New Terra Bella Bike Lanes Partially Replacing Van Nuys Bike Lanes
Metro and the L.A. City Transportation Department (LADOT) recently installed bike lanes on Terra Bella Street as a partial replacement for bike lanes being removed from Van Nuys Boulevard. The Van Nuys lanes are being removed in order to retain car travel lanes and on-street car parking along Metro’s under construction East San Fernando Valley light rail line.
The new bike lanes extend 2.4 miles from San Fernando Road to Wakefield Avenue.
As Streetsblog noted in earlier Terra Bella coverage, the “replacement” bikeway falls short on both quantity and quality. Overall Metro/LADOT are removing 5.6 lane-miles (0.9 protected) and adding back just 4.8 lane-miles (all unprotected). In addition, the new Terra Bella bikeway stops one block short of Nordhoff Street where it would connect cyclists to the new Metro light rail station.
The underlying premise of this facility shift is anti-bike. Metro and LADOT don’t see bicycling and bikeways as dovetailing with light rail. Instead of providing first/last mile bicycle connections to/from rail stations, Metro/DOT instead favor car capacity there. (Again.) Bicyclists are shunted away from destination-rich Van Nuys Boulevard onto the somewhat out-of-the-way, largely residential Terra Bella. If Metro and LADOT were genuinely interested in fostering bicycle transportation, they would facilitate bikeways on both Van Nuys and Terra Bella.
Terra Bella’s width varies quite a bit, so in some locations the city repurposed a car travel lane (called a road diet) to add the new bike lanes. In some places the bike lanes are buffered.
Sadly this part of Terra Bella, southwest of Whiteman Airport, has been the site of horrific car crashes. The T-intersection at the north end of the new bikeway – at San Fernando Road – recently saw one deadly crash (March 2025) and a serious injury crash (January 2026).
In December 2025, on Terra Bella at Woodman Avenue, a hit-and-run driver fled one crash, ran a light and crashed again, killing three people, before fleeing on foot.
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