South L.A. CicLAvia Host Committee 6pm Tonight at SAJE

[Joe Linton]

Sorry for the late reminder...

Don't forget - Third Wednesday 6pm - CicLAvia South L.A. Host Committee meeting

tonight - Wed July 30th - at TRUST South L.A./SAJE - 152 W. 32nd Street , L.A. 90007 

Tonight we've got some serious route discussions... below is a recap of a meeting that Tafarai and I attended this morning... We're in discussions with Metro about how to cross the rail safely... We need to put our heads together on what we think will make most sense for October and for the long run...

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Joe Linton <linto...@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 1:22 PM
Subject: Meeting with Metro this Morning
To: ciclavi...@googlegroups.com



Board -

Here's a quick re-cap of some of what was discussed at this morning's meeting with Metro... the bottom line is that, as I had described in my earlier email recapping route concerns, it's very difficult, but not impossible, for the route to cross the Metro Blue Line at Central and Washington.

Initially Metro safety staff asserted, as LADOT's Aram Sahakian had earlier, that it wasn't possible to cross at Central/Washington and that we needed to go around... when it was made clear that going around the Blue Line and the Expo Line is just too long... we began to discuss two options:

1. Safe Crossing at Central/Washington

2. Alternatives - using nearest grade crossing - at Figueroa where train runs underground for a few blocks.

Central/Washington:

Though Metro staff doesn't recommend it, it will require resources - additional uniformed officers, Metro staff, enforced dismount zone. It's not clear what the cost would be... but largely Metro and L.A. City staff time, plus barracades, signage, etc. - it's likely to be in the tens of thousands of dollars.  What I think is going to be rough is spillover... if we do a very strict dismount and trunk the route down tightly, and have all our cyclists walking, we create a bottleneck. Cyclists, being creative, will go around, spilling over into other parallel streets... potentially trying to cross the seemingly empty train tracks... We can prevent this by putting law enforcement at parallel streets (and ticket folks crossing unsafely due to a bottleneck that we've created? not optimal.) Though Metro doesn't recommend it, with enough attention (funding), we can make it safe... but it seems to me that it's likely to be an ongoing expense and an ongoing headache.

Crossing at Figueroa

It may be possible, and somewhat less problematic, to reconfigure the route to cross the Expo Line at Figureoa, where the train is underground. In the long run, this may well be cheaper and fewer headaches... One trick is that the at-grade trains run not-at-grade at the same kinds of streets that CicLAvia avoids ... big streets like Figueroa would be natural crossing point... and it will be really difficult to re-tool the route significantly to have things ready for October...

I am off to another meeting - that's a quick re-cap.