Eyes on the Street: Culver City’s New Higuera Street Bridge

Culver City recently opened the newly reconstructed Higuera Street Bridge over Ballona Creek. The project widened the bridge, adding one new travel lane for drivers, plus widened existing sidewalks and added a new access ramp to the creek path, new protected bike lanes, and a new mid-bridge belvedere (overlook).

Construction on the new bridge began in 2021, and the completed bridge re-opened in mid-May.

According to Culver City Senior Civil Engineer Sammy Romo, the overall project cost was $11 million, which included the $8.3 million bridge replacement, the $1.36 million bike ramp (Ballona Creek Bike Path Connectivity Project at Higuera Street), and $1.4 million for combined construction management for both projects.

New bike lanes on the bridge extend past the bridge abutments to span the entire long block from Jefferson Boulevard to Eastham Drive.

The new Higuera bridge project is not a massive step forward for walking and bicycling, but includes the kind of sensible accommodation that should be routinely included in multi-million dollar infrastructure upgrades (but is routinely missing from too many Metro and L.A. City projects). Sadly, Culver City, which had been a leader in these sorts of smart bike/walk project components, is now in the process of dismantling its ambitious downtown Move Culver City project.