Eyes on the Street: Santa Monica's Newly Concrete-Curb-Protected Broadway Bikeway

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Streetsblog rode the city of Santa Monica’s Broadway Safety Project yesterday. Find SBLA’s brief project construction coverage earlier this year, see post or video. The project is open and appears complete.

Added 10/6: A city representative responded that the project was “substantially completed” in September, thought a few final changes for pedestrians (RRFBs – Rectangular Rapid Flashing Beacon crosswalk lights) and for parking are still underway. The project is expected to be fully complete in November/December.

Map showing Broadway project – via city presentation

The city added 1.6-mile of concrete-curb bikeway protection along Broadway from 5th Street to 26th Street. The project included resurfacing, reconfigured parking, pedestrian signals, crosswalk upgrades, and more.

Santa Monica is a leader in curb-protected bikeways, with similar top-notch concrete-protection on 17th, 26th, and 28th Streets, and Colorado and Ocean Avenues. The city’s concrete extrusion machine – which quickly installs bike lane protection – has earned viral praise. Broadway now has the longest continuous stretch of concrete-curb-protected bike lanes in L.A. County, besting Pomona’s 1.5-mile facility along Valley Boulevard.

This Broadway project connects to the city’s earlier curb-protected lanes on both 17th Street (with a full protected intersection) and 26th Street. It also connects to a half dozen unprotected bike lanes. The Broadway project runs parallel to the Metro E Line, just one block north in and near downtown Santa Monica, so it provides needed first/last mile transit connections.

And here’s what it looks like.