Eyes on the Street: North Hills Traffic Circle Under Construction

The city of Los Angeles is building a new traffic circle at the intersection of Parthenia Place and Columbus Avenue in the central San Fernando Valley community of North Hills.

The project is located along the south and west sides of North Hills Community Park. Parthenia is an overly wide former Red Car San Fernando Valley Line right of way. The gently curving Parthenia Place is a hundred feet wide, with a thirty-three-foot-wide raised median.

There is a council file pertaining to project funding, but not a great deal of information available on the design. Streetsblog requested information from several city contacts, and the Department of Public Works responded, providing a “Parthenia Street and Sepulveda Boulevard Streetscape and Safety Improvement Project” fact sheet that clarifies features, schedule, funding, and location, but doesn’t show the actual design.

According to the fact sheet, the $2.1 million project is broken into two phases:

• Phase I includes a 60-foot-wide roundabout and a protected two-way bikeway at Parthenia Place and Columbus Avenue.
• Phase II includes two large pedestrian islands and a new “stop-controlled, right-turn-only street,” all located at Sepulveda Boulevard and Parthenia Place.

The project will include:

• Pedestrian improvements: curb extensions, refuge median islands
• ADA compliant curb ramps
• “Bicycle lane improvements along Parthenia Place” with 815 linear feet of bike lane striping 415 linear feet of protected bike lane (it is not clear if those are one-way “lane-mile” lengths or overall two-way lengths)
• New street trees and landscaping

Construction, led by StreetsLA (Department of Public Works Bureau of Street Services) is well underway at Parthenia Place and Columbus.

The city anticipates the entire project will be completed by September 2024.