Downtown Los Angeles Bike Network

Creating A Connected Downtown LA Bike Network

The Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition's top priority in the City of Los Angeles is to see the 2010 Bicycle Plan implemented, creating a Citywide Bike Network that links the city of Los Angeles with bike lanes, separated bike paths and calm streets where people of all ages and abilities will feel safe and confident bicycling.

Our campaign efforts have been focused on getting bicycle infrastructure into the urban core of Los Angeles. Our successful campaigns since the adoption of the 2010 Bicycle Plan include the implementation of bicycle lanes on 7th Street, Spring Street, and Main Street in Downtown Los Angeles. We want to ensure these routes are expanded to connect the many nearby communities, many of which have no existing bicycle infrastructure, are predominately low-income, transit dependent communities that rely on transit, bicycling and walking to access jobs in Downtown Los Angeles and meet their daily needs. To connect these campaigns we are focusing our efforts on advocating for the completion of connected neighborhood network in Downtown Los Angeles. 

Here's what is happening right now to make this a reality:

- Buffered bike lanes on Main Street (9th to Cesar Chavez) - completing the Spring & Main Street couplet and providing a north/south route from Chinatown through the Downtown core to South LA.

- Buffered bike lanes on Los Angeles Street (Alameda to 1st) - connecting Downtown to Union Station.

- Bike lanes on 1st Street (Grand to San Pedro) - linking the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, MOCA, Disney Concert Hall to Little Tokyo and bike lanes on Spring, Main, and Los Angeles Streets.

- 1.2 mile-long buffered bicycle lanes couplet on Olive Street and Grand Avenue.  These bike lanes will also help connect to future bikeways on 7th St., 11th St. and Venice Blvd. 

Challenges

The biggest challenges are the north/south bicycle routes on Venice, 7th, 11th, 2nd, and Sunset/Cesar Chavez. Several of these projects are included in a package of bikeways that will undergo an Environmental Impact Report delaying their implementation until the spring/summer of 2013. We are working with DLANC to build community support for all of these projects and encourage you to get involved with us as an outreach volunteer. 

Learn more about how LADOT is planning on rolling out bicycle projects in Downtown Los Angeles here.

How You Can Help

We are really excited to see these projects moving so fast and hope you are too! We are currently going door-to-door to local businesses and residential buildings to make sure everyone is aware of all of these projects. If you live, work, or bicycle in Downtown LA and are interested in volunteering to help do outreach for this campaign please email Alexis (at) la-bike (dot) org.

We also encourage you to contact Councilmembers Huizar and Perry to express your support a complete and connected Downtown LA bike network as well as for our long-term vision of protected bike lanes throughout Downtown LA. Ask them to seek the additional funding needed to make sure these projects and  vision is realized sooner than later. The more folks, especially residents and business owners in Downtown they hear from in support of creating bike friendly streets in DTLA the better!

Success on Spring Street!

The first bike lane in downtown Los Angeles was completed in November 2011. If you've been along Spring Street, you cannot have missed Spring Street's buffered, green bike lane, which runs from Cesar Chavez to 9th Street. Over 80 people gathered for a celebratory press conference and ribbon-cutting ceremony on Spring and 2nd Streets in Downtown LA.

Many thanks to Councilmembers Perry and Huizar, Mayor Villaraigosa, the DLANC, and LADOT for making this all possible! And thanks to everyone who came out to the press conference, the volunteers who did outreach leading up to the bike lane’s implementation, and the Downtown businesses and residents who supported turning Spring Street into a neighborhood street, but we’re not done yet!

To track the impact of this innovative bike lane project we conducted bicycle counts on Spring Street before and after the installation of the buffered green lane so we could see how this infrastructure investment affected bicycle riding in Downtown and cycling is up 52%!

We conducted our first counts on Tuesday, November 1st and Saturday, November 5th of 2011. The Tuesday counts were conducted from 7 to 9am, 11am to 1pm, and 4 to 6pm. The Saturday count was conducted from 11am to 1pm. Our after counts were conducted on Tuesday, April 24th  and Saturday, April 28th of 2012 at the same times as the before counts. 

The most substantial increase in cycling during the weekday counts was seen during the midday count, which had 36% more bicyclists after the buffered lane was installed.  The morning and evening counts each had increases in ridership of 12%.  The weekend count had a whopping increase of over 250% in the number of bicyclists. The most encouraging news from this count is the strong gains in the number of women riding bicycles on the Spring Street lane.  

Bicycle research has shown that the rate of female bicycle ridership is an indicator of how bicycle friendly a street or community is. The more women cycling the safer the street or community is perceived to be for cycling. As we report in our 2011 Bicycle and Pedestrian Count Report  the state of female ridership for the city as a whole is not good. Spring Street is an indicator of how in just a short while bicycle infrastructure that provides a buffer between auto traffic and the bike lane can make a big difference in the number of women who ride bicycles.  The number of female cyclists on the weekday went up 100% after the green lane was installed.  On the weekend, the percentage increase was a massive 650% making for an overall increase in female ridership of 161%. 

Read more about the Spring Street bike count here and the ribbon cutting here. 

Spring & Main Street Campaign

LACBC is campaigning for protected bike lanes, also known as cycle tracks to be implemented on Spring & Main Streets in Downtown Los Angeles. These streets link important cultural and civic landmarks with the downtown business core and residential communities and provide an ideal opportunity to pilot European style cycle tracks. We are working closely with members of the Downtown LA Neighborhood Council (DLANC) Complete Streets Working Group to help make this vision a reality, but we want to see something done right away to build off the momentum generated from the ThinkBike workshop earlier this year. Right now, Spring Street has a green buffered bike lane, while Main Street has a buffered bike lane.