Livable Streets

What would you do if you had $20 million dollars and were tasked with turning three and a half miles of one of Los Angeles' most iconic streets into the kind of street that encourages people to be outside?  That's the question the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) is asking at two workshops on Saturday, October 2, and next Tuesday, October 5, about Figueroa Street from the southwest corner of Exposition Park, past USC, and Staples Center in to Downtown Los Angeles.  Flush with $20 million in state "Proposition C" funds, the CRA is asking residents and business owners "what's your Figueroa" and what do you want Figueroa to look like in the future.

With financial reform nearly complete, the Senate Banking Committee turned its attention today to one of Senator Chris Dodd's (D-CT) next priorities, the Livable Communities Act. Local government came out strong for the initiative to promote sustainable and integrated regional planning, with representatives of the nation's cities, towns, counties, and regional planning organizations testifying in favor. Among committee members, concerns persisted about whether the bill would disadvantage rural areas. 

Los Angeles' Department of City Planning (DCP) is working on a study that has the potential to change the way that the city does streets. DCP's "Street Classification and Benchmarking Study" is lead by city planners Claire Bowin and Jane Choi and their consultant, Fehr and Peers' Jeremy Klop. The $55,000 study is funded by the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG.) There's apparently no information on the study online yet, though briefings on it were presented at the recent StreetSummit and to the Green L.A. Transportation Work Group. Dorothy Le reported on the GLATWG briefing at the Bike Coalition's blog.

Over at CicLAvia's blog, Joe Linton, who is no stranger to Streetsblog readers, has an interesting article featuring a dozen "Sadik-Khan"  like projects that could, and should, be done by the city of Los Angeles before next year's Street Summit.  After her inspiring perfomance at this year's Summit, NYCDOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan promised to come back next year and see how we're doing.  To, to the city of L.A. I say, "Tick-tock city!  That's only ten more months!"

Talk about having an immediate impact. Thanks to a grant from the L.A. County Department of Public Health, Green L.A.is looking for a "Living Streets Coordinator" for Boyle Heights.  You can read the full job description here, but here's a taste of what the Coordinator will do:

Although they aren't advertising it as such, the City of Burbank recently put Verdugo Avenue on a diet, a road diet that is.  And amazingly, the world didn't end.

Even as the Obama administration ramps up its work on a sustainability initiative that treats transportation, housing, and energy efficiency as interconnected aspects of development policy, the effort remains without an official congressional authorization -- a situation that Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-CT) vowed to fix yesterday.

The California Transportation Commission (CTC), is the state body charged with creating guidelines for agencies such as the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) and other regional planning bodies. This year, the CTC's guidelines are of greater interest to Livable Streets advocates because the language contains language that promotes Complete Streets as part of agencies' requirement to comply with S.B. 375, the recently passed anti-sprawl bill.