David Somers is a Bicycle Planner for the Department of City Planning (DCP) and will likely be back to the LADOT Bike Blog with additional updates and news in the future. Welcome to the blogosphere, David!
– Nate Baird
On Thursday, July 28th, the Department of City Planning (DCP) released the official notice that they, in coordination with LADOT, are preparing a Draft Environmental Impact Report (EIR) to study the potential environmental impacts due to the installment of 40+ miles of bikeways included in the Five Year Implementation Plan as well as the Figueroa Streetscape (MyFig) Project. The bikeways currently under evaluation are those that LADOT and DCP, acting in concert with the direction of the L.A. bike community and Council Offices, have received a first-year priority implementation status due to their benefits in closing critical gaps in the existing bike network, as well as scoring high on other criteria established by the 2010 Bike Plan.
Location of the bikeways included in the EIR:
As part of the public information gathering that will help in determining the scope and content of the environmental analysis, DCP and LADOT staff will also be conducting three pubic scoping meeting and a webinar as follows:
July 10, 2012, 5 pm to 7 pm
Caltrans District 7 Building, Room 01.040B
100 S. Main St.
Los Angeles, CA 90012
July 12, 2012, 6 pm to 8 pm
LADOT Western Parking Enforcement Office,
11214 W. Exposition Blvd., 1st Floor
Los Angeles, CA 90064
July 18, 2012, 6 pm to 8 pm
Los Angeles River Center & Gardens,
California Building
570 West Avenue 26
Los Angeles, CA 90065
Webinar, July 17th, 3 PM to 4 PM
Click here to reserve your Webinar seat
The webinar will include a presentation of the proposed project and review of the CEQA process. The information presented at the three scoping meetings and in the webinar will be identical. DCP and LADOT staff will take in feedback on the proposed scope and content of environmental information that should be included in the Draft EIR.
An interesting bit of engineering that Chicago is doing on their construction of a protected bike lane on 55th St is to have the bikes that are going straight move into the right-turn-only lane. Pictures of different design elements are in this Grid Chicago article:
http://gridchicago.com/2012/55th-street-protected-bike-lane-and-road-diet-began-wednesday/
Having the cyclists continue straight by moving into the right-turn-only lane reduces the stress-level for the cyclists compared to moving them into a bike lane to the left of the right-turn-only lane and also can eliminate the need for recommending the cyclist move into mixed traffic by the use of sharrows. An example of where this would work well would be heading south on Lankershim Blvd at the right-turn-only lane that moves vehicles into the parking lot for the Universal subway station.
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