Take Two translates the day’s headlines for Southern California, making sense of the news and cultural events that affect our lives. Produced by Southern California Public Radio and broadcast from October 2012 – June 2021. Hosted by A Martinez.
Los Angeles is in the middle of an ambitious plan called Vision Zero, with the goal of completely eliminating traffic deaths in the city by 2025.
To see it in action, keep an eye out on Spring St. in downtown over the coming months.
The way traffic flows on this one-way street, from left to right, is curb, street parking, two travel lanes, a bike lane, street parking and curb.
"The bike lane is on the same side of the street as all of the bus stops, so it has the potential to cause conflicts," says KPCC transportation reporter Meghan McCarty-Carino.
Once the project is done, it'll instead go: curb, bike lane, a concrete buffer, parking, two travel lanes, parking and curb.
"One of the other things that will happen is all of the crosswalks will be changed into high-visibility crosswalks," she adds.
That's achieved by repainting them with parallel white stripes that run through the space to make them easier to see by drivers.
Hundreds of other projects like this will break ground in Los Angeles in the coming years, sometimes with resistance by residents.
"What a lot of advocates say is, 'Just give it some time, let's look at the data,'" says McCarty-Carino, "and then there's another camp that's just fed up with how this is affecting their communities and their commutes."