Walking

For a quick preview of what Seleta Reynolds has to offer Los Angeles, watch this video of her commendation appearance before the San Francisco Board of Supervisors two days ago. Reynolds' item begins at 00:43.

At yesterday's Metro Board Meeting, directors approved a handful of initiatives that have great implications for the future livability of the Los Angeles Region. Here is the re-cap:

I assume that most Streetsblog readers who have any interest in sports turn elsewhere for insightful sports coverage. We barely cover competitive bike racing here. I don't claim much in the way of sport expertise, nonetheless, as a somewhat-closeted soccer fan, I am going to try my hand at writing about the World Cup Football. It's not Football in the American sense though, it is, of course, Soccer.

At its April 2014 meeting, the Metro board approved its First Last Mile Strategic Plan & Planning Guidelines. For readers unfamiliar with "first last mile" terminology, it's planner-speak for looking at the portion of a transit trip between a transit stop and one's final destination, most often a home or work place. Generally every transit trip includes some non-transit at each end. This last mile can include: walk, bicycle, skate, scooter, transit, taxi, carpool, driving, etc., or some combination of those. First last mile planning looks at the infrastructure that makes it safer and easier for riders to get to transit stops.

At yesterday's Metro Board meeting, bike and walk activists won a small victory to ensure a fair process for projects seeking state funding.

Crews are out this week doing striping and new crosswalks for a project called Broadway's Dress Rehearsal. Broadway is, arguably, Los Angeles' most heavily pedestrian street. The current project reallocates former car-lane space to make way for pedestrians. It's no secret that the transformation here is inspired by NYC's relatively-inexpensive street plazas, including Times Square.

At Monday's Los Angeles City Council Budget and Finance Committee, the city's proposed $10 million sidewalk repair program took a turn inward. After closed session deliberations over sidewalk lawsuit liability, Committee Chair Paul Krekorian relayed the committee's action to focus on "damaged sidewalks abutting city facilities."

The long-anticipated MyFigueroa project made another appearance at the Los Angeles City Council's Planning and Land Use Management (PLUM) committee yesterday. With more than a hundred supporters in attendance, a great deal of staff work, political leadership, and a stakeholder summit process underway, it appears that MyFigueroa may be on track to break ground some day in the not too distant future.

Last Saturday, Walk Bike Glendale hosted its second Pastry Walk event. Walk Bike Glendale advocates for a safe places to walk and bike in the city of Glendale. They host events and workshops, and press the city for new facilities, including Glendale's Glendale Narrows Riverwalk park and its new planned bridges, and future bike lanes being studied for Chevy Chase Drive. Walk Bike Glendale recently became a local chapter of the L.A. County Bicycle Coalition.