It took years before City Council approved the budget to improve the stretch of Santa Monica Boulevard from Robertson to La Cienega. Then, city staff left the project in a folder for two years with no progress. This article from 2019 shows another round of safety improvements, this time on Fountain Avenue: WeHo Crosswalk Safety Efforts.
At the time, there was concern that the budget and plan would take too long, so City Council approved “Pedestrian Safety Zones” and other traffic-calming measures. In this article, David Warren analyzed the effectiveness of these improvements after they were implemented: WeHo Crosswalk Safety Measures Working.
We need immediate action on Fountain Avenue. City Council can act now to install “Pedestrian Safety Zones” along Fountain Avenue. This would include large digital signs reading “Pedestrian Safety Zone, Speed Limit 35 mph” and other traffic-calming measures that can be implemented right away.
What are we waiting for — another tragedy? Slow the traffic down.
And while I am not a proponent of the removal parking for bike lanes there is an easier way forward than pointing fingers at each other. If we’re serious about debating Fountain Avenue’s future and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on studies that could take months or even years, why don’t we start with a trial run? Let’s mock up the street for a week with cones to create a prototype and see what happens. No more signs and debates — here’s a practical solution:
- Implement a one-week “model” of what the Fountain Avenue Streetscape Project envisions: one lane of vehicular traffic in each direction, no parking spaces on the road’s north side and some form of bike lanes. Monitor the flow of traffic. Count the bikes. Gauge the support of the public when they’re faced with the reality of the project, not just charts and concepts.
- Declare Fountain Avenue a pedestrian safety zone and move quickly to install permanent traffic-calming measures.
Let’s get to work.
This seems like a sensible idea, but it takes much longer than a week for commuters to take note of changes like this and adjust their routes accordingly. Any sudden changes in traffic patterns will generate additional backups during an initial adjustment period. Because of this, any data from this short of a pilot may not be helpful in determining longer term traffic impacts— it may even be misleading.
Good opinion and like idea of running a test if needed, a test much longer than a week though. However, I don’t see the demand for bike lanes, pedestrian safety yes. There are now bike lanes popping up all over town and I rarely see any bikes on them. Entire dedicated lanes that sit empty. And not interested in “build them and they will come” defense when there is zero demand. LA is too spread out, people aren’t going to ditch their cars to commute miles to work.
I agree and have said this from the beginning. A test run of a week or a month will give us answers. If it’s a success, then we move forward with the plan. And if it tanks disastrously we don’t sink the $14M and can come up with alternatives that make more sense. I still predict this will be a massive, unforced error. But I remain hopeful for our shared future.
Thank you Larry for pointing out that the primary objective is safety for pedestrians and everyone else. It is disappointing that this has become a “cars vs bikes” brawl, distracting from the fundamental community interests at stake.
During that test week everybody with a bike would be out there so they could be counted, then once the bike lanes were installed they would never use them again. They would bring in their friends from the Valley with bikes just to make a point. We already know what this project would do for those of us in cars, and what it would do for Fountain residents who have to park their cars somewhere else and would end up on the cross streets taking away the available spaces from those of us who currently don’t have much of a… Read more »
You hit it on the head right there — The Bicycle Coalition would definitely take advantage of that situation to manipulate the council even more than they already have.
Before we do anything perhaps a traffic study would be in order to see how the closure of lanes would impact Santa Monica and Sunset? That would be pretty standard operating procedure for anything else with this impact. What about getting a formal report from the Fire Department regarding impact to response times? How about asking Athens how badly traffic would back up on trash collection days? No common sense questions have been answered before the City jumped into this project.
yep! You nailed it there would be more bikers on Fountain that day than there are unite here local 11 employees at the city Council meetings when the developers want something approved!!
This is a very sweet, albeit naïve idea, considering the political shenanigans that go on in our city.
Excellent idea. Like test driving a car before you spend thousands of dollars to buy it. Let’s do it!
A lot of people have been saying this for a long time. But when City Council is playing games, denying there is “a plan” for Fountain”, it is really difficult to have a civil conversation. If the City had bothered to do an effective outreach, included neighborhood groups, a different safety plan might have emerged. But the current plan is one dictated by Streets for All which recently donated $35,000 to the Mayor’s re-election campaign.
The $35,000 donation to that insipid little mean girl currently in office just goes to show you how corrupt they are, how corrupt he is, and how pathetic West Hollywood City Council is. Unless and until the people rise up and demand different leadership, this is the kind of crap that they will get.
My only disagreement is that it is our current City Council majority who is corrupt, inept and arrogant. Whatever disagreements you may have with Lauren Meister and John Heilman, they are disagreements between reasonable adults. We are lucky to have two and hopefully three adult Council members by tomorrow.