Walk Bike Glendale webpage on the road diet proposal
Glendale city staff report: Proposal to Conduct a Road Diet Test Case
Sunroom Desk Notes on Traffic Safety and Road Diets
Glendale Safe and Healthy Streets webpage explaining road diets and their benefits

Streets named as candidates for the pilot include Honolulu Ave., Pennsylvania Ave., Verdugo Rd., and Orange Ave. Support this city effort to make streets safer and more usable for all! Email council members or attend and speak at the meeting.

Major changes, including Nashville’s expansion from 7 to 150 miles of bikeways and greenways, and $20 million per year for sidewalk improvements, are the result. Lessons learned from the Tennessee initiatives were topics of a helpful webinar screened today at the Glendale Municipal Services Building. Thanks to the Glendale Safe and Healthy Streets program for enrolling in the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycling Professionals series for the benefit of Glendale city staff and community stakeholders.

Major points: Advocate for change, look for supporters, educate policymakers and the public, and use existing rationales such as managing traffic demand and mitigating pollution to advance the goals of bicycling and walking as healthier transportation alternatives.

Safe and Healthy Streets coordinator Colin Bogart may arrange a second screening of the webinar for Glendale Safe Routes to School volunteers and other community stakeholders. Check the website for updates.

LaHood committed the DOT Safety Council to working with advocacy groups to ensure streets are as safe as possible. Complete Streets policies, requiring that roadways be designed for the safety and comfort of all users, including motorists, pedestrians, bicyclists and transit riders, were on the agenda as well. More than 100 localities and states have adopted these policies.

Secretary LaHood has established a distracted driving initiative, a new Safety Council and has shown strong support for community livability in general. “By adding Complete Streets to his list of safety priorities, he and his department can help ensure that every road project facilitates safe travel for everyone — including vulnerable pedestrians,” Transportation for America concluded in a post-meeting release.

Streetsblog Los Angeles has a local perspective on pedestrian safety issues here.

Najarian announced the beginning of his term to colleagues and the audience at Glendale’s council meeting June 30, saying, “I’m going to do everything I can to make sure Glendale and our region gets its fair share of transportation dollars to help us break the cycle of dependency on crude oil. We have great projects in the works – subways, light rail, transit lines, van pools, etc., and I will keep you posted.”

Also on June 30, as LA Now reported, a state Court of Appeals decision ratified the California Transit Association’s lawsuit over state siphoning of mass transit funds to balance the budget.

Najarian’s response to my email query on the decision: “The MTA applauds the court of Appeal’s ruling in the CTA case. It is important that the legislature realize that transportation money is just that…money for transportation! The State has already indicated that they will appeal the ruling, so a final decision by the Supreme Court may be months away, but it nevertheless sends a strong message to Sacramento that transportation funds can not be their slush fund to patch holes in the state budget. The MTA remains comitted to give LA County residents transportation options that do not involve the single passenger automobile.”

Friedman Also Comments on Energy Independence, Alternative Transportation

Concerning crude oil dependency and alternative transportation projects, council member Laura Friedman spoke along the same lines at the June 30 meeting. Friedman had just attended the Los Angeles Building Council’s annual sustainability summit. She noted that the local business community has begun to realize that our economic, ecological and energy crises present opportunities for innovation, job creation and efficiencies that will provide long-term benefits.

Friedman went on to deplore the billion dollars a day the U.S. sends to the middle east for crude oil: “That’s money that really should be staying in the U.S. While we are in this crisis, to be exporting our wealth for crude oil when there are alternatives available is really pretty incredible. As these new technologies come online, because we do have the brainpower in California we can kill two birds with one stone. We can not only create new businesses and new industry … but we can also now keep that wealth in California and in the US. There is a very clear nexus btween local policies that we have or don’t have in terms of alternative transportation, complete streets, [policies and programs] that will keep people from using cars, and national security and national wealth. That’s one of the reasons why its so important that we take as many actions as we can at the local level to be as aggressive as we can in terms of conservation … not only does it improve our local quality of life but it improves our national security in very direct and obvious ways.”

Riverdale Drive and Maple Street in Glendale will get bicycling and pedestrian enhancements, thanks to a federal stimulus grant to Glendale. Public Works will present the project on June 10, 7 p.m. at Pacific Park Community Center.

Glendale is considering updating its Bicycle Master Plan, which dates from 1996. (Warning: the downloadable file is huge.)

Glendale is also considering creating a pedestrian walking map.

Glenoaks Blvd., Foothill Blvd., and Kenneth Road are primary bike routes in the area.

Better bicycling access to Griffith Park via improvements to the Sonora corridor is one of the grant’s special projects, raising jurisdiction issues as physical improvements will involve surrounding cities.

California recommends that municipalities adopt a Complete Streets policy for all improvements. (Notes: At this week’s city council meeting, Glendale Council member Laura Friedman asked Public Works to look into implementing this policy in Glendale.)

Grant coordinator Colin Bogart will be organizing a pedestrian and bicyclist count later in the year to establish a baseline of Glendale numbers. He needs lots of volunteers to cover the city!

Special thanks to El Morfi Grill, which provided free empanadas and salad for the meeting. As Tropico Station noted, the restaurant is sensitive to traffic problems having had a literal “run-in” with a speeding driver last year. The delicious spread reminded me that El Morfi is my family’s first choice for great pizza in Glendale. I stopped by the restaurant for a take-out pizza on the way home!

Here is the Glendale News Press report on the event, reporting Bogart’s call for input on bike rack locations, planned bike route improvements, and the Public Works federal stimulus project.

Focusing on pedestrian issues as well, Bogart is working with two other Glendale programs: Safe Routes to School, and the Safe Streets Initiative. His goal is to develop a “Safe and Healthy Streets Plan” for Glendale, working with Parks and Recreation , Public Works, Planning, and other departments. He is currently meeting with stakeholders in the city and planning community input meetings for July and August.

One policy question he raised for discussion at a meeting last week was adoption of a “complete streets policy” guaranteeing that whenever any changes are made to a street, it is also made accessible for all users. Such changes would address problems such as a bicyclist’s inability to trigger a traffic signal change, and the lack of wide intersection medians where pedestrians can safely stop and wait for the next signal change.

While coordinating the grant, Bogart is also working on community outreach efforts such as the Glendale History Bike Ride, to be featured in the next post.