This week, the L.A. City Transportation Department (LADOT) closed a dangerous slip lane. The now closed lane extended from Argyle Avenue to Yucca Street in Hollywood. The site is one block north of the Metro B Line Hollywood/Vine Station.
Readers are probably familiar with slip lanes, but some may be unfamiliar with the term. A slip lane is an extra curved lane, at some intersections, designed to encourage drivers to make right turns without stopping.
Slip lanes are dangerous for pedestrians. Many drivers dart through slip lanes at high speed without noticing people on foot. The lanes add an extra crossing where pedestrians are exposed to fast-moving drivers. They're also dangerous for drivers who sometimes crash into moving cars and stationary objects there.
The Argyle-Yucca slip lane was a big one. The lane was 20-feet wide and about 300 feet long. I don't have any hard data for this, but I would estimate that typical L.A. slip lanes clock in around 11-15 feet wide and 30-100 feet long. Drivers often sped through this one as if they thought they were still on the 101 Freeway.
LADOT announced the project in their newsletter this week, noting that it built on the Bureau of Street Services resurfacing of Argyle Avenue. DOT's newsletter notes, "Closing this slip lane demonstrates LADOT’s commitment to prioritizing safety over vehicle speed."
The closure is a really good thing. A couple of years ago, I urged the local City Councilmember, Hugo Soto-Martinez, to close this very slip lane, calling it one of the worst in the city. Now it's gone!
If you want to just hear that takeaway - a sweet victory for pedestrians - stop reading here and enjoy the photos below.
I really want to like this project, but it feels like the LADOT won't just do an unmitigated good thing for pedestrians.
DOT didn't just close a slip lane, they added more on-street car parking in a way that feels like a slap in the face to bicyclists. Also, though it is safer, the area essentially remains an all too typical freeway-adjacent sacrifice zone, inhospitable to people on foot, inaccessible to people in wheelchairs, and dangerous to cyclists.
The Argyle slip lane was so wide that it had its own on-street parking - about four spaces. When DOT closed the slip lane, those spaces went away. The DOT wanted to make sure to provide drivers plenty of on-street parking, a block from a Metro station. So, on Yucca, for two blocks immediately west of the slip lane, the DOT added even more parking than they took away. DOT converted about 8 existing parallel parking spaces there into about 18 diagonal parking spaces.
On the whole, LADOT gave drivers about five new on-street parking spaces. And that added parking comes at the expense of the city's own bike plan.
The second block where DOT added diagonal parking - Yucca Street west of Vine Street - is designated for bike lanes, according to the city's Mobility Plan 2035. It's a street cyclists ride to get to/from the Hollywood/Vine Metro Station. The Mobility Plan also designates much of the Yucca/Argyle area as a Pedestrian Enhanced District.
Arguably all this LADOT reconfiguration of Yucca and Argyle (alongside the Bureau of Street Services resurfacing of Argyle) should trigger Measure HLA requirements to install actual Mobility Plan facilities, including bike lanes and accessible sidewalks/crosswalks.
But the DOT didn't install these.
With uneven sidewalks and potholed asphalt walk areas, the project doesn't meet the city's pedestrian district minimum requirements, which include basic wheelchair accessibility.
LADOT's own DASH stop at the northwest corner of Yucca and Argyle appears very difficult to get to by wheelchair. There are curb-ramps, but the stop is surrounded by deeply rutted asphalt.
DOT didn't just omit the planned bike lanes, they also removed existing bicycle markings (called sharrows) on Yucca. Sharrows are a wimpy inadequate bikeway facility. Removing them tells me that DOT can't even be bothered to do the most meager bike safety treatments, much less than what's actually approved for the site.
Converting the curb parking from parallel to diagonal takes up more of the street width, making it more difficult to install future bike lanes. Where DOT adds parking, it becomes hard to remove. DOT is very reluctant to remove parking.
Yucca Street is 70+ feet wide here. Maybe it's possible to squeeze the bike lanes between the diagonal parking and the sidewalk - like DOT did on Eldridge Avenue - but under HLA that probably should have been installed at the same time as other street resurfacing and reconfiguration.
At the Yucca/Argyle intersection, the former slip lane area is now a small triangular sea of cracked asphalt - roughly 15,000 square feet. Closing that slip lane opens up new possibilities. The site fronts a Department of Water and Power electrical facility, so some of the area may be under LADWP control.
What could that empty triangle become? Housing? A tree-lined mini-park, perhaps with rainwater cleansing swales? Basketball courts? Solar panels? What would you like to see there?
