Walking

In September, I had the pleasure of bicycling around Los Angeles with Guardian journalist Nick Van Mead. The reporter was on a tour of three of the United States' car capitals - Detroit, Houston, and Los Angeles - to understand how car-centric places are moving into a healthier, more multi-modal future.

This past April, author and former Los Angeles Times book editor David Ulin penned a New York Times op-ed shining a national spotlight on the potential future of an inter-modal Los Angeles. Ulin noted recent developments such as the Mobility Plan 2035 and the then-upcoming completion of the Expo line extension to suggest Los Angeles may evolve as a city widely accommodating to drivers, walkers, transit-riders, and cyclists alike.

Tomorrow night, the Mar Vista Community Council will hear from the public about a proposed mixed-use housing project slated for 12444 Venice Boulevard.

Welcome back to #DamienTalksSGV. This week, we are discussing a best practice from outside the SGV, a new pedestrian wayfinding signage campaign in Glendale.The campaign combines traditional wayfinding with a call to action to get involved with Glendale's process to develop a news pedestrian safety plan.

Under the seeming disorder of the old city, wherever the old city is working successfully, is a marvelous order for maintaining the safety of the streets and the freedom of the city. It is a complex order. Its essence is intricacy of sidewalk use, bringing with it a constant succession of eyes. This order is all composed of movement and change, and although it is life, not art, we may fancifully call it the art form of the city and liken it to the dance — not to a simple-minded precision dance with everyone kicking up at the same time, twirling in unison and bowing off en masse, but to an intricate ballet in which the individual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole. The ballet of the good city sidewalk never repeats itself from place to place, and in any one place is always replete with improvisations. – Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of  Great American Cities 

Just when the Metro board was on the verge of adopting a policy to incorporate first/last mile, including bike and walk, connections into "the planning, design, and construction of all [Metro] transit projects," Metro staff postponed including first/last mile connections to the second phase of Purple Line subway expansion.

Los Angeles City Councilmember Jose Huizar is excited about the future of bicycling in downtown Los Angeles. At a press event yesterday, Huizar took a test spin on one of Metro's bike-share bikes. SBLA Streetsie-winner Huizar sees bike-share as one key feature of "a snowball effect" virtuous cycle for central Los Angeles: more bikes on the street will trigger more safety-in-numbers, which will prompt more city investment in bikeways, which will lead to even more bicycling.

At a joint meeting yesterday, the L.A. City Council's public works and budget committees approved the outlines of how Los Angeles will spend $1.4 billion to repair its damaged sidewalks.

Downtown L.A. is getting a little safer for walking with some new traffic signals that give pedestrians a head start. Officially, these are called "Leading Pedestrian Intervals." The concept is that when pedestrians get the walk signal a few seconds before drivers get a green light, they can walk into the intersection and be more visible, and therefore safer.