Bike lanes on NELA’s York Boulevard, initial phase striped in 2010, reportedly to be extended to Figueroa soon – potentially later this month
Severin ‘walkeaglerock‘ Martinez credits Bikas’ Joe Linton for his Easy Bike Lane Projects in Northeast LA post earlier today over at Bipedality. It’s a great list, with map, of easy bike lane projects mainly in Eagle Rock, Highland Park, and Cypress Park.
Here’s a brief excerpt – go to Bipedality and read the whole thing:
as we await bike projects on major Northeast LA streets, there are opportunities to install bike lanes on streets (many of them residential) without any environmental studies or removal of car lanes. These are projects that could, in theory, be installed at any time the funding is available and help Los Angeles achieve its goal of implementing 40 miles of bike lanes each fiscal year.
I am happy that other folks are taking on some of the sort of urban analysis that Bikas has been obsessed with doing for the last few years. What I find both sad (past missed opportunities) and wonderful (future non-missed opportunities) is just how wide L.A.’s streets are and how many easy bike lane projects remain out there.
The early draft of what later became the L.A. City “2010″ Bike Plan asserted that only 26 miles of new bike lanes were “feasible” without hella-expensive time-consuming environmental impact reports (EIRs.) Then, lo and behold this fiscal year, the city got its political will on (big thanks @Villaraigosa!), and is on target for 40+ miles, with no EIR.
I think roughly 20-30% of those 40+ miles of FY2011-2012 bike lane projects removed travel lanes, including road diets. These diets were done in places where plenty of excess capacity already existed: 7th Street, Spring Street, the three different Main Street projects, and a few others. I think those road diets are among the best, most worthwhile, most effective bike lane projects! …but the vast majority of this year’s new bike lanes were just big wide L.A. streets where bike lanes could be easily added without removing any car lanes or car parking.
While walkeaglerock has documented many miles of low-hanging fruit in one area/neighborhood, as I bike around Los Angeles, I still see plenty of wide streets – from South L.A. to San Pedro to the San Fernando Valley – where bike lanes can be added easily without removing any car lanes. In addition to those, there are quite a few streets that appear to ripe for road diets – removing one car lane to make it safer for driving, walking and bicycling.
I think that, even with 40+ miles of low-hanging-fruit picked this year, there are still 100+ miles of very easy bike lane projects out there. One concern is, just because there’s enough space, should L.A. always add bike lanes? Generally my default answer is “yes” – bike lanes should be everywhere cyclists are and will be – which is to say everywhere. Prioritization is the next concern: which lanes should get done sooner, which later. With some, more pushy projects under environmental review, and plenty of easy projects available, the question should shift from “what’s doable?” to “what’s the priority?” – and we should hopefully see more Vinelands (population-dense, flat) and fewer Via Marisols (steep, suburban.)
What do you readers think? What streets in your neighborhood look like they have enough width and capacity to easily add bike lanes? Of the easy bike lane projects (lists by walkeaglerock and Bikas - or ones you’ve spotted) which do you think should be a priority? and why?
Niall Huffman (@kneel28)
06/13/2012
McLaughlin Ave in my old neighborhood of Mar Vista between Palms Blvd and Venice Blvd… perfect road diet candidate with four underused through-travel lanes and no big traffic-generating uses to justify them; connects existing Venice bike lanes with the Mar Vista Rec Center and gets within a couple blocks of two schools.
Dennis Hindman
06/13/2012
Why limit it to just high-stress bike lanes, which is appealing only to a very small segment of the population?
I’m discovering that there are usually lots of easy to ride, low-stress residential streets, that only need perhaps a loop detector for bikes or wayfinding signs to help guide cyclists. These streets are usually two lane streets that do not have centerline stripes.
Utilitybicycle trips for most people would have to be a low-stress route from their home to work, school or a store. Without protective barriers, buffers and no-turn signals at major intersections, major streets with unprotected bike lanes are too stressful for most people to ride.
walkeaglerock
06/13/2012
All the streets I included in my list are relatively slow, low traffic streets with one lane of traffic in each direction (they just happen to excessively wide so they can accommodate bike lanes)
walkeaglerock
06/13/2012
I agree with you though, I am pleasantly surprised by how many people I see bicycling on Norwalk Avenue, and Ellenwood in Eagle Rock
Dennis Hindman
06/14/2012
The Mineta Transportation Institute research report on Low-Stress Bicycling and Network Connectivity research report peaked my interest on focusing on creating low-stress routes for bicycling and not on how many miles of paint stripes that can be installed.
http://transweb.sjsu.edu/project/1005.html
The three researchers of the above report classified which one of the four levels of traffic stress levels that all 3,334 miles of streets in San Jose fall under (results on page 31 of the report). Sixty-four percent of the streets were at the lowest traffic stress level (mostly residential streets). Los Angeles is probably not that different than San Jose in this regard.
This in combination with noticing that there were 186 people I saw on the, as yet unopened, Orange Line extension mixed-use path last Monday night. I started to put together that most of the people that I see biking on these paths in the San Fernando Valley get to and from them by way of sidewalks and not by the street, due to stress levels exceeding their acceptable comfort threshold.
On my way home from shopping at two stores on Ventura Blvd tonight, I wondered what difference it would make, in the cycling rate, after bike lanes are installed on this street. My conclusion was not very much. The street would be very unappealing for mainstream cycling if only unprotected bike lanes were put on it, as it has far too much traffic that is traveling at a high rate of speed.
There are 6,500 centerline miles of streets in Los Angeles and only 2,600 miles of them are non-residential streets. The trick is to find ways to connect these primarily low-stress neighborhood streets into a network without having to spend a lot of money on treatments to lower the stress-levels for primary and secondary streets.
Dennis Hindman
06/14/2012
The Mineta Transportation Institute research report on low-stress bicycling came up with a different strategy for increasing the cycling modal share.
http://transweb.sjsu.edu/project/1005.html
LTS 3 and LTS 4 are usually found with unprotected bike lanes on primary streets.
The researchers mapped the LTS level of every street in San Jose and created a LTS 2 map that is shown on page 34, in figure 9. One color represents a connected island and each color is disconnected from another color of LTS 2.
Page 47, figure 16 shows the connectivity recommendations for these islands. None of these recommendations is a unprotected bike lane.
The end result is shown as a single LTS 2 cluster in figure 17, on page 49.
Using Portland bicycle coordinator Roger Geller’s classification scheme shown in figure 3, on page 11, a LTS 2 is targeting 68% of the population. A LTS 4, which is what most arterials with unprotected bike lanes are in LA, targets 1% of the population. LTS 3, which might be a unprotected lane on a secondary street in LA, targets about 8% of the population.
A LTS 2 is targeting about 68% of the population.
In other words, you are reaching a much larger range of demographics with a LTS 2, than a LTS 4 or LTS 3. So, you could have much fewer miles of bicycle infrastructure improvements that creates a larger modal share of cyclists overall for the city, compared to the LTS 3 or LTS 4 unprotected lanes placed on primary streets.
Joe Linton
06/14/2012
what is LTS?
Christopher Kidd (@BikeBlogChris)
06/14/2012
Level of Traffic Stress – a mixture of street condition variables that tries to measure suitability/comfort for bicycling.
LTS 1 is a street that parents would feel comfortable letting their child ride on, LTS 2 is a street calm enough that most adults (bicyclist and non-bicyclist alike) would feel comfortable riding on, LTS 3 is a street an experienced and/or vehicular cyclist would ride on with a modicum of comfort, and LTS 4 is a street almost all cyclists would either avoid or would not enjoy riding on.
Mapping out a city’s entire street network using an LTS system lets you #1: identify possible existing low-stress bicycle networks to enhance, #2: identify major high-stress barriers between neighborhoods/communities and their low-stress networks, and #3: help cities prioritize where their most impactful bicycle projects could be implemented.
Dennis Hindman
06/14/2012
Thanks for helping out with the explanation Chris. So, if you’ve read it, what do you think of the study? At the next BPIT meeting, I’m going to try and persuade LA to head in the direction of what this research report recommends for San Jose, emphasizing low-stress cycling, rather than how many miles of unprotected bike lanes that can be laid down on busy, stressful arterial streets.
Christopher Kidd (@BikeBlogChris)
06/14/2012
Overlaid with heat maps of population density, race/ethnicity, low-income status, vehicle ownership rates, etc. it could become a very powerful tool for prioritizing improvements, as well as clearly demonstrating why certain projects are necessary.
That being said, I think an LTS system would be most useful for a City starting a bike plan update process, especially when they haven’t done it in a while. For a City with a newly adopted plan (like LA) it could provide a lot of duplicative information and would provide a lot less utility compared the cost of mapping out an LTS system. I’m more inclined for LA to work with what they’ve got than jumping on each new approach as it comes along. If there’s a way for an LTS system to play a complementary role to the existing bike plan, I’m all for it.
Dennis Hindman
06/14/2012
Chris, here’s my take on the study:
There will be more people using transit less, rather than abandoning driving to take up utility biking. This is due to utility biking having to compete with the speed and convenience of driving. This would make the odds of a high amount of people biking in the westend of the SFV less likely, with its low transit use. Biking to school is a better target for this area with the Orange Line bike path installations, so low-stress neighborhood connections to the path should be a high priority there, rather than bike lanes on high-stress arterials that elementary and middle school kids would not be likely to ride on.
Observing how people get to the Orange Line path and how they leave it shows that many of them do not ride on the street. Monday, at about 7:45 PM, I counted 186 people using the almost completed Orange Line extension and the majority of them were getting there from the sidewalks.
A simple improvement to this design was the creation of about a dozen car sized ramps that are placed mid-block between the path and Canoga Ave. This makes accessing the businesses and the path much easier for cyclists.
Looking at downtown LA, connecting low-stress neighborhood streets would not work there because there are few of them. This is an area where investing in much higher cost cycle-tracks would have a big payoff.
The Westwood area doesn’t have many primary streets slated to have bike lane installations because the streets are so congested. The people that live in this proximity would put up fierce resistance if anyone suggests taking away space from drivers to give it to another form of transportation. So, connecting low-stress neighborhood streets would be a much more effective strategy there. The fact that the largest university in LA is located there makes it a good prospect for increasing the bicycle modal share.
Judging from where the highest use of biking is in the Netherlands, emphasizing connections to major transit centers should be a high priority. The busiest train station in the Netherlands is in the city of Utrecht, which is in the process of building a parking lot that will hold 23,000 bikes, which is not bad considering the city has a population of 300,000 people.
Right now, LA does not seem to have a strong focus on where the biking facilities are most useful. The implementation strategy is literally all over the map. To me this is like getting on your horse and riding off in all directions at once. It certainly looks like you are accomplishing something, but in reality you aren’t going very far. This will mean that a major increase in cycling will take a very extended period of time to achieve.
The recent emphasis on getting a network for biking in downtown LA is something I’ve always thought was the most important place to focus on. Biking is much more competitive with driving downtown, the greatest number of major transit connections is located there and so its likely to have a big payoff for the amount of money invested in bicycle infrastructure.
Finally, where I live in the Toluca Lake area, if the intersection lights for residential streets, that cross major intersections, had the loop detectors adjusted to register for bikes, then that will do more for cycling there than anything on the bike plan (which is very little). There are a number of small stores located along Riverside Dr that would be much more accessible by bike by having these minor tweaks on residential streets.
Dennis Hindman
06/14/2012
Another example is that the two biggest employment centers in the San Fernando Valley are at Warner Center and Universal Studios. The location of Universal Studios, which is located on two sides by hills and a third side has a steep incline, makes it not very condusive to walking or biking. The greatest amount of customers probably arrive by the subway and the employess tend to drive there as freeway on-ramps are close by.
You can bike to Universal Studios by using Lankershim Blvd north of there, but leaving by heading north on Lankershim Blvd is as stressful as you can get. Its literally like trying to cross two lanes on a freeway, where the two far right lanes are used for heading up Cahuenga Blvd The engineering solution is probably going to be to move the bike lane to the left of these two right turning lanes. That would be a laughable installation that nobody in their right mind would want to try using.
Also, Lankershim Blvd where it intersects Camarillo St and Vineland Ave has the highest stress level due to two right-turn lanes. Again, the traffic engineers solution, if they are following the Ca MUTCD schematic, is to put a bike lane pocket in between the two right turn lanes and the straight through lane.
I’ve tried every way that is conceivable to go through this intersection and this solution would not be an improvement. I frequently will wait in the crosswalk ahead of the stopped cars on Lankershim Blvd and look for a yellow light for the traffic that is moving through on Vineland Ave. If no traffic is coming on Vineland Ave under this yellow light, then I start to pedal on a red light for Lankershim Blvd. I’ve done this boldly while a police car has been stopped on the other side of Lankershim Blvd. There simply is no low-stress way to cross this intersection and traffic engineering is very unlikely to improve it enough to increase the rate of cycling.
I don’t have high hopes of improving the stress level significantly at these two points along Lankershim Blvd and so putting in bike lanes would have a minimal impact on the cycling rate for getting to Universal Studios.
Putting in bike lanes on Ventura Blvd (or Cahuenga as its called going east of Lankershim Blvd) would have little effect in changing the cycling rate as the street curves in this area and the traffic moves at a high rate of speed. It would be a very high-stress street with bike lanes.
Dennis Hindman
06/14/2012
Another example of how lame this bike plan will be in practice is Riverside Dr going west at the intersection of Camarillo St and Tujunga Ave. To continue riding along Riverside Dr, heading west through this intersection, you should get in the middle lane in order to make a curving left turn. Well, I usually would stay in the far right lane and then merge when I could see that there was room. Tricky, as you must deal with vehicles that will cross your path heading straight ahead towards Tujunga Ave.
A handful of times I decided to move over into the middle lane at the stoplight in order to be in the proper lane to continue along Riverside Dr. The last time I did this I was stopped waiting for the light to turn green in order to proceed and along came a car that pulled up behind me at the red light, with several cars both behind her and to our left. When the light turned green and I started to pedal, this female driver behind me ran over my wheel, causing my pedal to dig into my shin. To this day I have a scar on my shin from that. I no longer will do that manuever at that intersection. Low-stress it will never be, mainly due to stupid MUTCD designs that place the cyclist at high risk and make most of the potential riders uncomfortable about riding in a situation like this.
I also one day rode on the Reseda Blvd bike lanes from Oxnard St to Ventura Blvd at lunch time while at work. On my way back to Oxnard St, a woman driver cut in front of me to access a driveway at a high rate of speed. I plowed into her cars right quarter panel and broke my collarbone.
At Reseda Bicycles, located on the block that we were doing the sharrows pilot study, a employee there who is in his mid-forties said that he uses the Orange Line bike path to get to work, but he won’t ride on Reseda Blvd that has bike lanes. The last time I was there, his fellow worker had just recovered from a broken collarbone and ribs from being hit by a vehicle, although this collision did not occur on Reseda Blvd.
On Sherman Way as it crosses Topanga Cyn Blvd, a cyclist is forced in front of vehicles from the tight squeeze. The hundreds of times I have crossed this way, there have been few cyclists that have attempted this. The vast majority cross the street through the crosswalk and continue riding on the sidewalk when they reach the other side. A fifty feet, or so, west of this intersection are bike lanes, but they are essentially useless due to the high stress level to cross Topanga Blvd.
The bike plan looks good on paper, but in practice, for the San Fernando Valley, having bike lanes on arterial streets does little to increase the cycling rate from my experience of riding on them. There simply is too much traffic that is traveling at 40+ miles an hour, which is not conducive to increasing the rate of cycling.
An example of a secondary street with bike lanes that has several intersections with right and left turn only signals is Chandler Blvd. It’s essentially a two lane street with median landscaping blocking from view the two lanes that are moving in the opposite direction. This street could not be a lower stress level than a LTS 3 with 85 percent of vehicles moving at speeds of 45 miles an hour. If this street is too stressful for most adults to ride, then its hopeless for the rest of the primary streets in the valley to get anthing more than a low single digit percentage of potential bicyclists to ride on them.
Dennis Hindman
06/14/2012
The amount of money spent on bicycle infrastructure should be proportional to the degree of stress due to traffic. Bicycle friendly streets will typically get traffic calming, intersection signals and perhaps a median waiting area. Arterial streets also need traffic calming for cycling, no-turn signals should be installed at major intersections like they are for the Orange Line busway (incidently, I don’t believe that these no-turn signals were installed to benefit pedestrians or cylists, but only to reduce the odds of colliding with the buses), along with buffers and barriers.
When a pedestrian or cyclist is given a signal to cross a entrance to a freeway on-ramp, then the vehicles should not be allowed to turn across their path. This lack of consideration for peds or cyclists at these freeway on-ramps produces some of the highest stress levels for cycling and it effectively stops people from riding beyond that point. I usually avoid riding on Cahuenga Blvd a block north from where I live due to a freeway on-ramp. I will frequently ride in every other direction though.
Dennis Hindman
06/14/2012
I going to ride on the Orange Line path now, where the stress level is very low. To get there I have to go past the highest stress level points at either the freeway on-ramp entrance north, Lankershim Blvd where it intersects Camarillo St and Vineland Ave, or Riverside Dr just past Vineland Ave.
For most adult cyclists, these are barriers that woud prevent them from accessing the Orange Line bike path, effectively making a route that includes the Orange Line path the highest stress level, since links with lower stress levels do not compensate for the highest stress level link.
pacoimabeautiful
06/15/2012
In Pacoima: Osborne, Paxton, Laurel Canyon could all use Bike Lanes, are wide, relatively flat, near transit, and have reasonable traffic volumes. They’re pretty wide, also. With a bike path in the works for San Fernando Rd. and the potential for Pierce and Herrick as bike-friendly streets and potential Van Nuys rapidway bike infrastructure, it would be a pretty great network!