Downtown LA

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.

It seems like a simple concept. If you give pedestrians a walk signal before giving cars the go-ahead, pedestrians crossing at intersections will be more visible and crashes and injuries will be reduced. But in a city where too much of the infrastructure is still designed to encourage cars to move quickly, even a small change that benefits people who aren't in cars will be noticed.

If you approach LAPD headquarters from First Street, City Hall is reflected in the windows. This was designed into the building intentionally, to remind cops that they’re not there to serve the police department itself; they’re to serve the people of Los Angeles.

Crews are out this week doing striping and new crosswalks for a project called Broadway's Dress Rehearsal. Broadway is, arguably, Los Angeles' most heavily pedestrian street. The current project reallocates former car-lane space to make way for pedestrians. It's no secret that the transformation here is inspired by NYC's relatively-inexpensive street plazas, including Times Square.

The long-anticipated MyFigueroa project made another appearance at the Los Angeles City Council's Planning and Land Use Management (PLUM) committee yesterday. With more than a hundred supporters in attendance, a great deal of staff work, political leadership, and a stakeholder summit process underway, it appears that MyFigueroa may be on track to break ground some day in the not too distant future.

Sahra Sulaiman, SBLA's Communities Editor for Boyle Heights and South L.A. took this photo last Sunday, showing the flattened and missing pylons in the Second Street Tunnel in Downtown Los Angeles. This is Los Angeles' first and only protected bikeway.

The city of Los Angeles Department of City Planning is hosting a series of seven community planning forums running now through April 12th. Tonight's forum is at Metro HQ in Downtown L.A. from 5-8pm. The forums are for public feedback on three citywide planning processes: re:code L.A., Mobility Plan 2035, and Plan for a Healthy Los Angeles. Streetsblog is previewing the citywide initiatives; today it’s the city’s zoning code update. See earlier SBLA coverage of the Health Plan and Transportation Plan.

MyFigueroa is picking up some steam as the city's decision on an appeal of the project's certification  approaches.