Two Los Angeles thoroughfares won’t get bike lanes that were originally envisioned in a plan to make the city friendlier and safer for modes of transportation other than cars.
The Los Angeles City Council voted last week to strip plans for bike lanes on Central Avenue in South LA and Westwood Boulevard in Westwood from the Mobility Plan 2035 "for good." Instead, bike lanes will be added to Avalon Boulevard (in South LA) and Gayley Avenue (in Westwood), KPCC reports.
It routes were controversial. KPCC says the new routes will appease critics who said bike lanes on Central and Westwood would "disrupt traffic too much." But Streetsblog LA has has said the new routes offer less direct access to public transit and are less likely to be used:
Central Avenue is the most highly trafficked street by bicycle commuters in all of South Los Angeles, if not the entire city. The vast majority of the commuters are working-class Latinos and students who have few transportation alternatives available to them. They are also people for whom side streets are largely off limits (due to the way gang territories are divided up and enforced) and for whom a street like Avalon – a full half-mile away – is so out of the way as be of little use.
In the last year or so, LA’s Mobility Plan was approved, then rescinded. The plan has yet to be funded and needs further approvals from the City Council, according to KPCC.
- LA City Council's decision on bike lanes disappoints advocates [SCPR]
- Amendments to Remove Central, Westwood Bike Lanes from Mobility Plan, Add Substitues Move Through Planning Commission [Streetsblog LA]
- Los Angeles Approves Big-Time Plan to Make It Easier For Everyone to Get Around the City [Curbed LA]
- Anti-Development Group Forcing LA to Take Back Big-Deal Plan For Less Car-Centric City [Curbed LA]
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