Downtown LA

In recent months, Downtown Los Angeles, and especially Spring Street, have become ground zero for the battle over creating a Livable city. As the urban core densifies and diversifies, the older way of doing things keeps butting up against a evolving, truly urban, community. This is reflected in dustups over bike lanes, but also in easier-to-fix issues, such as the recent dustups over outdoor seating.

(An earlier version of this story featured a picture we believed showed an image from a film shot in New York that had a green bike lane removed. The location did not include a bike lane, we fell for a twitter joke. Sorry. - DN)

Yesterday, the Los Angeles Times weighed in on the debate over whether or not the city should, or shouldn't,repaint the fading Spring Street Green Buffered Bike Lane. The editorial calls for the lane to be repainted, but only after the city tries to find a shade of green that works for the filming industry per their representatives at Film L.A.

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Surely Film L.A. doesn't have so much clout that it can hold up the simple repainting of an already fading and chipped green buffered bike lane on Spring Street over the wishes of the Mayor's Office, LADOT, local City Council Member Jose Huizar and the Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council. So what's the delay?

Following the surprisingly strong response to yesterday's sarcastic short on the Spring Street Green Buffered Bike Lane, Streetsblog is proud to announce a new photo contest to our endangered bike lane project. For those that missed it, at the insistence of L.A. Film and other film industry groups the city seems poised to let the green paint on the Spring Street Buffered Bike Lane fade away. In response, Streetsblog published this helpful map to help confused film crews find places to film that don't have green lanes.

(This is part 1 of a 3 part series on the battle over the Spring Street Green Buffered Bike Lane. More to come tomorrow and Friday. - DN)