All Photos by Joe Linton. View more at the end of the article, after the jump.
On the L.A. Department of Transportation's (LADOT's) June 2009 Bike Lanes Project Status report, made famous for Reseda Boulevard bike lane issues, line 10 gives a status on new bike lanes planned for Myra Avenue from Fountain Avenue to Santa Monica Boulevard. The project length is specified as 2300 feet, just under half a mile.
Web research revealed that these lanes, located in City Council President Eric Garcetti's district, don't appear in the city's approved 1996 Bicycle Master Plan facility lists or maps. They do already appear as existing bike lanes in the new draft maps for the city Bike Plan update underway. A quick look at online aerial photos didn't reveal any bike lanes yet, but these aerials are never entirely up to date.
Many bicyclists already know this stretch of Myra to be a useful route. Cyclists use the street to avoid crossing Sunset Boulevard. Myra goes beneath Sunset at a stately 1929 historic bridge. The street is relatively flat, low-lying and curves gently... because it's actually a creek: Arroyo de la Sacatela or Sacatela Creek. The creek now runs underground in a concrete culvert... but that's yetanotherstory.
A Thursday afternoon visit to Myra Avenue showed that the LADOT has already quietly implemented the bike lanes. They're already very much in use, too, even before Streetsblog broke the story. In a visit that took less than 20 minutes, three different lone cyclists were observed using the lanes. All three were females, and appeared to be utilitarian transportation cyclists.
In the concrete roadbed there are telltale scrape marks that make it clear that this is a road diet. That's a street treatment where four travel lanes (two in each direction) are reduced to three lanes (one in each direction, with a two-way turn lane in the middle.) The space from the eliminated lane can be used to create wide outer lanes or bike lanes. This reduction in the number of lanes can actually produce a more efficient street, especially in places where cars make plenty of turns into driveways. The 3-lane road tends to create a street that better serves local activity, while the 4-lane street tends to better serve cars cutting through. This sort of lane reduction has been done in a number of locations in Los Angeles, sometimes without bike lanes (for example on Boyle Avenue between 4th Street and Whittier Boulevard) and sometimes with bike lanes (for example on Silver Lake Boulevard between Berkeley Avenue and Sunset.) Either of these treatments makes the street better for bicyclists.
Though it's already in use - and drivers and bicyclists are using it as intended, each keeping to his or her own lane - it appears that the project isn't quite finished. Though there are bike lane signs on posts, there aren't yet any markings on the street that designate the narrow outer lane as a bike lane. These are probably coming soon.
Imagining the future, as bicyclists, communities and the city work together to build a truly bike-friendly city (one can dream, no?), one wonders how the Myra lanes will fit into a cohesive bike network. With Myra, there are now three bike lanes in this area; Sunset and Griffith Park Boulevard are the others. All three of these are within spitting distance of each other, but none of the three actually intersect yet. They could perhaps someday connect via sort of bike route on Effie Street and perhaps road diets on Fountain Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard.
New bike lanes are wonderful whether they get cyclists from one end of the valley to the other, or just from one side of Sunset to the other. The new Myra lanes should be ridden, enjoyed and celebrated!
L.A. County needs to embrace physically-protected bikeways, robust traffic calming around schools, and similarly transformative, safety-focused projects