A few weeks ago, we celebrated the growing network of bikeway facilities in the LAX area with the opening of the Aviation Blvd. bike lanes. On that blog post, someone expressed interest in the reason why the Sepulveda Blvd. tunnel is closed to bikes. The tunnel is under the jurisdiction of the State of California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), who has deemed it unsafe for bicyclists and pedestrians following an incident that occurred over a decade ago. We have reached out to Caltrans to begin discussions on how we can move forward with making the tunnel more bike friendly. The tunnel is heavily trafficked, with three 10′ travel lanes, no shoulders, and no sidewalks and an ADT (average daily trips) of over 40,000 vehicles. A Bureau of Street Lighting project will soon be getting under way that may improve visibility in the tunnel. In the mean time, a good detour would be to use the new Aviation Blvd. bike lanes or La Cienega Blvd. to the east or Pershing Dr. to the west. We’d like to hear your thoughts or ideas on how the tunnel can be made more bike friendly; would sharrows, signage, or additional lighting be sufficient? Tell us what you think in the comments section below.
Update on the LAX Sepulveda Blvd. Tunnel
March 13, 2012 by LADOT Bike Blog
Posted in Bicyquality of Life, Safety | 27 Comments
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I have to agree with Cal Trans on this one. Because of the size of the lanes, the high traffic volume, the very busy freeway on and off ramps on the south end of the tunnel and the ramps in and out of LAX on the north end this stretch of Suepulveda is not suitable for bikes.
Sharrows? Signage? Lighting! Are you kidding? How about some candy and happy face stickers?
Clearly the only solution is to paint one lane green. That will make it safe.
Horseapples Larry!
This is a Public Right-of-Way and thus it must be open to the public for all modes of transport. Not just those fortunate enough to possess a two-ton machine that has between 1 and 50 U.S. gallons of highly-flammable liquid on board. Why must non-users of automobiles continue to be treated as third-class citizens?
Perhaps bicycles will have to be walked until engineering improvements can be made, but keeping non-motorists unable to transit the entire length of a road as important as Sepulveda (which is what this really is, the “Route 1” signs cam later solely as a means of directing users) is undemocratic and an insult to the principles on which this country was founded.
For the record, Sepulveda was not built with state gas tax dollars, as it existed before the state gasoline tax did, nor can it be argued that the state gasoline tax has ever kept pace with the cost of maintaining State Route 1 so let’s toss those old canards. The road is not policed by the Highway Patrol as it would be if it were only a State Highway. On top of which, the tunnel serves as a convenience to what is now LAX in helping to eliminate the old at-grade crossing that was required for the south runway (now 25L and 25R) so that it might be long enough for the then-new Boeing Stratocruisers to take off with a full tank of fuel and make it to Hawaii.
http://unitproj.library.ucla.edu/dlib/lat/display.cfm?ms=uclalat_1429_b257_95950EW-1&searchType=keyword&k=airport&w=none&x=title&y=none&z=none&s=1&all
The road was there first and if it can’t be open to all users, then LAX needs to shorten those runways, re-install the grade crossing (Gibraltar Airport has one) or move flights elsewhere, like ONT.
If our economic competitors can include bicycle facilities under their airport runways, we must too, or we lose potential development in our economy to them:
And why exactly was it closed? What was the nature of this “incident” or was it really because some dinosaur of a road engineer wanted to move more traffic?
The only solution I can envision is widening the tunnel to accommodate physically protected bike and pedestrian paths on either side of the roadway.
Notice the narrow curb/sidewalk present on both the left and right sides of the 3 travel lanes. If the lanes were moved over to the left so there was no curb on the left side then a bike-pedestrian path could be paved on the right side. A wire fence and LED lighting could be added for safety.
I also meant to add that car travel lanes could be narrowed slightly if additional space is needed, which has been shown to increase safety of vehicle travel as more effort is put into staying in the correct driving lane.
Oh look, another city with a growing creative economy more than willing to attract our educated workforce who managed to figure out how to get a bicycle under an airport runway:
Seattle’s Airport has a tunnel under one of its runways at 188th Street
Long Beach has no restrictions, that I can find, on who can use the two tunnels (Lakewood Blvd. and Spring Street) under LGB airport.
Here’s a neat factoid:
“Sepulveda Boulevard Tunnel–The Sepulveda Boulevard Tunnel is the section of Highway 1 that runs approximately 0.36 mile underneath Los Angeles International Airport. The tunnel has three lanes of travel in each direction with an 8-foot shoulder on both sides. It has an ADT of approximately 57,000 vehicles per day.”
From:
http://transweb.sjsu.edu/MTIportal/research/publications/documents/BikesAndPeds.htm
The same paper goes on to say:
“This gives a total shoulder width of 8 feet as a minimum that should be provided on freeways open to bicycles. Eight feet also provides room for the bicyclist to maintain distance from fast-moving heavy vehicles, and the problem of wind pushing the bicyclist is diminished. Caltrans should take steps to provide continuous shoulders of at least 8 feet on freeways open to bicycles.”
OMG…it “meets the standard”!! So why is this road closed to certain vehicles again??
P.S. Found a decent, albeit unscientific, list of “Airports with Tunnels under them” here:
http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/general_aviation/read.main/2227024/
Lower the speed limit to 35 mph or less. Problem solved.
Ok, I’m emailing Caltrans concerning this matter…road ways should be available for all users; simply banning bikes is not an effective way of dealing with an issue. And way is Caltrans not applying for Federal grant money to make the tunnel better for all users. Come on Caltrans step up to the 21st century.
PS love the new bike lanes next to LAX!
Reduce the speed limit to 25mph, narrow the lanes to 9 feet. (According to Streetswiki, “Those states with more arterial roads with lane widths of 9 feet or less had fewer traffic injuries. Lane widths of 10 feet or 11 feet are also associated with fewer injuries and fatalities compared to 12 foot lanes.” cf http://streetswiki.wikispaces.com/Lane+Width) That and a little jiggling of the shoulders should allow for a bike lane demarcated by reflective Botts Dots or equivalent. Slowing traffic through tunnels is generally a good thing anyway.
I’ve ridden though that tunnel, and it was not comfortable to do it VC style at all.
Streets are not freeways. Those who want to drive fast can try their luck on the adjacent 405. Arterial though it be, Sepulveda is an access facility for local destinations. Turning it into a de facto freeway–in part by excluding bicycle facilities–is an insult to the community, its merchants, and all road users except those wallowing about in cars, enjoying their tax subsidy. (See http://www.sustainablecitynews.com/rr69.html)
Sepulveda was there for, what, 150 years before the Airport?
A citation for the old runway grade-crossing:
http://books.google.com/books?id=7u7T56p6eAAC&lpg=PA10&ots=nHNZNjAYSJ&dq=sepulveda%20stratocruiser&pg=PA10#v=onepage&q=sepulveda%20stratocruiser&f=false
P.S. Lincoln used to meet-up with/split-off from Sepulveda near where the tunnel is today.
I love taking the lane, but this doesn’t seem like a battle that is worth the fight. I don’t even like driving in that tunnel, much less riding in it. I would prefer to work on making Aviation and Pershing more bike-friendly. And, keep an eye on the ongoing efforts to get public transit into LAX. Some smart, hard working folks might be able to get bike access piggybacked onto such a project.
Physically separated lane. Turn one lane over to bikes and peds, with a barrier to protect them from cars. Better lighting is absolutely crucial — it’s pitch dark in there.
While I applaud the notion of making Sepulveda more-bike friendly, taking two lanes away in the tunnel strikes me as being neither realistic or achievable.
The lack of bike and pedestrian access means you need to detour at least 2 miles out of the way, when traveling along Sepulveda thru LAX by foot or by bike. A trip from Westchester to El Segundo is 5 miles long, instead of only 3 miles with access. That’s not acceptable.
2 lanes each way are plenty for 57,000 vehicles a day, for a 1 mile section with no intersections. A lane of car traffic can move 2000 vehicles per hour.
Narrow Sepulveda to 2 lanes each way, and use the extra 10 feet to make a separate bike and pedestrian path on each side.
If there’s too much traffic at peak hours, cars can detour to Aviation or Pershing instead
I agree with you but I don’t think realistic and achievable will be given much consideration in this thread. Even if you did manage to sandwich in bike lanes in the tunnel there is still the problem of south bound bike traffic crossing the exit from LAX onto Sepulveda on the north side and then getting across the on ramp to the 105 on the south side. Riders going north have the opposite problem, off ramp from 105 and entrance into LAX.
If the design of this corridor makes sure that private motorized traffic is the fastest, easiest and most direct route, then bicycling will never have a chance of having any significant modal share. Paint treatments without barriers at this location would be inadequate in attracting anyone other than fearless bike riders. There needs to be a comfortable protected bikeway that a wide range of demographics would want to use.
An LED lighting project is being started right now according to:
Click to access SepTunLAX.pdf
(And by reinstalling the tunnel wiring, accommodations can be made for future Security Closed-Circuit TV Camera needs)
Many of the naysayers above are looking to ride through the tunnel in a traditional right-hand painted bike lane or use the existing sidewalk (or scarier still, a la John Forrester.)
But how about looking at a center, two-way, bicycle facility that runs along the median of Sepulveda from Imperial Highway to West Century Blvd.? Yes, in the tunnel this will get split by the support wall and may require narrowing of the motor-vehicle lanes (the current sidewalk could be removed), but for the remainder of the route outside the tunnel there is space already being taken up by an empty median and there is plenty of room on the outsides of Sepulveda for lane-shifting.
Access could be via crosswalk/pedestrian signal at both Imperial and West Century. Perhaps this requires a forced dismount, but I’d rather dismount to walk my bike 70 feet (NW corner Sepulveda at Imperial) to the median than be forced to ride 5 miles in order to travel 0.36 miles. And I’ll happily share it with pedestrians if we all can save that distance.
By running this down the median (that’s where Washington D.C. is finding space for bicycles, BTW) you avoid the conflicts with the on- and off-ramps that Larry mentions above. Bike access to Interstate 105 is not necessary; access to W. Century and World Way (i.e. the airport loop) is done at the northern end where one can also dismount to cross back to the right-hand side of Northbound Sepulveda.
This will also result in the two intersections mentioned above getting the four-crosswalks every intersection legally has, except when some dinosaur road engineer unilaterally decides that those pesky pedestrians will not allow him to move more cars and must be stopped by the magic “man with a line though him” pictogram. In the case of West Century at Sepulveda, an important bus stop on Southbound Sepulveda has its access limited by this closed-minded car-centric thinking.
LAX is one of the few airports in the world that one can actually walk to and from; it is connected to the Los Angeles sidewalk system. Witness all the pedestrians walking past the ParkOne lot to the Radisson and other hotels on W. Century or to the plane-spotters’ favorite In’N’Out.
Except you only can do this if you are north of Runways 25L and 25R.
Why?
[…] an official Streetblogger. LADOT offers initial results on wayfinding input, and wants your take on biking through the Sepulveda tunnel under LAX; personally, I don’t even like driving through it. A pink bike may be the key to a […]
One more thing to remember:
Airports are large employment centers.
http://airport-world.com/news-articles/item/1414-us-airports-powerful-economic-generator
Some of the employment at LAX is on the north side of Runways 25L & 25 R (Hotels, Passenger Terminals, Ground Transportation, Maintenance), but an equal amount is on the south side (Cargo, more Hotels).
As transportation costs continue to rise, why have we allowed a Berlin Wall to be built between the two halves of the airport? Especially when the LAX Bus Center is located where it is (not that everyone can even afford a Bus pass anymore). Sure, LAWA could run a shuttle bus, but they don’t and if they did, it would still be subject to future operation costs.
Probably this tunnel is worth a look by anyone reading this. Sound like some of the previous comments are highly speculative. So go and take a look. The South end is easily accessable from the Aviation Bvld. bike lanes ( which has it’s own mini tunnel under the ramp of th 105 terminus ). There a Green line station a mile East of the tunnel. And teh Beach Bike path is 2 miles west.
Here’s what I see: traffic approaching freeway speeds – 50-60 mph, lots of it, three lanes worth narrowing at the tunnel, and a quite narrow sidewalk. Cyclists have been sucked off that narrow sidewalk by the wake of big trucks moving at speed, proving again that sidewalk riding isn’t fesable for long. And it’s a dark tunnel, so on a bright sunny day, many drivers are blinded until they pull off their sunglasses. And after you clear the tunnel Northbound (or approach Southbound) there’s bascally a freeway sized road, with freeway speeds for a mile. Wide and very fast traffic. Rode though it once – it’s one of the few places I won’t cycle again, unless it’s a big group with a big honking light at the back
This going to be an extensive fix: here’s my start for a solution: find room for resonablely wide bike lanes on Sepulvada. The tunnel is not an islated issue. This section is very fast traffic, so a bicycle lane should be fairly far from the travel lane. Find a way to slow traffic there. Really, thats a key factor. Slow the traffic somehow. This now brings us to the tunnel. It has a few engineering issues on it’s own, before we add travel lanes for bicycles and peds. There seems to be a ventalation issue, it’s coved in soot and quite dark and noisy, and it’s big job is to hold up a quite heavy airplane, now a million pound Airbus. I suggest we ask for a study to find a way to: add better ventalation, some sound reducing baffing, and a small raised outrigger cove or tunnel to each side for the smaller bicycles. It would be possable to leave support pillars between the cylce/ped lane and the auto lane. That would reduce several issues at once.
Another source for solutiuons might be to include cyclist facilities in whatever people mover/subway solution is developed to connect the Mretro Green line or the next line to LAX. There just might be funding for another tunnel or a wider nicer tunnel there.
Suggestions to just treat the tunnel only with more lights on the soot covered space, or some paint, will be inadaquete to make this safe for cyclists. All of this section of Sepulvada near the airport need some clever planning to add cycling to the mix.
I am a big bike supporter. I support traffic calming, reducing speed limits, etc,
Reasonably.
Reducing lanes in that tunnel would back up traffic to Norwalk, Long Beach and Santa Clarita.
Mixing bikes into that functionally-obsolete tunnel … which essentially functions as an extension of an interstate freeway … is insanity.
Demanding equal rights at a place where drivers cannot see because of the physical nature of the human eye? Brilliant.
57k cars a day? Try 113,000!
Asking motorist to slow down? At an airport-to-freeway limited access quasifreeway? Daft.
That tunnel is not slated for replacement.
“A bike way down the center median” offers one helpful fuzzhead. What’s going to hold up the airplanes?
Stupid stupid stupid.
I agree to add bike lane there, I live in El segundo, i work in culver city, The tunnel closing for biker add me 2.5 mile to my trip every day. We need a big guy to push this idea.
Don’t hold your breath.
If Helena, Montana can tunnel, Why can’t LA tunnel? Surely LA engineers can calculate tunnel segments that will carry the load, and a way to install without shutting down the runway, or install when the runway is scheduled shut down for other maintenance. http://helenair.com/news/local/tunnel-provides-safe-crossing-under-i–for-bicyclists-pedestrians/article_50254f40-4841-11e3-865e-001a4bcf887a.html