Today city and community leaders broke ground on Mid-City street improvements designed to make it safer and easier to get around on foot or on bike. The project, called the Mid-City Neighborhood Greenways, includes traffic-calming, curb extensions, bike boxes, and more.
At this morning's groundbreaking, L.A. City Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky praised the collaborative process - between community, businesses, and city departments that got the project this far. Project construction is being managed by the city's Bureau of Engineering (BOE), while the city Transportation Department (LADOT) was responsible for securing grant funding, and spearheading the community outreach and design.
Former Mid-City West Neighborhood Council Transportation Chair Scott Epstein spoke of the roughly a decade long process from idea to construction. Epstein and his Neighborhood Council did a great deal of work to grow a strong consensus in favor of this project. (Epstein has authored a couple of SBLA guest posts.)
The type of facility under construction goes by a few different names: bike boulevards, neighborhood greenways, or bike-friendly streets. These projects take advantage of fairly quiet streets, adding features that make them even safer for getting around on bike or on foot. Generally, the greenway streets remain shared by bicyclists, pedestrians, and drivers - though with minimal car traffic moving at slower speeds. Often the most important greenway features are 'diverters' that control car volumes by preventing drivers from continuing straight through, while allowing cyclists and pedestrians to proceed.
There are a handful of examples of these treatments in Southern California, including Santa Monica's Michigan Avenue Neighborhood Greenway (MANGo), and facilities in Hollywood, Long Beach, and San Luis Obispo.
The 4+mile project is focused on three streets: Rosewood Avenue, Formosa Avenue, and Orange Drive.
The project includes three features that serve as diverters:
- a new diverter on Rosewood at Sweetzer Avenue
- an existing diverter at Rosewood and La Brea Avenue
- a block of Rosewood between Fairfax and Hayworth Avenues will be converted to one-way car traffic, with two-way bike traffic via a contraflow protected bike lane
The three streets will receive additional features: curb extensions, traffic circles, signage, bike boxes, sharrows, and new and upgraded crosswalks and signals.
A couple of early project components are already in place. These include a traffic circle at Rosewood and Martel Avenue (part of the city's BLAST program), and the above-mentioned diverter at Rosewood/La Brea.
The west end of the project connects to the city of West Hollywood's already traffic-calmed stretch of Rosewood.
Construction is underway and expected to be completed by fall of 2026.
Find details about the Mid-City Greenways project at this fact sheet, and/or the LADOT project webpage.
