Bike Shorts: Open Streets, Griffith Park, Metro Bike Share, and More
For your Friday reading, here are five bike-related news bits.
Metro Approves $1M for Open Streets
It only took ten months, the persistence of Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, and a competitive mayoral race, but Metro finally got around to finding money for 2027 open streets events!
Yesterday, the Metro board Executive Management Committee approved $1 million in Open Streets grant funding [staff report]. CicLAvias and other open streets will not be paused for all of next year.
What happened? In November 2025, Metro zeroed out funding for open streets not related to the 2026 World Cup or the 2028 Olympics/Paralympics. Horvath pressed Metro staff to identify a million dollars for events. In July, Mayor Karen Bass joined Horvath in insisting Metro find the money.
The funding still needs full Metro board approval next week, then event hosts and Metro staff will need to quickly program events for next year.
Metro Bike Share Expansion
The Metro board Operations Committee approved Metro Bike Share expansion [staff report], also pending full board approval next week.
Metro Bike Share will add 60 new docking stations and 600 new e-bikes. New stations will be located in the city of Los Angeles across South L.A., Mid-City, and West L.A. neighborhoods, including connections to K, E, and D Line rail stations, and the Rail2Rail path.
There’s a bigger story here, too. Twice Metro canceled botched bike-share procurements, and canceled a third procurement process this week. The agency’s failures essentially left bike-share in limbo, with the current operations contract repeatedly extended. Metro paused grant-funded (REAP, Reconnecting Communities) expansion projects, hoping to steer them to a new operator. Then, with time about to run out on a $7.5 million REAP grant (awarded in 2023), Metro is now set to reluctantly expand the existing system.
New Bikeway Protection on Hollywood
In 2025, the L.A. City Transportation Department (LADOT) added modular Zicla-brand rigid plastic protection to keep drivers out of the recently installed parking-protected bike lanes.
LADOT has continued to strengthen Hollywood Boulevard protection. Recently new rectangular plastic protection features were installed. Streetsblog couldn’t find the product name on the Zicla website; it kind of resembles a soapbox.
New Bikeway Protection on Crystal Springs in Griffith Park
Streetsblog recently reported briefly on rigid plastic bike lane protection that LADOT installed in Griffith Park.
This low hard plastic protection is called a Bike Lane Defender. It now appears that the Crystal Springs Drive installation is complete. Most of Crystal Springs has new plastic bollard protection; the rigid plastic protection was added to about a half-dozen curved stretches where inattentive drivers might inadvertently stray into the bike lanes.
New Protected Bikeway Block in Arcadia
The city of Arcadia recently added one block of diagonal-parking-protection to an existing bike lane on First Avenue from El Dorado Street to Faro Street. The city’s First Avenue Corridor Improvements project also included bulb-outs to shorten crossing distances.
The ~350-ft protected lane is not much. Though often when cities add diagonal parking, the parking takes up more space, so the city omits bike lanes. First Avenue shows one way to expand car parking and improve bike safety at the same time.
L.A. City has a somewhat similar (protected bike lane with diagonal parking) design on Eldridge Avenue in Sylmar.
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