Pedestrian Safety

Late last year, Metro finished pedestrian and other safety upgrades to eight intersections along the Blue Line. The pedestrian improvements finally taking shape at the remaining 19 intersections - 12 of which are in South L.A. - have been in the works for some time and continue to prove challenging.

"They've started work on that bike path!" a South Central bike shop owner announced excitedly after noticing mounds of dirt piled up in the rail right-of-way (ROW) at Slauson and Normandie.

"Maybe you didn't catch that you jumped into a convo specifically about transportation/police issues?" snarked the self-described "police/community relations specialist" and bike advocate.

Squeezed in between the major thoroughfares connecting Boyle Heights to downtown, the Pico-Aliso community has long been treated by the city as an area to be passed through, and as quickly as possible, at that.

Last week, the Street Beats team converted the extremely busy and often dangerous intersection of Crenshaw and Florence into a play zone.

Complaints about the condition of Whittier Boulevard are common among youth that regularly walk from the southern end of Boyle Heights to Roosevelt High School and back. And they're only one of several groups of schoolkids that must cross and/or move along Whittier on a daily basis -- a handful of schools and recreational centers straddle the three-quarters of a mile between Lorena and Soto Streets.

On Sunday, Raquel Diaz, a sister with the Los Angeles Archdiocese, succumbed to her injuries. She was seventy years old.

It may be one of those made-up statistics, but there is a repeated truism that millions of people visit Hollywood Boulevard every year, and they spend an average of about fifteen minutes there. Sure, there are the Walk of Fame, some beautiful historic theaters and other noble buildings, Metro Red Line subway stops, costumed performers, street musicians... but Hollywood Boulevard is mostly tacky souvenir shops, museums in name only, and sad restaurants one would never return to, all along a massive car-choked stroad.

While counting pedestrians and cyclists in the transit-dependent and heavily-pedestrian community of Boyle Heights for the Bike and Pedestrian Count this past Saturday, I got to thinking about street trees.