The city of Los Angeles recently extended its Sunset/Cesar E. Chavez Avenue peak-hour bus only lanes slightly further into downtown. These lanes had ended at Figueroa Street, now they extend a couple blocks further to Grand Avenue (eastbound) and Broadway (westbound.)
What is perhaps noteworthy is that the bus lane signage has changed somewhat. On peak-hour bus lane segments installed earlier the signs (see below) read "Buses/Right Turns/Only" with a smaller "Bikes OK" notation at the very bottom. It is not much, but the new signs are a bit clearer on the status of bicycling, with "Buses/Bikes &/Right Turns/Only" prominently. Bicycling is no longer an easily missed footnote at the bottom of the sign.
Perhaps the change was due to some negative publicity from a handful of fairly viral complaints from bicyclists using the shared lanes who were unjustly harassed by law enforcement personnel.
What do you think, readers? Are the new signs better? What could be done to make shared bus-bike lanes even better?
