The LADOT finished renovations to its new website last Friday, and as far as attractiveness and ease of navigation go, the new site is a big upgrade over the old one. I spent part of the weekend experiencing the new site. While I have some nitpicks and suggestions, I find the new site to be a big improvement on the old one.
LADOT is proudest of its new vehicle parking website, where according to an LADOT press release
...anyone can easily find off-street City parking lots, hours of operations, rates, even the number of spaces…with a map service on how to drive there. In addition, the site's home page features direct connection to "Real-time Traffic" information, updated every 60 seconds, indicating where traffic congestion is occurring and areas to avoid.
LA Streetsblog's first suggestion? Upgrade the parking website to include where bike racks and other public bike parking facilities are available.
Speaking of alternative transportation, it's great that the Bike Advisory Committee and Pedestrian Advisory Committee have their own webpages, but some of the information desperately needs updating. For example, the most recent agenda for the PAC is from January...of 2007.
The new site features a page housing forms for people that want to do business with LADOT. The forms cover everything from reporting a broken parking meter to requesting an LADOT representative do a presentation. While its helpful for advocates and community leaders to have forms such as this for lobbying the organization, but this part of the site should be expanded to both have license applications and especially the forms needed to apply for a bicycle license.
There is also a section for LADOT studies and reports, providing a one stop place to access the studies behind the projects. Currently, there are 11 reports. LADOT archivists should work to provide more historical reports and background documents on the site. For example, wouldn't it be interesting to read the reports that led to the creation of the DASH program, or even to have easy access to the earlier studies that led to the Pico-Olympic plan?
There's plenty more to say about the site, and I hope that streetsblog readers fill the comments section with discussion, but there's one other glaring absence from the website. In the links section, there's no link to LA Streetsblog. For the LADOT web programmers, the correct link is la.streetsblog.org.
