Results tagged “walking”

The brutal drenching Southern California took back in 2005 shut down a good deal of recreational space around Los Angeles. An LAist favorite included the trail Henniger Flats in Altadena, but more locally was the loss of the Lake Hollywood Reservoir

       

Nearly 75 people yesterday joined Dan Koeppel and friends on the first of two days in The Big Parade, a 40-mile walk from downtown to the Hollywood Sign up and down more one hundred neighborhood stair cases. They begin the last leg of their journey this morning after camping in a Silver Lake pocket park next to the Music Box Stairs.

Los Angeles has thousands of miles of failed sidewalks. Buckled, cracked, missing chunks or completey destroyed, the problem leaves the city paying out $2 to $4 million in trip and fall lawsuits each year. The city's budget only provides for fixing less than one hundred miles a year leaving residents on a wait list for 83 years to have their sidewalk fixed.

              

In the early days of Hollywood, one of the spoils of the wealthy who built their homes tucked into the area's plentiful hills was the option for seclusion. Many of the homes were built into the hills and accessible by staircases and pathways. In the era of the automobile, anyone navigating the hills behind the wheel knows how steep and precarious the ascents and descents can be--not to mention the fine art of parking. But take away the heavy machinery and strap on a good pair of shoes and you can slide into what feels like another world (and get in a workout!) when you explore the hidden staircases of Hollywood Heights.

Why did Los Angeles make Prevention Magazine's "25 Best Walking Cities" list? As they say, "once a cement pipe storage yard, the Augustus F. Hawkins Natural Park offers lush vegetation and paths for strolling on 8.5 acres right in the heart of the city." There's no doubt that this South LA park is a great public space, but it being the reason Los Angeles is number 14 seems a bit unscientific

                     

Who wants to spend hundreds of dollars a year on a gym membership when Mother Nature gave us California's glorious and varied landscape to explore for free, right? Some of the spots get talked about more than others, while others just sit quietly, doing their thing, and possibly remain unexplored. Up above Burbank are some lovely hills--you may have driven up there to have a meal with a view at Castaways, or you may have stuck to the lowlands--and they boast Wildwood Canyon park. There are a couple of miles worth of trails (described as "moderately strenuous") open inside the park, so grab your shoes and some water, and head on over.

          

This weekend marked the official opening of the jogging path around Silver Lake Reservoir. The new 3,300 foot path (that's about 2/3rds of a mile) on the eastside of the reservoir goes from Armstrong Avenue to the dog park. This new step helps one jog or walk a complete circle around the approximately 2 mile loop of both reservoirs (that includes Ivanhoe, too). The anticipated Silver Lake Meadow, however, still has not opened. For that, you'll have to wait until next summer.

Get ready Silver Lake residents. That nice dirt jogging/walking path around the reservoir is set to officially open this Saturday morning. But that doesn't mean people aren't using it already. Curbed LA took a lap or two this morning and found it to be very attractive: "It'll make lesser pathways feel inadequate." This certainty should be a good addition to places to train for the Los Angeles Marathon, which will take place on, of all days, Memorial Day.

If you see a group of people moving on foot from one end of the city to another today, you're probably seeing the folks taking part in the 3rd annual Great Los Angeles Walk. It's run by Mike and Maria of Franklin Avenue, and takes place to prove that people really can--and do--walk in LA. This year's route is the entire length of Santa Monica Boulevard. (Past walks have traveled down Wilshire and Pico.) They got underway at 9 this morning at Union Station, and are headed all the way out to the Britannia Pub in Santa Monica for their post-walk celebration. Want to keep up with the walkers? There will be plenty of Twittering going on via the Great LA Walk, and many of the participants are expected to tweet on their feet, too. Good luck, walkers! Can't wait to hear how the journey goes.

The LAPD's Central Division is increasing their resources in downtown in the form of eight bicycle patrols and new foot patrols finds downtown blog Angelenic. According to the Senior Lead Officer for the area (he's like the mini chief of police for a neighborhood), they are focusing on pedestrian enforcement. Blogger not happy:

   

Although Republican Presidential nominee John McCain has no plan for pedestrians that we know of, he definitely has some unintended subliminal messages around Los Angeles crosswalks thanks to a company that the city uses at crossings. LAist reader Jon Zack noticed these while at Highland and Franklin in Hollywood and exclaimed "say it ain't so!"

Last week, vowing to help make NYC transit less complicated, New York City and Google officially launched Google Transit's ability to help people navigate the city. So it got us thinking. If New York City has it and Chicago has it in addition to Orange County, San Diego, Burbank, Irvine, Metrolink Trains and Thousand Oaks, when will Metro, Los Angeles' main transit operator, launch the tool?

Streetsblog LA reports that the state legislature passed AB 1358, The Complete Streets Act, last week. It's a pretty important bill to help make (or force) cities to become more livable.

Around 2:15 p.m., an LAPD police pursuit ended after a fleeing suspect vehicle struck a pedestrian and another vehicle. The suspect who was being pursued either for a stolen vehicle or DUI was arrested along with a passenger that was earlier let out during the chase. A man in his forties was in a crosswalk on the 2300 block of Griffin Ave near Broadway in the Lincoln Heights area when he was hit. He was last listed in critical condition according to Fire Department officials (Update 4:30 p.m.: KCAL9 News reported that he later died). A woman in her 30s who was driving a vehicle that got hit by the suspect car was also transported to the hospital in minor condition. In July, two pedestrians died when a suspect vehicle hit them during a police chase in Hollywood.

If you felt your neighborhood should deserve one of those new scramble crosswalks, which allows for diagonal crossing at intersections (see a video example here), there's more than just the one in Westwood Village announced the other day (and the older one near USC). Here's the list of ten scramble crosswalks planned across the city, thanks to Steve Hymon at the Bottleneck Blog:

We have no scientific proof that this is the busiest pedestrian intersection in the world, but it definitely could be a contender.

Come Thursday, UCLA folk and others will have a new way of crossing the street at Le Conte and Westwood. It's called a scramble crosswalk and is currently in use in Pasadena, Beverly Hills and at Hoover and Jefferson near USC. It's where pedestrians can cross the street from all four corners at the same light as well as diagonally from opposite ends, according to a story posted on UCLA Today Online.

Earlier this month, Walkscore.com released their list of top walkable cities in the country based on neighborhoods within the respective city. Los Angeles scored ninth, but Long Beach got eighth. Press-Telegram Reporter Tim Grobaty decided to test out the theories and walk various Long Beach neighborhoods in an 8.4-mile journey from his home to his office using Google's new walking directions (for locals, he went from the "far Eastern territory of the Plaza, up the Los Coyotes Diagonal to the Anaheim Street Corridor to Alamitos").

We are all about the "people first" concept, which is planning for people, not cars when developing a new building or road. However, pedestrians still need to follow the law. Saturday night's traffic in Santa Monica for the Glow Festival was only worsened by the fact that pedestrians would cross streets against the walk signal's "don't cross" hand. Witnessed at just about every intersection, this left vehicles in all directions backed up and clogged at intersections more than they would without. We all have to work together, even when you're just on two feet.

Remember Walkscore, the website where you type in your address and the spit out a score rating the walkability of your neighborhood? Today, they released America's Most Walkable Neighborhoods and Los Angeles came out at #9. #9?!?! Well, it's not for the city as a whole, but rather for certain neighborhoods, specifically Mid City West, Downtown, Hollywood.

Although we nagged on Councilman Bill Rosendahl this morning, we had a candid chat with his office this morning afterwards. Things were overlooked and last night's meeting was not meant to be a secret, even if it was closed, they said.

This morning, a vehicle involved in killing two pedestrians on the boulevard last night still sat in the middle of the street. The two victims were reportedly holding hands as they walked across the street. The motorist was being pursued by an LAPD traffic officer, ran a red light, struck the couple and continued down Hollywood Boulevard before he stopped and was arrested, according to the LAPD.

Shortly before 9:00 p.m., an LAPD West Traffic Division officer attempted to pull over a car for reckless driving on Hollywood Blvd. The suspect did not stop, prompting a short pursuit before hitting two pedestrians between Wilcox and Cahuenga and then crashing the vehicle. Both pedestrians, a male and a female between the ages of 35 and 40, were pronounced dead at the scene and the driver of the vehicle was treated for wounds and arrested. Further details will come as the investigation continues.

Undoubtedly, some of the best things about living in Los Angeles are our varied terrain, eclectic architecture, landmarks, and fascinating history. That's why when you've hit treadmill and Stairmaster burnout and can't take another day of watching Montel on closed captioning in your gym, taking things outside and into the city's beautiful hills can be a welcome respite from workout drudgery. One great workout walk combines the best of the city with some kick-ass cardio--and some stunning views to boot; it's a walk through Upper Beachwood Canyon and it includes all 6 of the neighborhood's 85-year-old staircases.

Then you might have some information for police. At around 8:30 a.m. Tuesday morning, 31-year-old Vicky Noh was crossing Wilshire Blvd. in a marked crosswalk at New Hampshire Avenue when she was struck and killed by a yellow school bus that drove away. The 40 foot long bus is described as a "newer model with a flat front end" and was actually a charter bus, not one that transports children on a daily basis. The driver is described as a Latino with long hair in a ponytail.

An Urban & Environmental Planner friend of mine in New York City believes that when you build bigger and beefier streets, all you do is build increased traffic congestion. "Build it and they will come," he would say. Today, Steve Hymon in his weekly Road Sage column explores the subject by extension of the Pico/Olympic plan, where city officials are planning to begin adjusting the two busy arteries to act like one-way streets starting March 8.

Walking away from the Mayan Theater on Tuesday night, dazed, my ears still ringing and images of brightly-colored wrestling unitards still flashing before my eyes, I was transported back through time and space to a little strip club in Montana called Shotgun Willie’s, on a hot night last August.

It sounds really boring: California Health and Safety Code Sections 43845. However, within that state code is a something pretty neat: if your place of work has 50 persons or more employed for them and subsidizes leased parking for your and your fellow employees, then they must participate in the Parking Cash-Out program offering you a cash allowance in lieu of a parking space.

a writer's perspective

Sometime in the middle of last year, the Bank of America opened a branch on the SW corner of Hillhurst and Franklin in Los Feliz.