Reading Changes in City Streets

Markings on cities streets can sometimes reveal what used to be there

4:00 PM PDT on March 12, 2026

I think there used to be a bike lane here. Imperial Highway near LAX. Photos by Joe Linton/Streetsblog

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My job is to report on L.A. Streets. I like to think that every trip I take I am doing a sort of sampling transect, mentally making notes of how streets are working, what has changed, what led to the current conditions. I often encounter unexpected changes in city streets; then I try to figure out what happened and why.

City streets are a complex palimpsest - an outgrowth of centuries of policies and priorities and investments, spread on top of millennia of underlying landscape. Formal redlining and informal segregation might have defined neighborhood boundaries. Old rail rights of way cut through neighborhoods, affecting the shapes of parcels and the configurations of buildings. Highways cut through cities, severing communities and streets formerly connected. Cities that prioritize car travel over walking allocate more space to drivers, while shunting pedestrians onto narrow ill-maintained sidewalks - or no sidewalks at all.

That's the bigger context. What I am reading in streets - and sharing in this post - is less profound than that bigger picture. This post rounds up some changes I have "read" on Southern California streets - changes that weren't quite newsworthy enough for their own post.

Bikeway Removals/Downgrades

I have covered some fairly high profile bike lane removals, including the rollback of Move Culver City, the Playa del Rey backlash, and upcoming LADOT/Metro bike lane removal planned on Van Nuys Boulevard.

Biking on these streets today, it's possible to spot traces of the earlier bike facilities.

Washington Boulevard, where Culver City removed protected bike lanes and traces of earlier green pavement still show

On Pershing Drive, the bike lanes were removed in 2017, but there are still bits of white paint (called thermoplastic) where bike symbols were.

Many bikeway removals are quieter. These include 48th Street and Neptune Street, where the city Transportation Department (LADOT) erased bike lanes in order to increase on-street parking.

L.A. City removed bike lanes on 48th Street in South L.A. - in order to add diagonal parking

Less newsworthy is the disappearance of several sharrows. Sharrows are shared lane markings, called the dregs of bike infrastructure. On some bike routes, the city repaved streets and failed to re-install the sharrow markings.

Occasionally the city just covers up sharrows.

LADOT recently added a new stop sign on 4th Street at Westminster Avenue (in Windsor Square, very close to Koreatown). The new stop sign street markings covered up one sharrow, which was not reinstalled.

A closer photo of the covered-up sharrow on 4th at Westminster

When the city slurry sealed parts of Willoughby Avenue (in the Fairfax neighborhood, near West Hollywood) the seal covered up sharrow markings which were never reinstalled.

In some places, the city downgrades bike lanes, removing buffers, green pavement, and/or plastic bollards. When I bike these places, I notice traces of the removed features.

In 2023 LADOT removed buffers and green pavement on Santa Fe Avenue in the downtown Arts District

In 2024 LADOT removed a Winnetka Avenue bike lane buffer (center) - next to Pierce College

In 2018, LADOT upgraded a mile of San Pedro's 25th Street bike lanes from Patton Street to Western Avenue (a no-parking stretch many drivers speed). The project added a buffer, lined with plastic bollards.

25th Street in San Pedro in 2019. LADOT installed plastic-bollard-protected bike lanes.

By 2021 the bollards were no longer.

It's not clear if drivers removed all the bollards by running over them, or if LADOT removed them.

Road Diet Ghost Stripes

When LADOT reconfigures lane markings (sometimes for road diet improvements), the project typically involves scraping off existing stripes. The former stripes are often visible, not as a painted line, but as a sort of visible linear scrape mark. I like to think of these as "road diet ghost stripes" though there may be some more official name for this.

The two orange lines show where the "ghost stripes" are (a bit difficult to see in this photo) on recent road diet bike lanes on Hobart Boulevard in Hollywood

Ghost stripes in the middle of Avenue 51 in Northeast L.A. When LADOT installed uphill bike lanes and downhill sharrows, they moved the center line.

When LADOT added peak-hour parking on Victory Boulevard (in North Hollywood near Burbank) they scraped away dashed line lane markings, leaving a dashed ghost stripe.

Sometimes the City Would Rather Scape Than Fix

In late 2022, city leaders - Mayor Eric Garcetti, LADOT, and Bureau of Street Services (StreetsLA) heads - announced that Watts' 108th Street (from Central Avenue to Wilmington Avenue) would soon be repaved with bike upgrades as part of the city's BLAST initiative. 108th was due to be repaved with sharrow markings added - by July 2023. 108th is one of eight streets segments planned for modest bike improvements as part of the city's Watts Rising grant (see page 69 for bikeways).

When I reported, in 2023, that much of BLAST did not happen, I ran the below photo of 108th.

108th Street in Watts in June 2023. Three versions of "SLOW SCHOOL XING" are in various states of decay.

I don't know if maybe my photo struck a chord with someone at the city, but when I biked there a year later - in July 2024 - the city had done something.

The same stretch of 108th Street in July 2024. The city scraped off the SLOW SCHOOL XING markings, but has yet to repave the dilapidated street

Had the city repaved 108th? No. The city just scraped off the yellow "SLOW SCHOOL" letters. The road surface remains cracked and failing.

BLAST promised Watts six newly repaved street segments (parts of 103rd Street, 108th, Central Avenue, Compton Avenue, Willowbrook Avenue, and Wilmington Avenue). To date only about half of one (Central) was completed.

City Appropriately Fixes "Typos"

Occasionally, I have spotted city mistakes on newly installed bikeways. When I see these, I communicate them to DOT staff, who get the typos corrected. I bring these up here not to get anyone in trouble (I do more than my share of typos and corrections), but because I when I bike in these places I still notice traces of the earlier markings.

In 2020, when LADOT was re-striping part of Forest Lawn Drive (adding a small buffer along existing bike lanes) the city mistakenly painted a bike symbol in the wrong lane on this part of Forest Lawn Drive. I shared the "typo" with DOT staff who moved the symbol to the correct place.

Forest Lawn Drive where LADOT fixed an incorrect lane marking. In the lane on the right, visible black patches appropriately cover the mistake.

In 2024 LADOT added new bike lanes on Townsend Avenue in Eagle Rock. The city mistakenly painted one bike symbol in the wrong place, then (after my suggestion) corrected it.

Townsend Avenue bikeway's initial incorrect bike symbol photographed in September 2024. (The photo also shows road diet ghost stripes to the left.)

Townsend Avenue in June 2025. In the lane on the right, visible black patches cover the typo.

Markings Indicates Facilities Coming Soon

I am happy to occasionally spot street markings that herald new bike (or bus or walk) upgrades. I recently spotted construction markings on streets slated for improvements as part of LADOT's under-construction Mid-City Neighborhood Greenway Project.