First Year Bicycle Lanes EIR Hearings Start Today

MyFig Cycletrack Rendering via Architect’s Paper

City Planning’s David Somers filled us in a couple of weeks ago on the release of the draft EIR for the First Year Bicycle Lanes project. While AB 2245 exempt bicycle lanes from CEQA, it still requires a public hearing process and traffic/safety assessments in order to file the exemption.

Those hearings will be occurring as follows:

Northeast Area

February 13, 2013, 6 pm to 8:30  pm

Los Angeles River Center & Gardens

California Building

570 West Avenue 26

Los Angeles, CA 90065

Central Area

February 14, 2013, 6 pm to 8:30 pm

Caltrans District 7 Building, Room 01.040 A, B and C

100 S. Main St.

Los Angeles, CA 90012 

West Area

February 19, 2013, 6 pm to 8:30  pm

LADOT Western Parking Enforcement Office,

11214 W. Exposition Blvd.

Los Angeles, CA 90064

Valley Area

February 21, 2013, 6 pm to 8:30 pm

North Hollywood Regional Library

5211 Tujunga Ave.

North Hollywood, CA 91601

As a refresher, the First Year Bicycle Lanes project includes the city’s first protected bicycle lanes as part of the MyFig streetscape project, a continuous bikeway from Hollywood through Silver Lake and Echo Park to Downtown, and strategic gap closures in the existing bicycle lane network. Somers also discusses the approval process going forward in another blog post.

Make sure to attend the meetings and have your voice heard on this exciting process.

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LADOT to Begin Adding Sharrows to an Additional 20 Miles of Streets

Sharrows on 4th Street

After sharrowing 20 miles of roads in October 2011, LADOT crews will be sharrowing another 20 miles, starting this month. “Sharrows” are shorthand for Shared Lane Markings (SLMs), and are used to identify streets that are designated as shared roadways for bicyclists and motorists.

According to the Department’s Sharrow Report, SLMs have three primary functions: to be a supplemental wayfinding device, to help announce the presence of bicyclists to motorists, and inform bicyclists where they should ride to prevent “dooring“.

Sharrow Installation

With that in mind, LADOT installs sharrows to:

• Provide gap closures in the Class II (Bike Lane) network (in the near term)
• Enhance Class III (Bike Route) Bikeways – This includes future BFS facilities
• Improve bicycling conditions on two-lane roadways with dashed centerlines, specifically

This batch of sharrows tentatively totals 22.64 miles, and a good portion of them were prioritized to support  the upcoming bicycle sharing system.

Streets to be sharrowed can be seen here (More streets can be seen by clicking “Page 2″ at the bottom of the left column).

For more information on sharrowing procedure and its regulation in the CAMUTCD, check out our previous post Sharrows 101.

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LADOT at CicLAvia

Handing out reflector straps and other items at Hollenbeck Park.

Another awesome CicLAvia event is now in the books and we have a lot of fond memories to look back on. We thought we’d take some time to thank  and acknowledge our LADOT co-workers who help make the big day possible. It takes a small army of LADOT staff to make sure that large events like CicLAvia go off without a hitch. LADOT is responsible for managing the logistics of street closures – or in this case, street openings for bicycles and pedestrians.

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