Santa Monica

The City of Angels is noticeably transforming. Our once car-centric town is becoming less car-dependent. Public transit is having a comeback. Pedestrian and bicycle infrastructures are improving.

Streetsblog Los Angeles is excited to announce that sometime in August we will launch a new website for news and views in Santa Monica, Santa Monica Next.

Editor's Note: Streetsblog Los Angeles founding board member Carter Rubin recently finished his Master of Urban and Regional Planning degree at UCLA. In the following article, he recaps the findings from his capstone “client project” for the Urban Design Studio at the L.A. Department of City Planning. His research adviser was the inimitable parking guru, UCLA Urban Planning Professor Donald Shoup. You can read the report in its entirety here.

In my first post discussing new stop signs to be installed on Broadway east of 26th St., I set up some of the context for why stop signs can be frustrating to bicyclists, how social conventions of both drivers and bicyclists can vary from person to person. The Santa Monica Daily Press has also picked up the topic, in a recent article which I am quoted along with several others on the proposed new stop signs.  Something I also didn't touch on before and which I recall from reading Tom Vanderbilt's Traffic, is the fine line beyond a threshold where too many stop signs reduces compliance because of the tendency for some drivers to speed between stops to try and compensate for having to stop.

I am going to have a hard time writing this.

In response to a high rate of intersection collisions on Broadway in the residential stretch with center medians east of 26th St , new stop signs are to be added so that there will be 2 additional 4 way stop regulated intersections.

Each year, Santa Monica hosts a Main St. Independence Day parade, with a cutesy small town feel that has made it one of my favorite annual events a few years ago. Various civic groups create small floats, or dress up, with homemade signs, and bikes are a staple for a rolling presence. City council members, past and present, cruise the street in electric vehicles, of which Santa Monica has quite a sizable fleet, candy is thrown, flags are waved, it's a fun little time. National political issues of the day sometimes make an appearance, with a group of whistle blowing marchers supporting Bradley Manning & Edward Snowden this year.

This week the Santa Monica city council authorized the city manager to award contracts for the installation and maintenance for the Big Blue Bus Shelter Redevelopment Program, bringing us close to implementation of a process that has dragged on for far too long. This plan to update and modernize bus stop facilities and extend amenities to more locations goes to discussions at least as far back as 2007. I still recall seeing renderings and promises in the papers many years ago, and before I was much involved in transit advocacy, that just never materialized.

Yes, bike riders are subject to the same laws drivers are.