It took an advocacy campaign, a false start, and a while to get going, but the L.A. City Transportation Department (LADOT) has been implementing Slow Streets. This program grew out of a need to provide quick-build safe spaces for people to distance while walking and bicycling during COVID-19 stay-at-home orders - at a time when reduced traffic was resulting in drivers speeding and killing people.
Social media includes quite a few happy photos of Angelenos - including many families with young children (who, trust me, are a handful during stay-at-home) - enjoying these Slow Streets.
Plus a few photos showing some issues with entitled drivers reluctant to peacefully share space with fellow humans.
Yesterday, I took a spin down my nearest Slow Street: 4th Street in Koreatown.
Fourth has long been a city designated bike route and a rare relatively quiet east-west corridor through central Los Angeles. For decades it has been well used by cyclists, and a fair amount of people walking and running. LADOT installed sharrows there in 2010, but twicenow pushes for minimal prioritization of walking/bicycling have failed when city councilmembers couldn't support implementing anything that might prevent cut-through car traffic, remove car parking, or otherwise marginally inconvenience car drivers.
A couple of weeks ago, LADOT implemented a Slow Street on 4th Street; this now consists of sandwich boards from New Hampshire Avenue to Hobart Boulevard in Koreatown. The sandwich boards have signs that say "ROAD CLOSED - LOCAL TRAFFIC ONLY" and "ATTENTION DRIVERS: THIS IS A SLOW STREET." The signs are in English only, despite lots of Spanish-, Korean-, and Bengali-speaking residents living along this part of 4th.
Yesterday afternoon on Fourth, I saw some pedestrians on sidewalks, a few individual cyclists, no families in the street, and quite a bit of car traffic.
A half dozen of the sandwich boards had fallen down, probably hit by drivers. The boards and signs sat unused on nearby sidewalks.
I observed some drivers going a bit slower, but, by and large, they have figured out that they can pretty much ignore the signs, and continue to cut through the "local traffic only" blocks with impunity. With L.A. relaxing COVID restrictions, there's plenty of car traffic on 4th Street again.
At least for 4th Street, it seems like a full-on bike boulevard treatment is needed - like is done in civilized countries including Oakland, San Luis Obispo, etc. Don't just put up a sign, but actually close a couple of entry points so drivers really can't cut through. These streets would not be closed to cars, but in some cases drivers would go a few blocks out of their way.
Readers - how are Slow Streets working in the rest of the city? What works? What doesn't? Any interesting do-it-yourself improvements helping? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
There are seven L.A. County Reconnecting Communities grants totaling $162 million - about 90% of that goes to Metro's Removing Barriers project, which includes new bus lanes, first/last mile walk/bike facilities, bike-share, and more.
New bus lanes are coming to Broadway, Colorado Blvd., Crenshaw Blvd, Lincoln Blvd., Los Feliz Blvd., Santa Monica Blvd., Valley Blvd., Vermont Avenue, Westwood Blvd., Whittier Blvd. and many more city streets!