This past Tuesday, LADOT Bike Blog and Bikeways Engineering staff spent their evening attending a meeting for the Planning & Land Use Committee for the Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council (DLANC). Several members of the LACBC and the Los Angeles Bicycle Advisory Committee also showed up to lend LADOT their support.
Among other items, which included Master Conditional Use Permits (CUPs) for a few downtown developments and a measure to support “adult cabaret” uses at a nightclub out in the Industrial District, the LADOT Bike Program presented conceptual designs for bike lane projects on Figueroa Street, Flower Street, Spring Street, and Main Street. Ably covered by the excellent Blogdowtown, you can read the specifics of our presentation there. We plan to give these projects fuller coverage in the days to come, and we will make the powerpoint presentation given to the DLANC Planning & Land Use Committee available online along with it.
Next Steps, Post-BPIT
First introduced at the June BPIT (Bike Plan Implementation Team) meeting, LADOT took the comments of BPIT attendees and refined the conceptual design and the approach of the bike lane presentation for the DLANC Planning & Land Use Committee. The BPIT, in getting first crack at all new bike projects, helps LADOT to both refine and improve our design and our approach when bringing projects before Neighborhood Councils and community groups. LADOT will continue to inform involved parties about projects as we go through the environmental clearance required to install these projects. The idea is to have built a strong constituency of support in the community for projects by the time the approval process is complete, removing all barriers to implementation at once.
DLANC comments
DLANC members, on the whole, were very supportive of bringing bike lanes to downtown LA. On Figueroa, DLANC members were supportive of an option that ran a couplet of bike lanes on Figueroa and Flower. This was in contrast to the original concept of bike lanes on both sides of Figueroa, which would create greater impacts in loss of travel lanes and/or parking. This option for a couplet of bike lanes on Figueroa and Flower, we should mention, came as a result of input from attendees at the June BPIT meeting.
DLANC members were especially supportive of removing peak-hour parking restrictions on Spring Street and Main Street to accommodate bike lanes, though one member was dubious about a lane removal on Main Street having no significant negative congestion impacts.
In the end, the DLANC Planning & Land Use Committee asked LADOT to partner with their “Complete Streets” working group to refine our designs and possibly incorporate additional traffic calming features to improve quality of life for downtown residents. We look forward to working with this working group in the future.
when will the presentation be made available electronically?
As alluded to in the post, the presentation will be made available online in a .ppt format when we publish a more detailed post on the projects in the next few days.
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[…] would also bring a bike lane to Flower Street. The amended presentation was then given to the Planning & Land Use committee for the Downtown LA Neighborhood Council just last week, receiving warm […]