Beverly Hills Adopts Complete Streets Plan

City of Beverly Hills has finally adopted a complete streets plan. City council finally gave the nod on Tuesday, April 20th after having bottled-up a very good draft plan for eighteen months. We can now move forward on some of the first-year projects identified in the associated Action Plan: bikeway corridors, model bikeway design guidelines and the hiring of a mobility coordinator. Could safer streets for bicyclists be just around the literal corner?

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The Bumpy Road to a Failed Mobility Planning Process in Beverly Hills

City of Beverly Hills has been talking about updating its Bicycle Master Plan (1977) since 2010. And for nearly a decade the outdated and moribund plan was left for dead by city officials. With Metro grant money hanging in the balance, city council revived the planning effort by folding it into a larger complete streets plan in 2017. But after a couple of public workshops in 2018 it has again languished. This time it was done-in by a few NIMBY scarecrows. They derailed a two-year planing process despite hundreds of supportive public comments. Let’s take a look at how a perfectly good draft complete streets plan has remained bottled-up ever since.

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Santa Monica Leads, Beverly Hills Hardly Follows

Santa Monica continues to be a regional leader when it comes to supporting multimodal mobility and enhancing street safety. It has installed many miles of bicycle lanes (included protected bikeways) and has emerged as a municipal leader with development policies crafted to put a lid on new vehicle trips downtown. Not least, City Hall is working with the community advocates to bring Vision Zero principles to bear on the transportation planning process. What about Beverly Hills?

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Halfway to one Complete Street (if not a ‘Complete Streets’ Plan)

As we approach the upcoming complete streets workshop this Wednesday, a full ten weeks will have passed without a single word about the process from consultants Iteris or Alta Planning. Gotta wonder if our complete streets consultants aren’t off chasing other business. In the meantime, progress continues on Santa Monica Boulevard: eastbound bicycle lanes are striped bright green. Folks we are halfway to a complete street!

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