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The city of L.A. Transportation Department (LADOT) is in the field today installing parking-protected bike lanes on San Vicente Boulevard in the Mid-Wilshire neighborhood just east of Little Ethiopia.
San Vicente is an overly wide street, a former streetcar right-of-way. It is a predominantly residential street with, until now, up to ten lanes (seven travel lanes and three parking lanes), all given over to cars. The bike lane improvements remove one car travel lane in each direction: a road diet.
The lanes have been in the works since 2020, when community groups began urging the city to add the upgrades (already approved in the 2015 Mobility Plan) when the city resurfaced the street. In early 2021, LADOT hosted outreach meetings, where they received favorable input. At that time, the project extended 1.2 miles from Olympic Boulevard to La Brea Avenue. In that area, there were already three blocks of existing bike lanes between Redondo Boulevard and La Brea, so the project would upgrade those lanes, and add nearly a mile of new bike lanes - from Redondo to Olympic. (It appears that the northwest portion of the project may have been shortened from what LADOT had announced, though this may become clearer as project installation finishes.)
The improvements are not quite completed, but the new bike lanes are already open between Curson Avenue and Redondo Boulevard.
New parking-protected bike lanes on San Vicente Boulevard
LADOT crew out this morning adding thermoplastic bike symbols to the new lanes
Much of the thermoplastic striping is done, but a few preliminary markings still need to be filled in
Portions of San Vicente are still being repaved (the area pictured is just east of Redondo), with more protected bike lane coming soon
L.A. County needs to embrace physically-protected bikeways, robust traffic calming around schools, and similarly transformative, safety-focused projects