This morning, Pacoima celebrated the city of Los Angeles' newest protected bike lanes on Van Nuys Blvd. The Van Nuys parking-protected bike lane extends 0.8-miles from Laurel Canyon Boulevard to San Fernando Road. This is the city's fourth protected bike lane facility, and the first in a predominantly low-income Latino community.
This morning L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti, LADOT General Manager Seleta Reynolds, community leaders, and city staff celebrated the recently installed bike lanes in a ceremony at Pacoima Neighborhood City Hall.
The Van Nuys Blvd Safety Improvement Project was workshopped in April and finalized consensus designs were announced in May. The new street configuration will reduce corridor speeding that has contributed to crashes resulting in death and injury.
The boulevard received an asymmetric road diet, removing a single northbound lane to add two bike lanes. The southbound bike lane is fully parking-protected, with the positions of the bike lane and the parked cars switched. There are merge zones at intersections, with no specialized bike signals or floating transit islands, as L.A. debuted on Los Angeles Street downtown. The northbound bike lane is not protected, but includes a narrow striped buffer.
The southbound bike lane on Van Nuys Boulevard is now parking-protected. All photos: Joe Linton/Streetsblog L.A.
Signage posted on Van Nuys to explain how parking-protected bike lanes work
The safety project also added a northbound buffered bike lane on Van Nuys Boulevard
L.A. County needs to embrace physically-protected bikeways, robust traffic calming around schools, and similarly transformative, safety-focused projects