Long Beach

This morning's Times brought the grim economic news that traffic at the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles are struggling.  In fact, the ports have lost the momentum that brought them to annual record highs traffic numbers as recently as 2006.  In fact, the soonest the ports can expect to reach the 2006 numbers would be 2013, and that's a best case scenario.

The new Sharrowed and painted travel lanes in Long Beach have caused quite a stir; but the relatively new concept of painting a shared-lane has yet to draw a catchy adn easy-to-use name.  Since Streetsbloggers are nothing if not inventive, I was thinking that we could do our part by coming up with the best name for a travel lane marked with Sharrows and green paint as seen in the above picture.

While environmentalists and smart growth advocates focus on the I-710 Tunnel Project, the one that would "complete" by closing the 4.5 mile gap between the current end of the freeway and the 210 Freeway; another massive expansion project for the I-170 is more quietly moving though environmental review.

Last week, while reporting on the green, sharrowed travel lane in Long Beach, I wrote that to the best of my knowledge, this was the first lane of this type in America.  Thanks to commenter Dan Bergenthal, we discovered that Salt Lake City, UT announced their colored, sharrowed, lane in September of 2008.  Funding for the colored lanes comes from an FHWA bicycle safety pilot program.  Reports on the effects of these lanes will be completed in the fall of this year.

Russ Roca, the photographer and bike activist who has taken the lead on promoting Long Beach's world-class shared lane, brings us a video on people's first reactions to the lane.  For anyone that missed Friday's story, Long Beach painted a travel lane green and installed Sharrows on 2nd Street, one of the busiest streets in the city for both bikes and cars.

This upcoming weekend is a big one for bike culture in Los Angeles County.  While our famed DIY culture is already kicking into high gear today, a Friday that features the LACBC's Car-Free Fridays and two Critical Masses; this time the highlights are from a pair of official events.  Tomorrow morning, the City of Long Beach unveils green-colored shared lanes marked with a Sharrow on Second Street.  Across the county, the Eastside Bicycle Club celebrates their one-year anniversary with a ride and party sponsored by the Los Angeles Parks Department.

In the past several weeks, I've noticed a trend.  Cyclists from some of the cities surrounding Los Angeles have been emailing me asking why I never report on the great things going on in their back yards.  As a result, I'm going to write about what's going on around the county every Friday until I run out of topics.

E. 2nd Street, Long Beach, CA