Those of you who attended or followed the film festival last year will remember that we invited you on a bike ride tour of the neighborhood called “The Friendly Ride.”  The route for the group ride followed a path of a proposed new Bicycle Friendly Streets project being pushed by the Mid City West Community Council.  The proposal calls for several traffic calming measures along two corridors.  The group was joined by LA City Council Paul Koretz and leading candidates for the council district 4 seat.

The group ride was designed to attract attention to the proposal and it did!  Koretz backed the project and brought it to city council.  The city council also backed the project and submitted it to Los Angeles County Metro Transportation.

Currently the plan is listed as #7 of 15 approved projects. It is very likely to be completed with the Metro funds.

This is a big deal for the “little BFS plan that could,” as Scott Epstein quipped.  Epstein’s work on the local neighborhood council brought the plan into being.  And his continued work on it and refining with representatives from city planning and transportation brought it to the attention of our festival, and more importantly, Metro.  “It’s very exciting to see Metro recognize how great this project will be for connecting citizens to transit and other amenities.”  said Epstein when he heard the news that the project was highly ranked.

Here is a look at some of the changes. 

Providing some much needed traffic calming, as well as several first mile last mile solutions, you can see why we at the festival were excited to show off the plan.  If you come back to the fest this year, you can ride it again.  The actual work on the route will not even have begun yet, but it will be a nice ride just knowing it will get better.

Congrats to Scott Epstein, Mid City West Community Council, LA City Planning for winning the Metro funding.  Thanks for your hard work on bringing safe infrastructure to our neighborhood!

Correction: An earlier version of this post listed the project as 7 of 35.  While 39 projects were ranked by Metro, only 15 projects will receive funding.