River Development

Permitted, environmentally-cleared and publicly- and privately-funded, a planned multi-modal North Atwater Village L.A. River bridge faces final city approvals this month.

The city of L.A. opened its new Riverside Drive Bridge, featuring a protected bikeway and roundabout. The project was praised for safety improvements, but the oversized project is really about moving more cars even faster.

Due to this year's El Niño storms, the federal Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is clearing vegetation (arguably illegally according to a similar regional water board lawsuit) in the most natural areas of the L.A. River. USACE is also adding temporary flood barriers along the river in the middle of the central stretch of L.A. River bike path. The flood barriers have closed the river bike path between the 134 Freeway and Fletcher Drive. The closures apply not just to bicycling, but also to the equestrian crossing from Atwater Village to Griffith Park.

Above is a graphic created by Don Ward to show just how crappy the Bureau of Engineering's Glendale-Hyperion Bridge plan is. The unsafe design was recently approved by L.A.'s Board of Public Works, and will soon come before City Council. Streetsblog USA profiled the board's approval as a sign that Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti's commitment to great streets may be illusory.

In a hearing at City Hall this morning, the mayor-appointed Board of Public Works unanimously approved proceeding with the city Bureau of Engineering's (BOE) recommendation to eliminate one of two sidewalks on its Glendale-Hyperion Bridge retrofit project. The latest version, announced earlier this week, has not changed significantly since 2013 when BOE pushed a similar unsafe design, leading to a backlash, and the formation of an advisory committee to re-think the dangerous design.

It was sort of a surreal moment. Even as Los Angeles City Councilmember Mitch O'Farrell stood at the podium discussing the benefits of a planned new bicycle and pedestrian crossing over the L.A. River, the Bureau of Public Works released its recommendation (PDF) that the new Glendale-Hyperion Bridge would actually have fewer feet devoted to safe sidewalks than the current bridge.

This morning, Streetsblog enjoyed the ribbon-cutting for the newest stretch of Los Angeles River Bike Path, located in the West San Fernando Valley. In 2011, Streetsblog covered the project's groundbreaking.

A big property acquisition is underway that will set the stage for planned large-scale revitalization of the Los Angeles River. The City of Los Angeles is expecting to complete the purchase of a former railyard site that Mayor Eric Garcetti and others describe as the "crown jewel" of any large-scale restoration of the river.

There has been quite a bit of proverbial water under the Glendale-Hyperion Bridge. Under a great deal of community displeasure in 2013, the city of Los Angeles set aside an outdated bridge retrofit plan and formed an advisory committee to decide the future of the historic span.