderwriter.com). 

Joss the Boss Read more…

Earlier this week, a pair of brand new bike lanes appeared on Rampart Boulevard between Beverly Boulevard and 6th Street. What makes this development news worthy, outside of the excitement people feel whenever new lanes are added to the streets, is that these lanes come as something of a surprise.

New bike lanes on Rampart Boulevard. Photo: Joe Linton

Los Angeles cyclists have been frustrated with the pace of implementation of the city’s surprisingly-progressive bike plan, which celebrated its first birthday earlier this month, but the Rampart lanes are something of an anomaly. While the lanes appear in the plan and even in the city’s five year implementation plan, it never appeared on any of the lists LADOT has circulated with projects to be completed this year.  This is good news as it opens the door to more bike projects happening in a shorter time frame than just strictly following the lists that LADOT and City Planning have circulated. Kudos to Mayor Villaraigosa’s team for making this important change happen.

Rumor has it, that cyclist frustration is shared by some in the Mayor’s office who have pushed for a project list expanded beyond those in the original short-term implementation plan list. If the city is looking for more “low hanging fruit,” it could always crib off the list put together by Streetsblog Board Member Joe Linton at the Eco-Village blog. Of course, the Rampart bike lanes project is on that list, so maybe they already are.

So keep your eyes peeled cyclists, and if you see a new bike project on the street, be sure to let us know.