Last week, MetBlogs reported that some enterprising souls took it upon themselves to improve the city's bike network by adding their own lanes to the Fletcher Bridge that runs over the Los Angeles River. The Do It Yourself, aka DIY, Lanes lasted less than half a week as the DOT saw to their quick removal. Apparently, in Los Angeles it takes well over a decade to construct the projects in a Bike Master Plan, but a couple of days to remove vigilante bike lanes.
While I wasn't able to witness the DIY lanes personally, I did confirm with Streetsblog reader and commenter Ingrid Peterson that the lanes were real. She noticed them on her bike last week and managed to take a couple of pictures before the lanes were removed. In other words, these aren't altered photos. The unofficial lanes did exist for a short period of time.
Of course, vigilante street markings such as this wouldn't be necessary in the eyes of any if Los Angeles would finally get serious about funding bicycle projects. We know that Metro missed an opportunity to fund bicycle and pedestrian projects last week. Hopefully Mayor Villaraigosa isn't planning on reneging on his promise that some of the city's sales tax funds will get spent on "non-motorized transportation" projects.
