Results tagged “ladot”

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 Sawtelle or Sepulveda?"

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.

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...

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.

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:

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 is already 18 percent understaffed in maintenance technicians, making it harder to collect money and fix existing meters.

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 Hollywood Boulevard between La Brea and Vine.

"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 harshly, but telling it how it is--and is ready to become City Controller in July (let's keep that fire lit in her). .

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 for the police to enforce using radar," said John Fisher, Assistant General Manager of LADOT. Once an ordinance is drafted, it will be submitted to the Transportation Commission for consideration.

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:

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.

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 have long known but the City Council and other city leaders are still learning," noted Damien Newton at StreetsblogLA. "L.A.'s diverse bike community is an active and fast mobilizng constituency that is growing to loud to ignore or push aside any longer. After all, this is the second time this month that a group of cyclists has descended on the City Council and walked away with resolutions passed by the Council based on their testimony."

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 we thought all signs would be updated by now... apparently not. "It would be inappropriate [to ticket] without the new signs," the department spokesman Bruce Gilman explained back then.

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.

Newton also points something funny and interesting out: Eng's press photo page contains three pictures, two of which display him in automobiles.

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 brought the issue to City Councilmembers who in turn are beginning to show disapproval of the system, too.

Mayor Antonio Villariagosa today appointed two heavyweights--Councilmember Jose Huizar and LA Department of Transportation General Manager Rita Robinson--to the Metro's Board of Directors. “With our passage of Measure R, our effort to aggressively build a modern public transportation system in Los Angeles County demands strong leadership,” Mayor Villaraigosa said in a statement.

When the state legislature and Governor Schwarzenegger signed off on this year's budget, it depleted transportation funding to countys and citys. That means transportation funds for city hall's transit lines will soon start operating in the red. We're talking about a $200 million yearly deficit. "How big is the deficit?" Damien Newton at Streetsblog asks. "It's so large that if the city cut every DASH, Commuter Express and charter bus route, the city would still have a transportation deficit in the coming years." Ouch. Yesterday, we found that DASH transfers will be eliminated beginning in April. Start saving those quarters!

The city budget crisis must be really that bad. Today, the LA Department of Transportation announced the elimination of free transfers on all of its DASH Downtown L.A. routes effective April 1. Fares will remain $0.25 per boarding and monthly passes can now be bought for $9 online or at various locations. "It will help a little bit," LADOT Bruce Gilman said of the increased revenue, which is projected to be around $130,000 annually based on an average of 10,000 transfers a week. "And we introduced a new pass that we want people to take advantage of." As for integrating with Metro's TAP fare system, Gilman said the department is "moving in that direction."

Although they admit the lead time to market the program was insufficient, Metro and the City have not committed to operating late-night Red Line service again in 2009, according to a report (.pdf) published by the Department of Transportation this week. However, they do believe Metro can "operate effective additional service" if funded and that the community may have an interest in seeing it happen again during the 2009 holiday season.

If there's anyone who shouldn't be running red lights, it's civilian city employees for the Department of Transportation. Instead of being examples to the community on how citizens should drive, we often witness them blowing past stop signs and running red lights on right turns (oh, the "California stop"). This morning, we happened to witness such an incident and catch the license plate number.

Starting Monday, LA Department of Transportation parking enforcement will change how they spend their days. Instead of gravitating to areas where it's easy to find violations, therefore write a lot of tickets, they will now be assigned a neighborhood beat.

The answer to that may depend where you live. If you're a UCLA student, parking on the sidewalk may not get enforced, but if you're in a different part of the city--let's say the Valley--a ticket could be there waiting for you. The inconsistent parking enforcement is now park of a lawsuit against the city. "This lack of enforcement continues even though parking on a sidewalk violates both the California Vehicle Code, Los Angeles Municipal Code and may violate the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)," explains Damien Newton at Streetsblog LA. "The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Barden v. Sacramento sets a nationwide precedent requiring cities to make all public sidewalks accessible. As a result, cities must remove barriers that block disabled access along the length of the sidewalks."

On the upcoming March 3rd ballot, we will be voting for city councilmembers, the mayor, the city attorney and city controller candidates. The latter is one of the most unusual, but extremely important for government. The controller, who often has to take a pit bull stance, audits departments, and not just for their financial accounting but on their efficiency and productivity. Basically, are they serving the people in a timely, professional and efficient way while not going in the red?

For years us Angelenos have been trained that once the clock strikes six, we're free from parking tix. But now that the city standard for enforceable parking times has been pushed back later into the day, our human habit ways are out of whack. Last night in Sherman Oaks, a cursory street poll found that people didn't pay at meters enforced until 8 p.m. with signs above saying "2 Hour Parking, 8 AM to 6 PM."

     

Yesterday morning at 5th and Flower, a memorial appeared near the crosswalk where a women was fatally struck by a city DASH bus. Around 6:30 a.m., Wednesday, January 7th, Gwendolyn Coleman, 58, was walking across the street in the crosswalk when the bus turned left, striking her. A police investigation is still ongoing.

A few people have been asking what happened yesterday morning downtown near Central Library where a large memorial with flowers sits today. A pedestrian was hit by a DASH bus at 5th and Flower around 6:35 a.m. in the morning.

Streets around USC will start seeing those new fancy meters, otherwise known as pay stations, later this month. 25 of them--mostly placed along Jefferson Blvd.--will be activated January 20th through 22nd. For the first two days, Department of Transportation ambassadors will be around to help people use the machines.

Passed unanimously at today's City Council meeting, Los Angeles took another step forward to possibly adopting bicycle sharing, as seen in Paris and at the DNC in Denver. As explained in today's meeting, bicycle sharing in LA can be exemplified by the rental carts at LAX: you pick up a bike at one spot, use it to get to a destination and drop it off at another spot. The approved motion directs the Department of Transportation to "examine the feasibility of creating a bike sharing program in the City of Los Angeles and submit recommendations to the Transportation Committee within 45 days." It's a small step, but like Coucilmember Wendy Greuel said today, "we have a long way to go to be a bicycle city."

This morning, the city launched its Tiger Team V to focus on patrolling, citing and towing illegally parked vehicles in the city's top 25 "hotspots" where said vehicles slow down traffic. We asked for the complete list and they provided. These locations were selected by the number of citations issued from June 2008 through August 2008. Check below to see if any of these streets and block numbers are part of your commute.