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NYC Commissioner Says L.A. Should Quickly Move on Transportation Pilot Programs

Last night New York City Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Kahn visited Occidental College to school Los Angeles on how they improved transportation for New Yorkers. One big suggestion? Pilot programs.
Bicycle Sharrows Expected to be on L.A. Streets by Summer

A sharrow in Hermosa Beach | Photo by Dan Gutierrez via LAist Featured Photos on Flickr Plans to pilot bicycle sharrows on Los Angeles streets are beginning to solidify, a city bicycle official said today. A working group between the city's Department of Transportation and L.A. County Bicycle Coalition hope to announcee five to ten sharrow locations by the end of the month (a list of possible locations were announced in January). Paint could...
Tweets of the Day: Villaraigosa & Robinson on Driver Behavior Towards Cyclists

Rita Robinson Is this a true change in standpoint from our leadership? The beginning of a culture shift? Today, the L.A. Department of Transportation General Manager, Rita Robinson, aka MobilityMaven on Twitter, tweeted a warning to drivers: "Drivers - plz watch the road- be aware of cyclists. LADOT wrking w/LAPD & cyclists on road conditions/safety. Educ of drivers is crucial." Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa then retweeted it and followed it up with this: "I'm directing...
Car Sharing Program A Success, but Plans to Expand are Tentative

Photo by La Citta Vita via Flickr After debating speed limit increases, the Transportation Committee of the L.A. City Council yesterday heard an update on the pilot car sharing program currently going on at USC and UCLA with ZipCar. The verdict: it's a success. Car sharing--in which people can rent a car by the hour--is nothing new on the campuses, but on September 15th of last year, the city began a pilot program allowing...
LADOT Officials Want to Tow You After 3 Unpaid Parking Tickets

Photo by Atwater Village Newbie via LAist Featured Photos on Flickr Current law: don't pay five parking tickets, you get booted and/or towed. Possible future law? Don't pay three or four parking tickets, you get booted and/or towed. The latter is the dream of the Los Angeles Department of Transportation, according to a 2009-10 State Legislative Program packet submitted to a City Council committee for consideration later this afternoon. According to the department, the...
Mark Your Calendars: LADOT To Hold Meetings About Bus Service Cuts

Photo by fredcamino via Flickr Earlier this week, it was learned that, faced with steep budget cuts, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation is planning dramatic cuts to its transit service programs. Under consideration is jettisoning 11 bus lines from the DASH and Commuter Express services, doubling the quarter-fare to fifty-cents and other cuts to Cityride and charter buses. The agency expects to see a $350 million budget shortfall over the next decade. "The...
Bicycle Sharrows Could be on L.A. Streets by May

Photo by richardmasoner via Flickr Nearly two years after a motion set forth by Council President Eric Garcetti, a pilot program to bring sharrows--street markings educating bicyclists and drivers on sharing the road--could become a reality. Installation of the street markings could begin February 2nd and be completed by May, provided all funders sign contracts allowing city employees to begin work, it was learned a Los Angeles City Council Transportation Meeting yesterday. In addition...
LADOT Recommends Cutting 11 Bus Lines, Doubling Cash Fares

Photo by RebelSciences [Kwasi B.] via LAist Featured Photos on Flickr With a projected budget deficit of $350 million over next ten years and a $23 Million projected deficit in the next fiscal year, the city's Department of Transportation is being forced to seriously look at their operations. Part of that includes the management of their transit services like DASH and Commuter Express where massive cuts are being proposed. In addition to doubling cash...
How to Park Legally on Christmas

Just in case you didn't know, here's how parking works tomorrow. The city of Los Angeles does not enforce certain parking regulations on national holidays like Christmas and New Year's Day. Here's how it works, via LADOT (.pdf)
Apparent Fake Twitter Account Created for City's Bicycle Coordinator

The cycling community is rife with exasperation over Los Angeles' Senior Bicycle Coordinator Michelle Mowery and it looks like her last comment comparing Portland to Los Angeles has people saying "enough already." At a City Council Transportation meeting earlier this month, this was the exchange that lit fires: COUNCILMAN BILL ROSENDAHL: Alta Planning is reportedly one of the finest consulting groups in the world for bike planning. How is it that the City of...
Zebra Crosswalks Coming to L.A.?

Those large white-and-asphalt/concrete barred crosswalks are starting to appear in some places around Los Angeles, reports Damien Newton at Streetsblog. Whether this is a new policy or a pilot project, we're unsure, but it's definitely a positive step towards pedestrian safety. A tipster to Newton shares his thoughts on a new one at Manchester and Sepulveda: "I observed the new crosswalks for about 15 minutes last week during evening rush hour and it seems...
L.A.'s Transportation Department Likely to See 10% Reduction in Staffing

Photo by Daquella manera via Flickr In a move to alleviate a $400 million-plus budget deficit, the Los Angeles City Council earlier this year approved a program allowing 2,400 employees to retire early. However, ERIP (Early Retirement Incentive Program), as it's called around city hall, is going to turn the city into "swiss cheese," according to the city's top Personnel Manager. 159 Department of Transportation (LADOT) employees have applied for ERIP, but at this...
Guerilla Sharrows Appear in Northeast L.A., Cleanup Will Take 60 Days, Says LADOT

Unofficial Sharrows dot a NELA Street | Photo by ubrayj02 via Flickr City approved sharrows--street markings that educate drivers to share the road with cyclists--have been buried in the city's bureaucracy since first proposed over a year ago. While plenty of cities around California have painted them on their own streets, Los Angeles officials say they are still studying the issue. To many cyclists, it's simply a matter of painting a stencil on the...
Signs Stopping Food Trucks from Parking on Wilshire are Fakes

Reader submitted photo Although they even fooled one LADOT representative, further research has shown that Tow Zone signs put up yesterday on the 5700 block of Wilshire Boulevard were not placed by city workers. "Our temporary sign posting folks reported those are definitely not our signs," explained spokesman Bruce Gillman. "We log all postings by LADOT personnel." Gillman said they would be picked up and office workers tell LAist were already gone this morning....
Does Traffic Get Worse After the End of Daylight Saving Time?

Photo by JoshMcConnell via Flickr Frustrated with a new (and slower) traffic pattern, one LAist reader earlier this week wrote us an e-mail: "Over the past week I’ve noticed a sharp increase in Eastbound traffic between Bundy and Overland during the morning rush hour, almost doubling the Santa Monica-Century City commute time," he noted. "Any idea as to why this might be? Have they reprogrammed the signals in the area? Perhaps the one at...
LADOT & Downtown DASH Now on Twitter

Has the world gone topsy turvy? The city's Department of Transportation is finally using Twitter for real-time updates to their DASH service. That's a great first step as there have been many times we've waited for the Studio City/Van Nuys DASH thinking, "it'd be nice to know if it's ever coming..." You can follow the transit service here and more specifically, the downtown DASH here. Mobility Maven is the department's General Manager, Rita Robinson....
Bicycle and Pedestrian Count Will Help Future City Planning

Next week, the first ever Los Angeles Bicycle and Pedestrian Count will take place all over the city in the hopes of gaining a better sense of the number of bike-riders and pedestrians who use the streets. With a better sense of who is out there on foot and two wheels, the city can take those numbers into account when planning for the future, explains the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition (LACBC), who are running the count...
LADOT Says They're Caught in Rumor Mill about Eliminating Bicycle Lanes

Photo by roland via Flickr It's been a trying few days for the Los Angeles Department of Transportation as strong emotions from bicyclists and other complete streets activists rallied to save the elimination of bicycle lanes on Reseda Blvd. to make room for peak hour traffic. A Northridge Neighborhood Council had it as an agenda item earlier this week, prompting a huge turnout by the public to fight the measure. However, according to LADOT,...
Who's Next on Google Transit? A Sampling

Yesterday was a big day for Los Angeles transportation. Metro, the county's behemoth transit agency, officially announced their partnership with Google. But the county is large and there are various partner agencies throughout. Here's a sampling, with more to come in later days, of where other city transit systems stand with Google Transit: Los Angeles (LADOT): "Basically, our information, all of it, whether it's DASH or Commuter Express, will be included in whatever Metro...
City Considering New Locations for More Parking Meters

Photo by biofriendly via Flickr The city is looking into installing new parking meters that could potentially bring in $1 million in additional revenue to help fill the budget gap, but officials say they don’t have enough resources to do so. LADOT told councilmembers at last week’s Transit meeting the plan would not make any money in its first year because the meters would cost $1 million to install. Additionally, officials said the department...
New Kind of Bicycle Rack Dots Hollywood Boulevard

Out with the old meters, in with hand-me-down bicycle racks called meter hitches. When the city last year began replacing parking meters with the new pay station ones, that either left headless meters or no meters at all along stress, which meant less options for bicycle parking. Then last night, as part of a pilot project between the Department of Transportation and Council President Eric Garcetti's office, came 52 new bicycle meter hitches on...
Quote of the Day: Planning & Transit Departments Slammed

"We've got a room full of people, all claiming to have been left out of the Bicycle Plan Update process. You can't call that the result of effective outreach!" That was Councilmember Wendy Greuel last Wednesday at the big bicycle transportation meeting chastising representatives from the Planning and Transportation Departments on not performing sufficient outreach for the now controversial bicycle plan. It looks like she has taken a cue from Laura Chick--that is, opining...
Speed Limit on Beverly Glen to Increase & Decrease

If you've ever driven the 2.1 mile canyon-to-valley-floor stretch of Beverly Glen Boulevard, you probably have noticed that it changes throughout, telling you to go 25 mph, now 35, oh wait, now 30. The city's Department of Transportation now wants to change the sporadic nature by splitting the baby with a uniform 30 mph from Mulholland to Moorpark in Sherman Oaks. "It will be easier for motorists to monitor their speed as well as...
Big City Council Bicycle Meeting Tomorrow

Photo by GarySe7en via the LAist Feathred Photos pool on Flickr Tomorrow's City Council Transportation Committee meeting has an agenda full of bicycle (.pdf) issues including the master plan, LAPD and a revival of the bicycle license. The latter is one of the more peculiar items because city council just recently squashed its existence. Now a new motion is trying to have it come back. Vaguely written, it goes like this: I MOVE that...
Hundreds of Thousands of Parking Tickets Overturned

Photo by Atwater Village Newbie via LAist Featured Photos on Flickr A Tuesday night CBS 2 News report that featured LAist (they described as "a Web site where people vent about issues like parking tickets," and pronounced us as LA-List, hehe) exposed the hundreds of thousands of tickets that drivers have fought and won. In total, over a two and a half year period, they found that more than 124,000 tickets were overturned. An...
Bicycle Funding Saved in City Budget Process

The City Coucnil not only saved cuts proposed by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to special funds--that's where bicycle funding sits and was threatened to be completely eliminated--but they also directed LADOT not to propose cuts to the the bikeways department before consulting them. And a lot of the attention drawn to this subject was due to cyclists who showed up to yesterday's hearing and spoke during public comment. "Yesterday proves one thing that bike activists...
Parking Signs Still Contradicting Meter Inserts

Enforceable times at parking meters are still confusing residents as LADOT makes it way through the city updating extended times at signs and meters. The problem? Here's an example: a sign on West 3rd Street says "2 Hour Parking 8am to 6pm Except Sunday” but corresponding meters say Mon-Sat 8am-8pm and Sunday 11am-8pm, notes Tasha Nita Adams at her blog Blackburn & Sweetzer. This is an issue LAist looked at back in January and...
LADOT Proposes to Cut Full Funding from Bikeways Office

The LA County Bicycle Coalition sent out an "urgent alert" Saturday afternoon that was pretty shocking: LADOT THREATENS TO CUT THE ENTIRE BIKEWAYS DEPARTMENT!! BIKE PROJECTS WOULD BE CUT!! Los Angeles is facing a perilous budget crisis. All city departments are being asked to submit plans on how they will cut spending, and LADOT have proposed to eliminate the entire Bikeways staff. Not just lay off some people, but cut it altogether.
Why the 'Safe Streets Bill' was Stalled

Photo by Tom Andrews/LAist In a strongly worded post on StreetsbogLA, Damien Newton breaks down where support lacked for AB 766, dubbed the "Safe Streets Bill:" Assemblymember and Transportation Chair Mike Eng, representing the San Gabriel Valley, only let the California Highway Patrol speak as expert witnesses. Lieutenant Carl Povilaitis of the Glendale Police Department, who has experienced too many pedestrian vs. auto accidents in the city, spoke during public comment. Councilmember and Controller-Elect...
Speed Limit Increases Likely to Spread from Valley to Rest of City

Photo: TheTruthAbout...via Flickr By law, if police want to use radar guns on streets, cities must measure the average speed cars are going, regardless of posted limits, every 7 to 10 years. If they find that 15% of vehicles are illegally going over the speed limit, the city must increase the limit to allow for radar use. That's what's been happening for nearly a year in the Valley, angering residents and activists who have...