I just spent some time reimagining one of the most crowded crazy bits of West Los Angeles, that street known as Westwood Boulevard connecting the major cross-town boulevards, Santa Monica, and Wilshire with the UCLA campus. Westwood Boulevard itself is also a major shopping street with pretty active street frontage, some offices and businesses, and crazy amounts of commuter traffic connecting to the near by 405 freeway.
Now this being the Westside, I don’t think these street sections will ever be built, but it’s interesting to imagine what an even more equal balance of streetscape could look like in Los Angeles.
With the context of Westwood Blvd, I imagined that a full complete set of bike lanes and also transit lanes are necessary as one end of the boulevard has a very active destination — UCLA with its 10s of thousands of students. On the other end of Westwood there is a mall that was designed as a fortress of impenetrable delight. With a more welcoming streetscape, perhaps it would be welcoming to open itself up in a redesign — much like the Santa Monica Place Mall.
Option I – Transit lanes in center with “rapid/limited stop” bypass
Option I has transit lanes in center with a left-turn restriction for the through lanes for auto traffic. There is also a parking lane on each side which creates a barrier for bike lanes.
At intersections, an island is created for bus stops which includes a bypass lane. At this point there is no on-street parking. Just a through lane in each direction for a car and for a bike.
Option II -Transit lanes in center bicycle lanes on one-side
Option II has transit lanes in center, but without any bypass lanes and also features bicycle lanes on one side of the boulevard. Parking is on the same side as the bicycle lane and in lieu of a parking lane, intermittently having a bulb-out for pedestrian crossing islands or at intersections could work very well.
Option III – Transit lanes on outside with buffered bike lanes
Option III has transit lanes on the “outside” with the through lanes in the center. Median-buffered bike lanes are next to the sidewalk, but have a median on the traffic side which would allow for bus riders to load out of the way of bicyclists and also provide a buffer for bicyclists the rest of the time. One possible problem with this set-up would be the transit lanes would possibly become right-turn lanes in the case that traffic backs up.
Andrew Reker 