Eyes on the Street: New Left-Side Protected Bike Lane on Grand in Downtown L.A.

Downtown L.A. has a nearly completed left-side southbound parking-protected bike lane along one mile of Grand Avenue between 5th Street and Pico Boulevard. As of last weekend, the thermoplastic striping on Grand is complete, but the bollard protection has not yet been installed.

Much of this portion of Grand Avenue previously had a buffered bike lane on the right side. The initial downtown Grand lane was striped in 2012, and in 2015 it was extended south to 39th Street.

In the past few weeks, this portion of Grand was resurfaced under Streets L.A.'s ADAPT program, and the bike lane was upgraded.

The lane has now been moved to the left side, which is a best practice for one-way-street bike lanes, as it minimizes conflict with transit. One-way Grand's southbound lane forms a couplet with Olive Street's northbound bike lane, which was similarly resurfaced and upgraded in July.

The Grand Avenue bike lane was also extended north two blocks - about a thousand new feet of bike lane. It previously started at Wilshire Boulevard; now it starts at 5th Street.

In May, Metro and LADOT announced five new bus-only lanes coming soon to downtown Los Angeles. Of these five, new bus lanes opened on 5th and 6th Streets two weeks ago, and bus lanes are scheduled to open on Aliso Street in October 2020. Grand and Olive bus lanes have no announced schedule at this point. It would have been cheaper had the Grand and Olive Street bus lane couplet been incorporated into the recent resurfacing, but the agencies were apparently unable to coordinate to make it happen quickly.