Eagle Rock Neighborhood Council Tables Bike Lane Vote

The Eagle Rock Neighborhood Council on Tuesday evening decided to delay their vote on a motion submitted by treasurer Ashley Atkinson to write a letter to the Los Angeles Department of Transportation in support of proposed bike lanes on Colorado Boulevard and North Figueroa Street.

The motion to table the vote was proposed by Atkinson herself, who said that the community should be allowed more time to weigh in on the matter.

"After announcing that we were planning to discuss this tonight, we found out that [Council District 14] is actually planning to hold a community outreach meeting specifically on this topic later in the month," Atkinson said.  "We wanted to give the oppotunity for more public comment, and for more people to attend that meeting if they so choose."

No official date has been cheduled for CD 14's outreach meeting yet.

Atkinson's motion to delay the vote was unanimously approved. 

Speaking during the public comment portion of the meeting, which was held prior to Atkinson submitting her motion, Eagle Rock resident and Boulevard Sentinel publisher Tom Topping took issue with the way the original motion was worded.

He told the board that the original motion was incomplete because it did not mention the removal of car lanes.

"It think it appropriate to change that, re-agendize the motion and discusss thisat a latter time," Topping said.

Bike Lane Presentation

Tim Fremaux, a transportation engineering associate with Los Angeles Department of Transportation, provided details about the bike lane project on Tuesday evening.

According to Fremaux, the department has two options on Colorado west of Eagle Rock Boulevard, which is wider than the eastern side of the boulevard.

"West of Eagle Rock Boulevard is a little bit wider. We can implement bike lanes on that stretch from Sierra Villa to Eagle Rock without taking travel lanes and keeping the three travel lanes, but the concern there is we would be left with very narrow lane widths and very narrow bike lane. That ends up being a very tight facility," Fremaux said. "The alternative is to a buffered bike lane and go to two lanes in each direction."

East of Eagle Rock Boulevard to the 134 freeway exits, a travel lane would need to be removed so a buffered bike lane could be installed.

"We would remove travel lane on each side. A buffered bike lane is really the only way to do bike lanes on this side of the street, east of Eagle Rock Boulevard," Fremaux said.

As a traffic impact study released by the Department of Transportation in January indicates, the removal of the lanes on Colorado Boulevard would lead to increased traffic delays. However, Nathan Baird, a project coordinator for LADOT, said the project would have benefits in terms of safety.

"We expect this will have a really good safety improvement for the street, it should slow down vehicle speeds a little bit. We think there are a lot of benefits to it," Baird said. "We do see people switch to bicycling when we put in this new types of features. The street will have to function a little differently, especially at rush hours. You're not going to be able to move the same amount of cars."

Fremaux also noted that the initial LADOT data regarding delays at Sierra Villa and Eagle Rock Bouevard along Colorado were inflated in the initial traffic impact study.

"Those numbers dropped by 50-percent or something like that," he said. "These two projects are actually on the lower end of the spectrum in terms of delay impacts to vehicle. These are actually on the easier side."