Infrastructure projects improve safety along Venice Blvd. in L.A.

California Construction News staff writer

More than four miles of safety and mobility improvements have been added and upgraded along Venice Blvd between Inglewood Blvd. and National Blvd., including new crosswalks, signal upgrades, parking-protected bike lanes, and a 24-hour dedicated bus lane.

The improvements will provide greater access for pedestrians, cyclists, and bus riders to and from the Metro E Line (Expo) at the Culver City Station on the eastern edge of the project area.

“Just think about what we could do if we brought this kind of infrastructure to communities across Los Angeles and created a truly connected bike network and made bus travel times faster. It would fundamentally transform the way we live and move around in LA,” said Los Angeles city councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky.

LADOT leads transportation planning, project delivery, and operations in the City of Los Angeles.

This project is one of the many recommendations in the bus speed engineering group, authorized by the Metro Board and Los Angeles city council in July 2019. It is a collaborative effort between Metro, the Mayor of Los Angeles, and LADOT to identify, design, fund, and build transit-supportive infrastructure.

“I’m very proud of the outreach partnership between the Palms Neighborhood Council and LADOT,” said Katrina Kaiser, vice chair of the transportation & infrastructure committee.  “We were able to daylight the unique needs of our neighborhood, which has both many bikers, bus riders, and pedestrians but also specific business needs. I’m also proud of the advocacy work that many community organizations – including my own, Streets For All – did to ensure the city witnessed the wide community enthusiasm for safe multimodal infrastructure. “