Bicycle Fixation Weblog
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02/16/2010: "Bus/Bike Lanes"
There has been a proposal floating around to implement a rush-hour bus-only lane on madly-congested Wilshire Boulevard here in Los Angeles. When I was interviewing LADOT's Bicycle Program Coordinator Michelle Mowery for an article on the state of cycling in LA, I suggested that these should be combined bus and bike lanes, with cars and parking excluded from them during the rush hours only.I heard a litany of reasons why it was not feasible, even though other cities have already been implementing these temporary re-rationalizations of lane space--but worse yet was that I knew, and stated, that Los Angeles already has these lanes on several streets.
And the photo is a case in point: right downtown, about five blocks from LADOT's headquarters (and Ms. Mowery's office), is a rush-hour-only bus/bike lane stretching for several blocks in one of the most congested quarters of LA.
Wilshire Boulevard is the most heavily trafficked commute corridor in the country, possibly on the planet. Yet Los Angeles officialdom seems to have its collective thumb up its ass on almost anything pertaining to rational allocation of street space along this grand avenue that forms the backbone of our city's culture and commerce: the subway runs barely one quarter of the street's length before veering off to the Valley, and efforts to extend it, though they are finally beginning to succeed, have met with years of what can only be called stonewalling. Repaving has been neglected for decades. And now a simple plan to put in rush hour bus lanes languishes, and the idea of letting cyclists use the bus lanes is treated as an impossibility--though LA already does so on other streets.
We should just do it. Building only for cars is sucking the life out of our culture, commerce, and communities. We've got to make streets more rational. We've already paved 70% of our land surface for cars. LA, get out of your motorized baby carriages; it's time to grow up.
