Roxbury Park Protected Bike Lane Demonstration on July 22nd
City of Beverly Hills will host a demonstration to show what a protected bicycle lane on Roxbury Drive adjacent to Roxbury Park can look like. Drop by Sunday, July 25th from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m to chat with city transportation officials. At 10:30 a.m. join fellow riders in a bike ride with our Mayor Bob Wunderlich.
The Backstory
Years ago the City of Los Angeles installed class II bicycle lanes on Roxbury drive south of Roxbury Park — a wide street that connects Pico in Los Angeles to Roxbury Park and the business triangle beyond in Beverly Hills. The lanes ended just at the city boundary south of the park. Riders heading north found the lanes just ended. Riders heading south to the park found no late at all and, worse, had to navigate drivers turning into, and pulling out of, angled parking spaces adjacent to the park.
The city staffers with transportation’s ancien régime never saw a piece of bicycle infrastructure they liked. Consequently Beverly Hills never thought to pick the lowest-hanging of fruit: simply stripe a lane on Roxbury to meet the City of Los Angeles lanes where they end several hundred feet south of the park.
But there is a new transportation regime (located in Public Works and away from the ditherers at Community Development Department) and a new multimodal mobility-friendly Mayor, Bob Wunderlich, and together they are jump-starting the city’s very belated effort to make streets safer for those who ride (and walk and scoot and so on).
That comes on the heels of Beverly Hills City council finally adopting a Complete Streets plan in April. Among other good things, the plan backs the creation of a citywide bicycle route network of the kind first envisioned in the city’s Bicycle Master Plan back in 1977.
The Beginning of a Citywide Bike Route Network?
Fast-forward FOUR DECADES and we may finally see that citywide network take shape. However it may be cobbled together piecemeal from projects like the Roxbury Drive protected lanes. Following on the demonstration project, City Council will consider implementing a one-year pilot Roxbury bike lane project. Yes, progress comes in small steps in Beverly Hills.
Ostensibly this demonstration project is intended to float a trial balloon to invite public comment on the proposed lane arrangement. We don’t expect any NIMBY protest, though. When the city held a virtual meeting in advance of this demonstration project event not a single opponent phoned-in.
Again the demonstration project is scheduled for Sunday, July 25th starting at 10 a.m. near the intersection of Roxbury Drive and Olympic Boulevard adjacent to Roxbury Park. (See the flyer.) Starting at 10:30 a.m. Mayor Bob Wunderlich will lead a slow-moving peloton from the demonstration around the southwest area. This may be only the second mayoral bike ride in the history of the city as Wunderlich follows in the footsteps of a bike-with-the-mayor event held by Lili Bossee some years ago.
More from the city press release:
Using temporary markings, signs, and planters, this demonstration will show what a protected bike lane looks like and offer the chance for cyclists to test the proposed bike lane configuration and provide feedback on the design. Members of the community are encouraged to attend the event on bicycle, ride through the pop-up protected bike lane, and share their experiences and thoughts on the proposal….Due to the available street width, this location provides the opportunity to install a high-quality bicycle facility connecting to existing bike lanes in Los Angeles…
As if to anticipate resistance from superannuated NIMBYs the press release adds with some haste, “…with no reduction of parking spaces or impacts to vehicle travel lanes.”