Friday Bike Updates: New 2nd Street Bike Lane, and Two Upcoming CicLAvias
Three bicycling news briefs for your weekend reading:
CicLAvia West L.A. is this Sunday April 26
Two days away: The first-ever CicLAvia event for Westwood! It’s an easy bike ride distance from several Metro E Line stations, including Westwood/Rancho Park. It’s free, fun, fabulous, family-friendly, and fantastic. From 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Westwood Boulevard and Santa Monica Boulevard will be closed to cars. Participants can bike, walk, skate, etc. as much or as little as you like. Find event details at the CicLAvia webpage.
Who’s coming this Sunday?
CicLAvia will return to South L.A. on Sunday June 28
This week, CicLAvia shared the route map for the next CicLAvia event. CicLAvia will return to South L.A. on Sunday, June 28, with ‘Leimert Park meets Expo Park’ presented by Metro.
Find June CicLAvia details at the CicLAvia webpage.
Short new bike lane on 2nd Street
The L.A. City Department of Transportation (LADOT) recently added about 230 feet of new westbound bike lane on 2nd Street between Spring Street and Broadway – at the Metro A/E Line Historic Broadway Station.
About 100 feet of the new lane are plastic-bollard-protected, and about 130 feet are unprotected. The bikeway closes a gap between the Spring Street protected lanes and bike lanes on Second, which extend through the tunnel under Bunker Hill.
To add the short new bike lane, LADOT removed a right turn only lane. Metro installed that turn lane in 2023 when Metro widened 2nd Street for the new Historic Broadway Station. (For what it’s worth, the turn lane had been installed intermittently during Metro construction, and was made permanent in 2023.)
Advocates pointed out that, in 2023, Metro and LADOT failed to follow city-approved downtown street standards (approved in 2009), favoring adding car capacity instead of first-last-mile (FLM) station connections. Metro and LADOT responded that they had to balance bike/walk station access with “parking and traffic maintenance” priorities, but would “identify opportunities for further FLM and mobility enhancements in the station areas.” It took three years, and now most of one block (of more than a dozen missing FLM facility blocks) of bikeway is completed.
The new bike lane fails to comply with current city plans (Mobility Plan 2035, approved in 2015), which designates protected bike lanes for this entire block.
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