Downtown LA

For as long as I can remember, Streetsblog Los Angeles has been lamenting the L.A. Police Department's targeted ticketing of pedestrians. LAPD "jaywalking" enforcement occurs mostly in downtown Los Angeles, but also outside various central Los Angeles Metro rail stations. I am excited that Los Angeles City Councilmembers Mike Bonin and Jose Huizar recently introduced a motion to begin to examine these stings, but it looks like the archaic walking law will probably need to changed at the state level.

Step aside, North Hollywood. Keep chugging along, Purple and Crenshaw lines, and Regional Connector. Wait a while, preferably a long, long while, South Pasadena.

At its June 25 monthly meeting, the Metro Board will be voting on the contract for the initial phase of what is now optimistically called "Metro Countywide Bikeshare."

Last Friday, May 1, Los Angeles City Council livability leaders introduced a motion [PDF] to get the city family to examine the effectiveness of LAPD's ongoing pedestrian sting operations. We would like to think that SBLA's recent article critiquing these stings paid off, but probably the excellent recent Los Angeles Times articles by Steve Lopez and Catherine Saillant got just a tad more exposure.

I recently got a preview of Pedal L.A. - a fascinating new bicycle-themed interactive art installation for the Los Angeles State Historic Park. What I saw was the work-in-progress prototype. The installation's creator, David Gauch, is looking to Southern California's diverse cycling community to get involved in using his project to tell our stories.

Metro regional bike share is coming soon. If all goes as planned, a year from now, downtown Los Angeles will have system on the ground. It will include about 1,000 bikes at 65 docking stations. The system will extend from Union Station to USC. For more detail, see SBLA's earlier preview.

Metro is moving forward with its regional bike share system, expected to debut in downtown Los Angeles in about a year. Metro released its bike share Request for Proposals (RFP) in December 2014, with bids due January 27. A bike share contract is expected to be awarded by June, with full implementation of a 1,000-bike system in downtown Los Angeles nine months later.

Through cinematic distortion, alleys are seen as hubs where criminals engage in drug dealing, whacking, and even murder.

Yesterday, the Los Angeles City Transportation Department (LADOT) released a new report entitled Broadway Dress Rehearsal: Pre-Installation Existing Conditions Report 2014 [PDF]. The handsome 82-page report is full of facts, figures and graphs all detailing the "safety, public life, and economic" conditions on Broadway from 2nd Street to 11th Street in downtown Los Angeles. This stretch of street is where the Broadway Dress Rehearsal project was recently completed. The streetscape project removed a traffic lane to make space for plazas which feature outdoor seating and planters.