Update: This portion of Main St. was always intended to include conventional bike lanes. Design work is still ongoing for the segment north of 9th to Cesar Chavez.
This past weekend, bike lanes were installed on Main St. between 9th St. and Venice Blvd/16th. in Downtown Los Angeles. Crews have already installed most of the new striping and signage for the bike lanes. Installation is expected to be complete by this coming weekend – crews will be adding additional lane markings and conducting minor touch up work. Inclement weather could not delay this important project that further extends the Downtown bikeway network southwards through the Fashion District and into South L.A.. Be sure to check out our flickr page for more photos of the facility.
Spring St. Material Testing Delayed
Unfortunately, the weather did delay LADOT’s planned green bike lane material testing. We’ll be sure to update you here on the LADOT Bike Blog with the revised schedule as soon as we have it. Thanks!
Hey guys, could you go paint some bike lanes up in the sierra nevada? Apparently, LADOT bike lane project = rain and the state needs more rain.
[…] The southern stretch of Main (between Ninth and Venice/Sixteenth) was bikeified over the weekend, reports the LADOT Bike Blog, but the lane is looking a bit gray. Apparently, “The Department of Transportation now […]
I hope you are making some progress on getting bicycle boulevards built. I’m convinced that it was the development of a bicycle boulevard grid that drove the bicycle mode share in Portland over the past decade. Right now people are fixated on Bike lanes, as many Portlanders were in the 1990s, but most people don’t feel safe until bicycle lanes are either protected (cycle tracks etc.) or until they become more confident cyclists – which is something they learn riding less stressful parallel alternate routes through residential neighborhoods. LA, from what I’ve seen, isn’t capable producing the sort of better designed bicycle lanes that current non-cyclists are going to feel safe using for the bulk of their trip. They need alternate routes to get near their destination before the switch over to the potholed bike lanes with that appear to disappear at intersections. I lived in Portland on and off from 1997 until recently and as much as I hated the idea of bicycle boulevards in the 1990s I believe they created or made apparent the demand for the more serious facilities now being built. I hated boulevards, especially after two years at the University of Munich, but most people hated shitty bike lanes. It was on these parallel routes that people learned how to ride adult bicycles (and ditch their beach cruisers), use front brakes and make their first utilitarian trips to the grocery store. Very few people are going to use second rate bicycle lanes and dodge right hand turning cars mile after mile to get to downtown to use spring st or main. I would, but that is only after years of using bicycle boulevards and many more years in traffic in downtown Portland. This probably isn’t news to people at LADOT but the lack of bicycle boulevards has to be brought up in a city where advocates are apparently fixated on cycle tracks. The inability to deal with major intersections on 4th is really rather pathetic. Of course you need bike lanes downtown but LA should already have made some serious progress on the boulevards that could take people to the cities’ few bike lanes. I tend to think of american bike lanes as a last mile treatment. Most people would prefer safer or safe feeling alternate routes until the last mile or less.
If Long Beach doesn’t have as many cyclists on it’s cycle tracks as one would like to see it is because there is no bicycle boulevard network taking people to and from downtown. The intersection of 3rd and Alamitos, that takes you to the southern end of the cycle tracks, is something only experienced cyclists will deal with on a regular basis.
LADOT’s bicycle lanes seem to have been designed for experienced cyclists who know how to deal with intersections and are willing to make vehicular left hand turns.
I’m not convinced that you’re going to attract new riders if they feel pushed into the cross walk or curb at intersections. I fear that the current weak intersection treatment as well as the difficulty of getting to bicycle lanes is going to put us in a position of having to defend bicycle lanes that appear empty to many people. I could imagine an LAweakly led backlash against “empty” bike lanes downtown. For all I know Willamette Week editorialized against the isolated bits of standard bike lane Portland built in the 1990s, before the city got serious about the bicycle boulevard grid and the cycling population really took off.
The very large and very visible population of people using bicycle boulevards for most of their trip in Portland has made it much more difficult to argue against more expensive facilities. People are willing to deal with difficult stretches of second rate commercial street bike lane or difficult intersections if they have a less dangerous and less stressful alternate route that reduces exposure to these less friendly streets. Right now LA seems to only be making progress building those facilities that should comprise the least pleasant 5% of a bicycle trip.
Hi James,
I am happy to let you know that we are making progress on implementing Bicycle Friendly Streets in the City of Los Angeles. In the pipeline are streets including 4th St in the Central City and Yucca St. out in Hollywood. In the future, we have also secured funding through Safe Routes to School to create an 11th St BFS facility out in Pico-Union. Thanks for reading and commenting and we’ll be sure to update you here on the blog with some updates on Bicycle Friendly Street facilities.
Thank you for an enlightening comment. I agree that the current bike lanes, whether they have green paint or not, exclude the vast majority of potential bike riders because, though better than nothing at all, they are still too dangerous, subjectively and actually. I haven’t ridden on a ‘neighborhood greenway’ aka ‘bike boulevard’ aka ‘bicycle friendly street’ (is that correct?) and wasn’t sure how great they would be, but I guess they could be the game changer, depending on how many and how they’re done. Personally, I would love to see a few neighborhoods in different parts of the city selected as pilot projects / experiments where they would each get a tight network of Dutch quality protected lanes and neighborhood greenways.
[…] The southern stretch of Main (between Ninth and Venice/Sixteenth) was bikeified over the weekend, reports the LADOT Bike Blog, but the lane is looking a bit gray. Apparently, “The Department of Transportation now […]
Apparently, Hollywood executives don’t like green when it comes to bike facilities but the color of that green money doesn’t seem to bother them. Maybe they should donate some of that green money to make LA an excellent place to ride a bike and be greener!
Thanks for backing down to a nonexistent lobby of “Hollywood” types and removing the green from the lanes. Not a single public hearing, not a single meeting to address the issue – just one lousy LA Times article.
Can you guys clarify what the heck is going on with Spring/Main, specifically a) what problems it presents for film crews and b) which portions of Main will/won’t be painted green going forward?
The LAT editorial made it seem like it was just the green paint that was messing up visuals for car ads, but then LA Weekly quoted FilmLA as saying that the lane itself presents logistical barriers for parking equipment trucks (I don’t understand this, BTW — how does a bike lane instead of a car lane adjacent to the curbside parking make it any harder to park equipment trucks at the curb? Are they kvetching about the temporary disruption of the curb being unavailable for parking while the green paint cures?).
Similarly, the LAT piece says LADOT has promised not to paint the Main St. lane green, but the just-striped portion of Main from 9th to Venice wasn’t supposed to be green anyway, and the LA Weekly seemed to backtrack when they heard about this and updated their original blog post. Did the LAT simply get confused about the different segments of Main (i.e., the 9th-Venice 2-way portion vs. the missing half of the Cesar Chavez-9th one-way couplet), or has LADOT actually agreed to stripe the Chavez-9th portion of Main without green paint?
Thanks for looking into this.
[…] Main Street Bike Lanes Aren’t Green, But Are Open for Business (LADOT Bike Blog) […]
Looking forward to the CONTINUATION of this bike lane N on Main through downtown Los Angeles (which would be the main corridor for cyclists heading N out of downtown to Chinatown, E. LA, Glendale, Los Feliz, Atwater Village, Elysian Valley, Highland Park, South Pasadena, Pasadena, Eagle Rock, etc.) Up to City Hall and the courts would be a start. Is that in the works? ETA?
Connecting downtown LA to, say, the S terminus of LA River Bike Path that heads N would be superb. Right now, it’s pretty much an unaccommodating war zone for cyclists struggling to get out of downtown and head home that way, but there are no alternatives. Very uninviting–if we’re trying to encourage more folks to try bike commuting.
Hi Ross,
The continuation of Main St. north towards the Civic Center is in the works and is a high priority project for the Department. We’ll keep you posted here on the blog with updates as they come up.
With regards to your other comment about connecting DTLA to the LA River Bike Path, check out an earlier post we did on the Ave. 18/19 bike lane couplets that were recently installed. They are the first “down payment” on a network of lanes, paths, and bridges that will eventually connect the L.A. River to Downtown L.A..
Thanks for the reply. I have noticed the new 18th/19th street bike lanes, and have ridden them a few times, but was left scratching my head to find the greater connectivity purpose behind it and the logic in why they abruptly ended and dumped cyclists out on Spring Street with no further (current) accommodation. I missed the earlier blog post, so that was helpful. Thanks.
I’ll put another vote in for some type of treatment for Broadway between Chinatown and the 18th/19th bike lanes you referenced. Lotsa cyclists use that stretch, the vehicle traffic moves scary fast–and its nice and wide in most places.
Downtown has some of the greatest potential demand for a high modal share of utilitarian bicycling in Los Angeles. LADOT gives out parking tickets on bikes there, bikes are a efficient way to deliver messages, the police department patrols by bike, there are private neighborhood bike patrols and even Dominoes Pizza delivers by bicycle. When you already see a strong practical application of bicycling by government and private companies, then that shows that many more people could be riding on a daily basis if the conditions for it are made more comfortable and attractive.
Quickly getting a strong downtown bicycle modal share will be a constant reminder to the decision makers and influencers located there that cycling is a viable means of transportation for Los Angeles.
[…] Chinatown, the Civic Center, and the Historic Core to the edge of South Park. This past February, Main St. joined the fray, extending the Spring St. bike lane southwards between 9th and 16th/Venice … with a two-way […]
[…] Chinatown, the Civic Center, and the Historic Core to the edge of South Park. This past February, Main St. joined the fray, extending the Spring St. bike lane southwards between 9th and 16th/Venice … with a two-way […]