More Details on Bus and Bike Upgrades Planned for Venice Boulevard

Venice Boulevard bus and bike lanes rendering - via LADOT Twitter
Venice Boulevard bus and bike lanes rendering - via LADOT Twitter
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Last night, L.A. City Councilmembers Paul Koretz and Mike Bonin, the L.A. City Department of Transportation (LADOT),  and Metro, together hosted a virtual community meeting on bus and bike improvements proposed for Venice Boulevard. According to LADOT, the Zoom meeting was attended by over 300 persons.

LADOT map of planned Venice Boulevard upgrades - via presentation
LADOT map of planned Venice Boulevard upgrades – via LADOT presentation

LADOT is planning to add a new bus-only lane extending 2.5 miles from Inglewood Boulevard to Culver Boulevard.

LADOT also plans to upgrade existing bike lanes to parking-protected bike lanes. These upgrades would extend 0.8 miles from Lincoln Boulevard to Beethoven Street, and 2.8 miles from Inglewood Boulevard to National Boulevard. Between Beethoven and Inglewood, the Venice Boulevard bike lanes are already parking-protected. When completed, Venice Boulevard’s protected bikeway would extend 5.1 miles, from Lincoln to La Cienega Boulevard, and would be the longest protected bike facility in L.A. County.

City and Metro presentations share current conditions, proposed upgrades, and a tentative project schedule.

Slide
Venice Boulevard project Metro bus ridership slide. Venice Boulevard’s Metro’s Line 33 bus historically saw roughly 20,000 daily weekday boardings. (That figure is pre-COVID. As ridership is rebounding after COVID losses, 2022 boardings have been around 12,000-13,500 daily.)
slide
Rendering of new parking-protection for existing Venice Boulevard bike lanes west of Beethoven Street. The configuration in that area is more-or-less identical to the existing Mar Vista Great Streets project immediately east.
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Proposed Venice Boulevard cross-sections. Parking protected bikeway would extend the full project length. Bus lanes would go from Inglewood to Culver.
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The city’s anticipated project schedule tentatively shows Venice Boulevard improvements being implemented starting in November

After the presentation, agency staff answered attendee questions, then took over an hour of public comment. While there were certainly critics (many harking back to earlier criticism of Venice Boulevard’s road diet through Mar Vista), of more than 75 commenters, project supporters outnumbered detractors by more than two to one.

For a full minute-by-minute recap, see Streets for All’s Twitter thread.

To give input on the Venice Boulevard improvements, take LADOT’s project survey.

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