LADOT

Tracking the Great Streets program as it has begun to unfold around town has, at times, been a bit of an exercise in frustration. Which never fails to strike me as odd, given Mayor Eric Garcetti's declaration that the transformation of the 15 chosen streets into gathering places would happen via a "bottom-up and community-based process" in which the city "[worked] with neighborhood stakeholders to develop a vision for each corridor."

Tap tap tap.

Today, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti signed a directive [PDF] that commits city departments to Vision Zero. Specifically, the City of Los Angeles is committed to reducing traffic fatalities to zero by the year 2025.

Responding to community concerns that the high volume of pedestrian traffic at the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue was creating an unsafe crossing, City Councilmember Mitch O'Farrell and the Department of Transportation recently announced that a "pedestrian scramble" will be installed by the end of the year.

Sometimes neighborhood livability and walkability do not need to wait for multi-million dollar infrastructure streetscape re-vamps. Sometimes all it takes is paint. Or, as in the case of these streets, longer-lasting thermoplastic striping that doubles as "paint."

The city of Los Angeles' progressive new Mobility Plan was approved by two City Council committees yesterday. The joint meeting of the Los Angeles City Council committees for Transportation and Planning and Land Use Management (PLUM) both approved the plan intact, postponing decisions on sabotage attempts by City Councilmbers Paul Koretz and Gil Cedillo.

Yesterday, the community of Pacoima celebrated the opening of the city of L.A.'s latest car-free space: Bradley Plaza. The plaza closes to cars one block of Bradley Avenue immediately east of Van Nuys Boulevard in the north San Fernando Valley neighborhood of Pacoima. The plaza is a product of the city Transportation Department's (LADOT) innovative community-driven People St program. Through the People St program, community groups can apply for and receive local plazas, parklets, and bike corrals.

For decades Hollywood has exported Southern California car culture images around the world. That's changing now. Made-in-L.A. commercials, films, and videos now increasingly feature bike lanes, inverted-U bike racks, and, yes, even People St polka-dotted pedestrian plazas. From NPR via Streetfilms' Clarence Eckerson, have fun watching Yo La Tengo's 'Friday I'm In Love' video - showing L.A.'s premiere pedestrian plaza - the Sunset Triangle Park Plaza. Tomorrow we return to serious news.

Downtown L.A.'s "Broadway Dress Rehearsal" project entered a new phase last month. SBLA readers will recall that the Broadway project was a relatively quick and low-cost creation of bulb-outs designed to calm traffic. The project removed space from cars, giving it to people dining and traveling on foot on one of L.A.'s highest pedestrian-volume streets. Broadway's Dress Rehearsal opened August 2014 and every day plenty of people use it, especially the tables and chairs there. Last fall, the city Transportation Department (LADOT) published a study showing baseline conditions on Broadway; this fall LADOT will be following up with comparison data on what has changed.