Last night, the city of Los Angeles Vision Zero team hosted the second of three community open house meetings for input on planned safety upgrades for Fletcher Drive. The portion of Fletcher under consideration extends from San Fernando Road to the 5 Freeway.
Though Fletcher lacks any bike-specific features below San Fernando Road, it is a key bicycling connection between central Los Angeles and Northeast Los Angeles. There are very few surface streets that go across the linear obstacles of the L.A. River, railroad tracks and the 5 Freeway. Fletcher crosses all these barriers, and is relatively flat.
At a workshop last month, LADOT showed two alternatives. Last night, those two alternatives are still under consideration, and a third alternative was added:
- Alternative 1 features a road diet that would include removing two travel lanes, and adding a continuous center turn lane and bike lanes
- Alternative 2 would keep two travel lanes in each direction, and remove peak hour parking to add a center turn lane
- Alternative 3 would be an asymmetric road diet, removing one northbound lane, and replacing it with a center turn lane
All of the alternatives would add pedestrian head-start signals, speed feedback signage, and high-visibility crosswalks. Only alternative 1 would include bike lanes.
As detailed by Walk Eagle Rock, Fletcher Driver safety plans have been criticized by the Atwater Village Chamber of Commerce, Silver Lake Neighborhood Council, Silver Lake Chamber of Commerce and KTLA traffic reporter Ginger Chan.
Last night's open house meeting had participants vote by placing a sticker on their preferred alternative. Several attendees, apparently displeased with LADOT's alternatives hand-wrote two additional choices: "no road diet" and "none of the options." At the time the meeting ended, the vote totals were as follows:
- No Road Diet - 46 votes
- Alternative 1 - 39 votes
- Alternative 3 - 9 votes
- Alternative 2 - 6 votes
- None of the Options - 4 votes
Attendees expressed skepticism that Fletcher was in any way dangerous, doubting LADOT data that maps four people killed there in traffic crashes: three pedestrians and a driver. The most recent death was Ryan Coreas who was killed by a hit-and-run driver last December.
A third Fletcher Drive meeting is planned for Wednesday August 2 from 6-7:30 p.m. at Modernica at 2805 Gilroy Street in Frogtown.
