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Complete Streets - Projects
CURRENT PROJECTS
Reclaiming the Right-of-Way: Creating and Implementing Parklets
Project funded by The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation
This three-phase project centers around parklets, which emerge from the low-cost conversion of small and underutilized residual spaces originally devoted to cars into spaces for the passive or active recreation of people. The first phase of this project is the publication of the parklet assist cities, designers and business, interested in best practices and provide practical guidance for the development of small-scale parks. To read the completed toolkit, please go to the publications page.
The second phase, conducted in collaboration with the Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council (DLANC), will construct and implement a demonstration parklet in Downtown Los Angeles in front of LA Cafe on Spring Street. This demonstration parklet will provide a free opportunity for exercise in this park poor, low income community. The rendering is seen above. In August 2012, the LA City Council approved the permitting for the first 4 parklet sites in Los Angeles. For more coverage of this vote, please visit any of the media links below.
LA Times - "Los Angeles to try out parklets at four locations"
CBS - "LA City Council approves first 'parklets' "
The final phase of the project involves evaluating parklet use, pedestrian and business volumes before and after parklet installation. UCLA will provide this data to the Department of City Planning for use when they report back to council after a six-month demonstration period.
Project funded by the Southern California Association of Governments; Project partners Ryan Snyder Associates, Kittleson and Associates and Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition
Principal Investigator: Rui Wang
This project seeks to compile, organize, and make accessible all existing bicycle count and survey data collected in Los Angeles County. This data is crucial to effective planning and policymaking, as well as to understanding and communicating the benefits ofbicycling. In order to empower local stakeholders (i.e. jurisdictions, community organizations,and others) to collect more data, and in order to facilitate the assembly of a countywide data set, SCAG and Metro also seek guidance on best practices for conducting bicycle counts and surveys, and for inputting and analyzing the resulting data. This guidance will be codified in a training manual and shared in workshops with each of the eight SCAG sub-regions. The final result will be a data clearinghouse built by UCLA, where stakeholders can learn how to design a count or survey program to meet their needs, where they can access existing data, and where they can add new data they collect.
CicLAvia Economic Impact Analysis
Project funded by the UCLA Luskin Center for Civil Society; Project partners Luskin Center for Innovation, Los Angeles Sustainability Collaborative and CicLAvia, Inc.
Principal Investigator: J.R DeShazo
The project will aims to calculate the physical and economic impact of the October 2012 CicLAvia event, wherein streets are closed to cars and opened for people to walk, bike and enjoy. This project will utilize sales tax revenues and other economic indicators to create a quantitative picture of this events impact on the adjacent communities.
Exploration and Implications of Multimodal Street Performance Metrics: What's a Passing Grade?
Project funded by the University of California Transportation Centers
Principal Investigator: Robin Liggett
This project will analyze new multimodal street performance metrics for transportation projects. While practitioners and advocates have shown enthusiasm for these new metrics, policy-makers have found it difficult to transition from well-understood and standardized automobile-based LOS metrics to any one of the new multimodal metrics. Scholars have paid a great deal of attention to the development of these new metrics, but have not documented how these metrics compare to one another. This project will aid policy-makers by explicating these assumptions, providing a comparability analysis of the various metrics and relating the results to policy implications.
PAST PROJECTS
Mobility, Safety, and Health Performance Metrics for the City of Los Angeles
In collaboration with Ryan Snyder Associates and LA County Department of Public Health: RENEW
This project is to develop a set of key performance metrics for the City of Los Angeles. The purpose of this effort is to inventory available data, inventory data that is not available and create a series of benchmarks, metrics and goals which can be used to measure progress on active transportation and related health metrics. Findings seek to inform future planning efforts within the City of Los Angeles General Plan's Mobility and Health elements.
The report can be found here.
Model Design Manual for Living Streets
In collaboration with Ryan Snyder Associates and LA County Department of Public Health: RENEW
This manual is a comprehensive document written by leading experts from across the United States in transportation planning, architecture and engineering, and funded by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health which details how to design living streets. The manual outlines bicycle and pedestrian design features as well as thinking about streets as vital public places that support healthy mobility, human interactions, and ecological processes among other needs. This manual is a resource for cities looking to update their existing standards and for other community organizations to better understand the options available for improving streets in their community.
The manual has been extremely well received with over 4,000 downloads to date. The manual has been presented at: American Planning Association California chapter conference, US Department of Transportation, Walk 21, with an upcoming presentation at the National American Planning Association conference in Los Angeles.
To download the manual, please click here.
STUDENT PROJECTS
During the 2011 - 2012 academic year, the Complete Streets Initiative, the Lewis Center and the Luskin Center supported six urban planning masters students to conduct research around complete streets on three research topics: case studies, instiutional capacity/implementation and multi-modal level of service. Each student carefully selected a research question, reviewed germane literature around the topic, collected and analyzed data and provided policy recommendations for addressing this issue within Los Angeles. The listing of students and projects are listed below. Please visit the publications and presentation tabs for reports and presentations from the May 2012 highlight event.
Michelle Craven
Title: Getting Los Angeles to Walk the Walk
Client: Los Angeles Walks
Research Question: How can pedestrian advocates convince the City of Los Angeles to adopt a citywide, pedestrian master plan?
Huma Husain
Title: How can Los Angeles be more livable?
Client: Green LA Coalition
Research Question: What is the institutional capacity for implementing Complete Streets in Los Angeles?
Jennifer Karmels
Title: Leveraging CEQA to Enhance Complete Streets
Client: Los Angeles Bicycle Coalition
Research Question: How can California cities redefine impact to promote Complete Streets?
Sarah Peters
Title: "Impact Fees for Complete Streets"
Client: Fehr & Peers
Research Question: How can impact fees be used to pay for transit, bicycle and pedestrian modes?
Ryan Johnson
Title: Bringing New People to the Open Streets
Client: CicLAvia
Research Questions: Was there a difference between first-timers and repeat participants at the October 2011 CicLAvia? How can we bring in new participants, especially from low-income, minority, park-poor communities?
Kristen Torres
Title: From Statute to Street
Client: Green LA Coalition
Research Questions: Does the City of Los Angeles comply with the Complete Streets Act? What are the institutional opportunities for the City of LA to fully address the tenets of AB 1358?
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