LADOT’s John Fisher on the Future of the American City

I bike to work every dayand I find myself constantly wishing that all the cars on the road woulddisappear. What do transportation engineers take into account when consideringbikers and pedestrians?

In the last few years, there's been a real emphasis onimproving the environment for other modes of travel, for bicyclists, forpedestrians, and for the handicapped. We try to make our streets safer forpedestrians. We have a major program to put in flashing lights and a warningsign that will flash only when a pedestrian is crossing, called a smartcrosswalk or smart activated pedestrian warning. We're trying to becomecredible with the motorists--when these lights are flashing, there really is apedestrian, so yield to the pedestrian.

We've looked at some of our streets and determined that someare mainly for through travel but others are for retail and pedestrianfriendliness. We've looked at how to make the sidewalks wider, how we canprovide more streetscape features such as decorative lighting, trees, and crosswalks.

With bicyclists, there are activists in many of the majorcities demanding more facilities for bicycles, so we're looking at how we can restripeour streets to accommodate bicycle lanes. I think in time there will be somestreets where we'll deemphasize the streets for vehicular travel and make themavailable for bicycle travel.