Last month—after a bit of controversy—the Los Angeles City Council voted to dedicate $27 million in the next fiscal year to the city’s Vision Zero plan to eliminate traffic deaths. Already, it seems that city staffers are snapping into action, with plans materializing last week for no less than five new bike lanes totaling 17.4 miles in South LA and the San Fernando Valley.
The plans (spotted by Urbanize LA) call for street safety improvements along Hoover Street, Broadway, Avalon Boulevard, Main Street, and Sepulveda Boulevard. The proposed changes would shave a single automobile lane from sections of each street, with that space being replaced by bicycle lanes in each direction.
Here’s a breakdown of the changes:
- Hoover Street: Three miles of bike lanes would be added between Vernon Avenue and Manchester Avenue.
- South Broadway: One mile of buffered bike lanes between Manchester Avenue and Century Boulevard.
- Avalon Boulevard: 6.4 miles of bike lanes between Jefferson Boulevard and 120th Street.
- South Main Street: Four miles of bike lanes between Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and 92nd Street.
- Sepulveda Boulevard: Three miles of buffered bike lanes between Nordhoff Street and Rinaldi Street.
Similar street safety alterations in Playa del Rey have drawn the ire of drivers dismayed about the effects on traffic and commute times. City officials who advocate for the changes, however, say they’ll help to reduce the risk of fatalities on some of LA’s most dangerous roads.
In January, the city updated its Vision Zero action plan to help achieve Mayor Eric Garcetti’s ambitious goal of eliminating traffic deaths by 2025. All five of the streets now set to receive safety-oriented updates were identified in the study as among the 40 most dangerous corridors in the city.
- City Council votes to dedicate $27M to Vision Zero, its plan to end traffic deaths [Curbed LA]
- How Los Angeles plans to make its streets less deadly [Curbed LA]
- Drivers aren’t happy about pedestrian-friendly changes in Playa del Rey [Curbed LA]
Comments
Still not enough. LA needs way more bike paths and buffered bike lanes. Forget a stupid painted line down a street. Drivers here are beyond the worse and riding a bike on the street here is worse than hell. Too many people looking at their phone I would say 80 percent. Don’t believe me? Ride a bike you will see how many "distracted" drivers their really is. Where is the bike PATH from the Westside to the Valley!
By Jimmy Wong on 06.12.17 8:11am
You mean a bike path from the west side to the valley that no one will ever use?
By LADude on 06.12.17 11:40am
People are distracted, period – regardless of mode of transportation. Can’t even count all of the cyclists I see with earbuds in, pedestrians looking at phones, and people on bus not moving for the elderly.
By MMVic on 06.12.17 2:25pm
Yeah, but they are not driving 2 tons of metal. Slight difference.
By Jimmy Wong on 06.12.17 2:51pm
2 tons or 25 lbs…wandering around totally distracted can cause crashes for vehicles AND cyclists. No excuse for people not paying attention.
By MMVic on 06.12.17 3:02pm
There were less than 250 traffic related deaths (car drivers, passengers, cyclists and pedestrians) in all of LA last year. That’s 250 in a city of 4 Million. Why are we spending Tens of Millions to cause an increase in traffic for a negligible number of deaths.
By LADude on 06.12.17 11:39am
That’s not a "negligible number" to the family and friends of those that have died. The point of Vision Zero is just that: to stop traffic deaths. We’ve grown accustomed to death being a price to pay for driving places quickly and some people have decided that’s not an appropriate trade.
By brianmojo on 06.12.17 11:57am
It’s a negligible number. And given the number of cars on the road it’s actually astonishingly low.
By LADude on 06.12.17 2:27pm
Cool, so if it was your husband/wife, child, or friend that died you’d still feel that it was worth it so you could save 5 minutes on your commute? I mean, if that’s how you feel, then that’s how you feel. Just making sure you understand what you’re saying.
By brianmojo on 06.12.17 2:45pm
Your statistic is going in the wrong direction. The number of people killed in traffic collisions in Los Angeles soared 43 percent from 2015-2016, even as city officials worked to curb traffic deaths, the Los Angeles Times reports. By the way that is only deaths, not injuries. Now multiply that by a few thousand.
By Jimmy Wong on 06.12.17 3:00pm
In LA, traffic deaths and homicides are pretty close in numbers most years… yet we spend a helluva lot more money addressing the latter. Fact of the matter is we have a piss poor safety record when it comes to streets in the U.S. Other countries in the west have basically solved these issues through better design.
It ain’t rocket science: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlApbxLz6pA
By corner soul on 06.12.17 12:36pm
First, homicides includes car deaths. A homicide is anytime a person kills another person. So the car deaths would be included in that. Second, these other countries you speak of are completely different than LA such that trying to apply what they do will never work. Have you actually traveled to the Netherlands and ridden a bike in their cities? I have. Their cities were designed specifically for bikes and you can actually use a bike connected to a public transportation system to get anywhere in that country. The same is not true for LA/the USA.
By LADude on 06.12.17 2:30pm
Yes, but LA has major traffic corridors that could be designed better to incorporate a fully secure bike lane… thinking of Adams or Venice. North/south is a little more tricky in the city.
By VBNate on 06.12.17 3:31pm
Sorry, still think priority needs to be given to bus lanes on thoroughfares with bus routes. More people use the bus in this city than ride bikes, and we’ll INCENTIVIZE more people to ride the bus if we can speed along bus commutes.
40 people on a bus > 1 person on a bike
Bikes are still single-occupant vehicles that move slowly and take up space in order to operate safely. Why we are prioritizing them over buses is beyond me.
By MMVic on 06.12.17 2:35pm
^^^^ THIS! @MMVIC you couldn’t be anymore on point. Road space is a finite resource (for the most part). As more ppl come to LA or are born here, more ppl will inherently use the roads. Why on Earth are we prioritizing Bikes over Buses, or other vehicles that can carry multiple persons rapidly?!?!? People are acting as though adding bike lanes will solve our congestion issues (which is much more of an issue to LA voters, than Bike injuries, not saying that’s a good thing tho). How can one even logically state this alleviates congestion? On Fairfax for example where they put that Bike lane in, at most, you have 0-7 bikes riding it per hour (I live near by, and frequent restaurants on that stretch, giving me (and anyone else) the ability to easily monitor this).
So for 0-7 bikes, we have no displaced Bus’s and cars carrying easily more than 7 ppl?? And we wonder why congestion is getting worse? PPl say road diets work by limiting congestion on roads and slow down traffic. Yea that happens bc ppl start taking residential streets, its not like cars just magically vanished. And now we have ppl zooming down our residential streets putting dog walkers, children and pedestrians at risk.
Why couldn’t we just redirect bikes to residential, low vehicle used streets/corridors? Corridors that ppl travel at slower speeds anyway, thus making it safer for bikes?? Why are we removing our already limited street resources for rarely used Bike lanes???
By USCTrojan90 on 06.13.17 1:06pm
More, please. At some point, now f’rinstance, you just have to say "F&%k cars. Drivers are the problem" and leave them to make the decision whether to contribute to congestion and pollution or get around faster, either by bus or bike. Oh, forgot to mention the need for bus-only lanes so transit vehicles aren’t stuck in a sea of SOVs.
By keenplanner on 06.14.17 12:01pm