April 2023 Audited Survey Results: moveculvercity.com/wp-content/... On April 24th, Culver City's Council has an opportunity to vote on removing it's best infrastructure project in LA history (Move Culver City), built only in 2021.
For Culver City residents, or those interested in supporting the lanes staying in place, the motion is being voted at the culver city council meeting on 4/24!!
So glad you're advocating for this. They actually did this in Hollywood on Willoubougy. The neighbors complained about the turnabouts and then had them taken out after they complained too many people were coming through and had them put in. The bike lane went out with the turnabout.
The fastest way to economic growth for an economy is transportation and communication improvements. The surest way to maintain that growth is education and research. On thing the U.N. does really well is keeping statistics ... and figuring out what they mean.
You MUST protect this at all costs. You have no idea what a gem this design is. Even in Europe, yes, we have good public transport- but in most of EU, where we use buses in the city, bus only lanes aren't a thing. It's still a relatively new idea, but the buses have been there for a loong time, getting stuck in traffic. And this is in Los Angeles, of all places!
i lived in Mexico City for a few months and there Bus Rapid Transit system they have with bus only lanes was really impressive to me, especially when you take into account that they ALSO have a massive city wide spanning Metro/subway system that was better than NYC's even.
As someone who works and lives in the area and walks to and from work every day, I can confirm the area has been completely transformed in a beautiful and positive way thanks to all of these changes. The local businesses are thriving and the spot is constantly full of people. That's people, not cars. Those streets that close down on specific days and get reclaimed by pedestrians help the place feel like a proper community and also help the local businesses a ton too. Pretty shocked and disappointed that what might be the nicest part of Los Angeles wants to erase and undo the progress its made becoming the nicest part of Los Angeles. Makes zero sense. The area will become way less nice to spend time in.
What's sad is conservatives think it's an "us against them" game and a fight. These "progressive" ideas have been around non-partisan for 100 years. Where I lived after leaving Santa Monica was a job in Vancouver, BC. It's FAMED "Stanley Park" was closed on Sundays (our day of rest) to all traffic but pedestrian.............in 1920. ONE DAY of the week, in those days the Lords Day, that people could picnic, bike slowly, and walk around, and get pooped on by Canada Geese. The pooping continues, but it's people's nonsense.
"The local businesses are thriving." Local public comment from businesses has been 99% negative (Wishing Well the only exception) and vociferously so. Customers cannot park or use rideshare to get there and incoming and outgoing deliveries are almost impossible. That's besides the fact that people know to avoid the area like the plague now because of congestion.
@Tony Rogers Yes I'm sure that for people with cars who get there in a car and have to park their car and leave in their car, the area might be a bit harder to navigate, but remember that the whole point of this was to make the area more welcoming and accessible for people first, cars second. I think Americans are just extremely unaccustomed to seeing urban areas that have been designed to be friendlier for pedestrians. I know it's hard to realize you're viewing the situation purely from the perspective of someone who is going to drive in and out of there and can't possibly imagine not having to park their car to walk around, but I think this conversation is important because it'll help you realize that not everyone drives, and if more areas like this existed, maybe less people would want/have to drive too. "People" don't know to avoid the area because of congestion, cars do. The area is full of people, congestion doesn't matter when you're walking. And in this particular area, congestion doesn't matter if you're riding your bike or taking the bus, either. Bonus points.
@@nvrndingsmmr Lots to unpack here. I'm used to planner pedantry, lecturing and hubris but you still surpass that. To be clear, I love transit, bike lanes, bus lanes, etc. I detest failure and this project is an abject failure. The public was never consulted, the scope of the project was hidden, when called out the planners/staff just lectured the public (sound familiar) and lied, the project was implemented in the most awful way, etc. There is nothing wrong with TOD, new urbanism, walkable communities and all the other ideas that people misapply and misunderstand on this thread. That doesn't mean that you can throw crap against the wall and it will stick. I'll overlook your consistent condescending tone and address a few of your assumptions: 1)"I think Americans are just unaccustomed to seeing urban areas that have been designed to be friendlier for pedestrians." -Nothing in the project was designed for pedestrians. This was a bus and bike lane. In fact, pedestrians are often confused by the over-engineered aspects of the project and just wander into oncoming traffic. So, essentially, I have no idea what your point is. 2) "I know it's hard to realize you're viewing the situation purely from the perspective of someone who is going to drive in and out of there" - I've walked, bused and biked myself up, down, and through that neighborhood for 30+ years. Never had a problem. Bikes, buses, and cars aren't an either/or. They existed fine together in that area before. 3) "the whole point of this was to make the area more welcoming and accessible for people first, cars second" -Well, then it failed. Also, when the true failure of the project was realized soon after its debut, the planners completely dismissed the notion that they were making the area less accessible for cars (could they have been lying?). Nobody uses the bike lane and the bus runs half-full every twenty minutes at best. Also, now people (who happen to be in cars) don't want to come to Culver City and businesses are getting killed (just like Westwood and Santa Monica if you need specific examples).
@@nvrndingsmmr Honestly, you shouldn't bother arguing with "Tony Rogers". His channel was *literally created yesterday* , and yet here he is claiming to have been in the neighborhood for 30 years. He has no sources, no points, only to assert ad nauseum that things were fine before. I wouldn't be all that surprised if this is an account designed for astroturfing. (For those unaware, 'astroturfing' is a verb meaning to fake grassroots support.)
One thing I'd like to clarify is that the council who implemented move CC, two of the progressive members were replaced by one progressive, and one conservative. The new conservative majority has been doing a ton of terrible things. 1. On their first meeting, they repealed a higher minimum wage for medical workers that had been implemented the SAME MEETING by the previous council 2. Implemented one of the harshest anti camping ordinances that I've seen in LA 3. There was a street that closes on the weekends to cars, they axed that. 4. There was a street that was turned into a mini parklet during covid, they just voted to turn it back to a small side street. 5. They're going to try to remove incremental infill, which is Culver City's version of abolishing single family zoning, (basically bringing back single family zoning in most of the city) 6. And this. 4, 5 and 6 were all done in the same meeting, the last meeting. It was depressing to watch.
Yep, it's been cringe to watch... but I'm optimistic this moment in history is going to pan out to be a brief moment of suburban reactionary-ism before a long century of urbanism sets in for good (vast majority of young people, anyone not high income, renters want livable cities).
@@lej_explains Yeah, it's really uplifting to talk to people my age and many people agree on this stuff. I'm very sure that the future will be bright but as far as I can tell that future is still many years away. Hopefully this is the worst and it only gets better from here.
So sad to see conservatives voting against good urbanism. I don‘t get it, there’s nothing right wing (pro freedom, pro free market, pro tradition) about parking lots, asphalt and single family home requirements (I mean that’s a perfect example for government overreach, shouldn’t we conservatives really hate single-family zoning? 😅)
@@laurinnintendo Travis must be tough but you're being stared in the face by the reality of conservative beliefs in this country. They say a lot of things that don't sound too bad, they don't mean any of them as the actual beliefs boil down to malice towards the poor
I live not too far from Culver City, and I've loved using the bike lanes to help me get to Cliffs of Id on my climbing days & to check out local businesses. Every time I use them, I just think about how nice it would be if more streets in LA were as bike friendly. That's not to say that they are perfect, but compared to biking in traffic I'd take these any day. Hopefully they end up voting to keep them, removing such useful infrastructure without a replacement would be a huge shame (and, selfishly, would be very inconvenient for me).
I wish more of LA would do the same... Ktown (esp around the Wilshire & Western Station) and all its various plazas would be much nicer to get around if biking and busing was more available. (Alth the quality of the LA Metro busses themselves are another topic to get into....)
As someone who has to commute through Culver City I hated the bus lanes but truthfully it didn't increase my already 1 hour commute that much and it made me want to move to culver city because it's becoming the 1st livable neighborhood in LA
@@truthteller4442 It’s NIMBYs like you who want to make every single city a suburb like most in Arizona. You are forced to own a car. You can’t walk, bike, or take transit anywhere.
The problem with things like this is often they don't go far enough (literally) and end up being a disappointment. If they extended the protected bike lanes then they'd have even more people using them, unless you live near the end of the bike lanes you probably wouldn't use them Also, empty bike lanes aren't a sign they're being wasted, you just need a lot of bikes for a traffic jam
I'm not in Culver City but am a frequent pedestrian / bike rider in the downtown area. If they remove the bike lanes I will find somewhere else to spend my time and money. With the new bike/bus lanes coming to Venice Blvd, it may be time for me to give more of my money to LA and explore Mar Vista and other nearby neighborhoods who are a bit more progressive and can see the writing on the wall. It'd be absolutely stupid if they vote to remove the bike or bus lanes just as LA puts theirs in on Venice. LA's pedestrianization is slowly kicking into gear, and tons of new bike/bus commuters will completely avoid a newly out of touch downtown Culver City instead of potentially stopping on their way through if it feels like a place for cars instead of a place for people. Long term, with the new people mover unlocking the ability for people to fly into LA without needing to rent a car, tourists may not consider Culver City a place to go if you need a car to get anywhere from there. That they're even considering this demonstrates they are not forward thinking and show poor leadership. We can't physically build more roads, so we have to move people with other, more space efficient modes of transportation. Those modes need to be faster than traveling by car, in order to encourage more use, and in exchange that will make traffic slightly better. If they do go through with it, I hope there are a lot of studies that show the traffic getting worse, more pass-through traffic in downtown, and that the roads and pedestrian crossings became less safe with the handing over of bus lanes for cars. Then we can point to them when they inevitably complain about traffic again, and hopefully convince some of the car brains will buy a bike so we can start the cycle anew.
@@MrHennoGarvie Most people go to the same places regularly (work, the grocery store, etc.) Cars have a place when traveling somewhere that transport doesn't (yet) reach, but they're extremely space and energy inefficient ways to move people when compared to bus, train, bike, and walking. "why not just make better roads?" - there aren't better roads... cars take up much more space than all other methods of transport, and we have nowhere to put any additional roads. Unless we want to start tearing down businesses and neighborhoods to build more lanes, but they'd inevitably fill up with traffic anyway. Our cities are growing and will continue to grow, and at least in LA, they bring their cars with them (increasing traffic, commute times, cost of living, and environmental impact) when they move here because there's no viable alternative, and even in places where there are alternatives, they have the perception that there isn't one. I would encourage you to try living without a car for some of the places you regularly go, unless you live in the suburbs in which case that choice was already made for you and you are stuck being fully dependent on your car. You'll save time and money, get more exercise, and put a dent in your own carbon footprint by choosing something other than a car.
@@christopotamus All default talking points I've heard before but theres plenty of counters to them. They are inefficient in terms of space and energy compared to those yes but we arent just numbers on a spreadsheet to move about, when do hear anything postive about public transport? I'd rather avoid being next to people I choose not to be. Not to mention new methods of energy are coming all the time if only our world stopped seeing people as numbers and constant growth we might actually get those ideas put to use, such a nuclear. Yes the trains, buses etc would also get the benefits but you again have to sit with people you dont want to which is the biggest factor for me. Maybe I should have phrased it as 'plan better roads'. For being such a car centric nation you americans make some awful networks. I'd be fine adding bike lanes to the sides of roads for example, giving people the opportunity to bike places is fine but theres no chance im being forced onto public transport.
I will be at that City Council Meeting. Thank you for letting us know. That will be a wasteful, expensive project that will congest the area further even just in the span of construction, then the complaints will keep flooding in. I will be giving comment. I hope to see you there.
This is a key point - almost none of the culver city residents who oppose the bus/bike lanes have tried riding on the BRT since it was built. ( Only 15% of city residents polled said they have tried the bus since 2021). This is because car culture is deeply ingrained, and because for as long as they've lived here, busses got stuck in traffic and had bad frequencies. So their background idea of busses being slow/only for people who can't afford a car remains the default. That, and the very real vibe among some classes in LA that riding the bus is beneath them. The more BRT we build, the sooner people will realize that they should just suck those feelings up and take the faster/easier option - taking a bus. Plus, if all of LA's main boulevards had BRT, they would no longer have an excuse about it not taking them in route to work.
@LEJ I unfortunately sympathize with their point of view. Being from Long Island, the buses are so infrequent due to the car traffic that only the most desperate people take them. I wonder if stubborn LI will ever make that service better.
@@CopperScott I do hope that bus ridership goes up and we can change cars to being for the nuro-divergent and farmers. Imagine being so poor the only home you can afford is an hour away from a walmart - where the poors shop! HA! Car dependance is for poors. /s
@@spoonikle imagine being a single person, unlikely to marry, and even more unlikely to ever have children..because you’re so concerned with riding your bicycle everywhere by yourself.
@@swisschalet1658 Im guessing you're one of the people stuck in traffic, and seeing the buses and bikes just drive on by just loosened the last screw.
Agreed, but I suspect what happened in CC would dwarf the "uproar" of the privileged car folk in LA. I'm in Highland Park and when York blvd went from 2 to 1 lane, the uproar was nuts. Luckily, they haven't reverted, but the new BRT along Colorado Blvd in Eagle Rock, with many improvements for buses and bikes, has brought out the pitchforks locally.
@@MauricioRU-vid York was an unpopular move but didn't create bottlenecks, didn't remove parking, and didn't limit access to businesses. This project does all three and more. York I would even argue is an example of good planning. The new "system" on Figueroa though is the exact opposite - creating a traffic nightmare for no reason.
Where I am from (a city within LA County) we have bike lanes, but they are nowhere the size that Culver City and even Long Beach have. I wish our city can have their wide bike lanes.
@@MauricioRU-vid LOL highland park is a gentrified shithole, As a Hispanic you should know the white folks have been restricting car access to cities as a way to segregate la. Pasadena got the freeway canceled to keep la raza out, educate yourself.
This is very common in my city of Melbourne Australia. Most major roads and even a busy freeway have a dedicated bus lane. The inner city usually gets very busy during peak hour but it's not an issue for people who take the bus or bike. We also have an average train system which although gets crowded, it's nicer standing on a busy train which flies to the suburbs vs having the space of your car but being stuck in traffic. After factoring the price of petrol, parking and tolls, it's a lot cheaper to take public transport or ride the bike.
Melbourne is definitely one of the cities where would feel okay without a car. The issue is almost anywhere outside of the major cities sucks to be without a car. Can't live in Bendigo without one
LA has incredible potential for urban design upgrades. Hope you continue your content creator journey. You are entering the urbanist sphere at a great time. Best of luck dude,! will wait patiently for more videos.
Use their own Arguments against them: This street was too full, so the capacity had to be increased. Also, People needed a way to get in the downtown reliably, and cant just hope that they arrive in time or leave home 3h early. People need to get to work, not to sit in that stinky traffic. Emergency Services also need to get everywhere in times, what isnt prossible on the road. Imagine your daughter or wife dies because they are stuck in traffic.
US politics is all about culture wars on the conservative side. They are not really interested in arguments or facts. It is all about imposing their will and that of their donors.
Ooohh I like this! They all apply perfectly to removing car lanes, but appeal directly to the values of pro-car campaigners (or what they claim to value anyway)
"Why are you trying to ruin lanes emergency services use to bypass traffic? Do you want to die or something?" Like, seriously, you actually see ambulances using cyclepaths in London.
Epic video! A truly excellent breakdown of the benefits of public transportation to a community. Think of all the small businesses that get pedestrian traffic now only because of those bus stops and bike lanes. That traffic will be ripped away and replaced with car traffic--not to mention the noise pollution--if we do not make our voices heard. Local politicians make a lot of decisions that affect our lives much more directly than national politics on many issues like this. Vote! No off years!
I just about remember when a person would LIVE (Dwelling) within a 10 minute walk to work, When mom&pop stores had accomodations above them. Yet, buses ran every 15 minutes. Then Zoning entered the field. After that was "Redevelopment", in my city over 300 business (marginal at best) were destroyed in down town for a short lived 16 business mall. That mall died, because people from a housing project next door stole from shoppers, A 100 year old bakery was raided by teens repeatedly forcing that closing.
Greetings from Amsterdam. That infrastructure is really impressive for American standards and even beats many European countries. The problem with adding more car lanes is that inevitably creates more demand to drive a car as it's seen as the only viable way to travel and commute. This in turn creates more car traffic and traffic jams and therefore becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. The car drivers stuck in traffic blame the bikers and buses when they should realize that they could be those people, free from the burden of car insurance, fuel costs, costly maintenance etc. and could instead by driving a bike and zipping through traffic while burning calories instead of dollars. Car owners demand complete monopoly over public roads and tolerate no other traffic participants and lash out when even a single inch of their territory is given others. Keep up the fight and lobby with your local officials to make America walkable.
The bike lanes suck for anyone that doesnt reside within the city. And no sane person wants to live in an american city, rightly so. Especially a california city. Thats the rub. Some people want space at home, isolative security, property, quiet, etc and the city cant provide that. This system works well for childless 20 somethings working as baristas, but your average doctor with a family doesnt want to deal with and can afford to avoid living like a sardine. Having a family of 5 in an apartment trying to take the bus everywhere is a nightmare situation. So you end up with the situation in which actual taxpayers leave, because the council listened to people who dont actually pay any road tax or income tax. They go to texas. If you had to plate, title, register and insure a bike, then pay a usage tax to make up for the space taken from cars paying that tax on top of gas, drivers might feel a bit less ripped off. If they saw cops ticketing reckless cyclists (which they should be) it would help too. But people really hate to see their commute get even longer to match the wishes of leechy downtown populations who dont pay for the roads. The proof is in the pudding whenever anyone tries to make cyclists accountable for infrastructure they want dedicated to them. Cyclists refuse to pay a red cent over the cost of their bikes, so why should they be catered to? You have to respect the wishes of the people who actually pay the hard cash to maintain infrasructure, or they get frustrated and move. Then you have no money to do what anyone wants. The city is obviously returning conservative because theyre surrounded by real time examples of why you dont prioritize non payors, it only nets more homeless, more drugs, higher population density. By the pictures its noticably less awful than the california leftist strongholds. Theres no tents, because they came down hard on them. It all comes down to the something for nothing crowds continuing myopic perspective on the systems that maintain their cushy modern lives and what makes them viable. Its cars and the associated taxes, business, shipping, finance, all the things people claim to hate are the only things paying into government coffers to do the free shit people want. Roads. Cost. Money. Cyclists. Dont. Pay. In.
@Xi Jinping's Favorite Hemorrhoid the "cyclists don't pay for roads" is so dishonest and ingenuine. Why will this constantly debunked myth always be waved around? Because people people value their own opinions above reality
@@xijinpingsfavoritehemorrho1328 1. Gas taxes don't fully cover the costs of road repair and maintenance 2. Freeways and roads are heavily subsidized and paid for by all taxpayers, including those who rarely drive or don't drive 3. Single family housing zoned areas and massive car friendly businesses and parking lots drain the city of tax revenue money. They cost more to maintain than they provide in taxes. The only way old single family zoned housing is maintained is by new housing development paying for older development. Once new development revenue stops coming in, the existing single family housing areas cannot be maintained and paid for, so suburban cities fall apart. It is a Ponzi scheme growth model. 4. Older, denser parts of cities that retain their old "main street downtowns" and denser housing actually subsidizes low density single family parts of cities as well. That is basic math, that when housing is denser, more tax revenue can be generated per square mile of roads, pipes, and other infrastructure. It takes a lot of pipes and asphalt to pave your quiet suburban street. If everyone on your street had to pay for new sidewalks and road pavement, or replace the sewer lines below your street, your neighborhood might have to split a few hundred thousand to a few million dollars to come up with the money to repair it. It is fine to like living in low density suburban neighborhoods; but you need to accept that denser cities and new suburban development subsidize your quiet single family zoned neighborhood, and your street is a net drain to the city's tax revenue.
@@xijinpingsfavoritehemorrho1328 "The bike lanes suck for anyone that doesnt reside within the city." And? They don't live there, why does it matter how it effects them?
I stayed in Culver City last year and even though I had to use my car to visit my friends elsewhere, I can’t recall encountering traffic there. Also it was so nice to walk along in the mornings. Sad that this might change!
The purpose of a road is not to move cars, its to move people. Count the number of people being moved per hour compared to 10 years ago, and I would guess there has been an improvement.
@@TonyRogers-gp1fl Bike lanes are empty because unlike cars they move people. Buses run every 15-20 minutes because the road isn't blocked by cars, now those buses won't move any faster than the car and they carry 30 x the passengers in the same to 2x the space, meaning you need to reduce the car traffic time by 125 minutes to carry more people than having the bus lane in.
@@PCDelorian Oh boy. Don't even know where to start. Let me simplify things as much as possible. Full bus = 40 people (bus rarely full but I'll give you this). Three to four buses per hour in this bus lane. So 160 people transported at max capacity at max frequency. The maximum capacity of a traffic lane is @1800 cars per hour. Assuming every driver drove solo and giving you the extreme benefit of every other assumption and not taking into account the traffic consequences of removing the lane, a regular lane has at least 11 times the utility of this bus lane.
@@TonyRogers-gp1fl No because those cars are congested so they aren't moving that fast. Every study ever done since the 60s has shown that removing a traffic lane increases traffic flow, because most travellers won't go by car when there is an alternative. The extra lane cannot move close to 1800 cars per hour because, and I'm sorry you missed this bit, there is a bottleneck and a road can only move as many people as its lowest point, all you're doing is creating more queueing space. A full bus carrying 160 people means you need to move an extra 160 cars every hour, that means more than one car every minute extra needs to go through a traffic light controlled intersection, which frankly isn't going to happen.
@@PCDelorian I admire your passion but you have to be realistic. "Every study ever done since the 60s" - nope. Not even close. Hard stop. Bless your heart but that's completely wrong. The "1800" number I threw out is standard for traffic engineers when traffic planning. "More than one car every minute extra needs to go through . . . ." Turning the bus lane back into a regular lane will allow more than one extra car every minute to go through that intersection - actually dozens of cars! It seems like you have an interest in this area which is great and I admire that. Bus lanes are great and bike lanes are great but this was just the worst place to put these.
I wish my city had BRT like this. I used to use the buses a lot before I got my E-bike, and they often got stuck in traffic and couldn’t make their schedules. My city doesn’t have any light rail or subway either, so unless you’re near downtown (which has added bike lanes recently) the only real options are to get stuck in traffic in a car, or get stuck in traffic riding the bus. I can’t believe a city would solve this problem, increasing QoL for everyone, and then decide to destroy all that infrastructure for no real reason. It’s infuriating! Edit: That street also looks absolutely beautiful. Colorful, interesting, and full of people. I’m getting even angrier thinking about how lifeless it could soon become. I bet the car-drivers don’t even notice how nice it looks, since they are trapped in their tiny metal boxes and don’t actually live in their own city.
Thanks to everyone for defending bike/bus infrastructure in the comments and to the city council. More videos to come soon! The vote will take place during a council meeting on April 24th, check this link for how to zoom in / attend in person if you want. They haven't posted the links yet, but soon enough the 4/24/23 date will have information --> culver-city.legistar.com/DepartmentDetail.aspx?ID=27970&GUID=450C9CD7-F159-4D90-BDF7-64A912D9D355
Where are you finding the biggest challenges in overcoming opposition? Not knowing, have you tried emphasizing what conservatives will see favorably, such as the growth of the area and the positive financial impact of the buses and cyclists on the surrounding businesses and downtown? Also, people may need to be informed that buses and cyclists progressing faster than cars is exactly what MUST happen to encourage people to stop contributing to road congestion and start using those other modes. I also encourage measuring the number of people trips done by bus and cycle, because I suspect the drivers think "barely anyone" is using it, just because it's mostly empty compared to space-hogging cars! Good luck, I'm sure you realize LA really needs to get a grip on its sprawl, and I hope you successfully fight to keep this step in the right direction!
@@chrisstarlitvagabond1496 IMO the biggest challenge is getting enough pro-transit voices to win out over the anti-transit voices. Although there's lots of interesting ways to debate someone by getting them to agree with bus/bikes lanes in a "conservative lens" like that it almost always increases business revenue, expands personal freedom by not making cars the only option, etc... I think it's less effective than simply rallying people who am already inclined to support transit (b/c online at least, very few people will get won over by a logical debate). There was a mid-2022 report done which showed the bike/bus lanes generated lots of new users (moveculvercity.com/), but unfortunately the opposition just called it fake and cherry picked online and in council meetings. Also, the city's downtown sales tax revenue shows big gains since the project was put in, but it's barely been acknowledged.
Awesome video! I'm working on a video right now about turning our stroads into main streets, and I was planning on briefly talking about how Culver City did just that. I think I'm going to have to try to rush production to get it out before the council votes on it.
Nimesh! Your recent West LA videos were a big factor in me getting off my butt and making videos about urbanism in LA again after a long absence! Happy you liked it!
Nice to see Nimesh here! I live in perhaps one of the most pedestrian/cyclist unfriendly parts of LA, the suburb of Torrance. However, Torrance has an old core, constructed in the 20s by FL Olmsted Jr and it's fabulous - mixed use, walkable, bike racks galore, etc. The rest of my city is pretty awful when it comes to cycling/hoofing it. I've recently gone car-free and am frustrated by how challenging it is to get around. Culver City's redesign is an inspiration and would set a terrible precedent in SoCal - a supposed bastion of progressiveness - would they actually deign to reverse it.
Local businesses are the ones pleading for this debacle to end. You can't get deliveries, customers can't park, rideshare has nowhere to drop people off, third-party delivery won't even take your orders to customers because they have no way of accessing the business etc.
@@TonyRogers-gp1fl Have you ever been to NYC? There's plenty of small businesses here that thrive off of the pedestrian foot traffic here and on top of that businesses don't have to pay for extra land solely dedicated for parking, since there's no parking minimums in large swaths of the city. It creates a lower barrier to entry for businesses and creates more customers Since good public transit is now in CC, Transit Oriented Development is the best option here. Why don't you move to a town or city that's car dependent rather than try to erase progress? There's plenty of towns like that esp. in California
@@TommyJonesProductions Besides arguably Village Well, every downtown business has been extremely negatively affected by the bike and bus lanes. Customers cannot access their business. Bike lanes bring zero customers to most businesses. What is not clear?
@@joeh3491 1) Have you ever been to NYC? Yes, very familiar with NYC. I hear it's an abandoned commercial hellscape and the worst location to have a small business in the country (fact, not opinion). 2) "Since good public transit is now in CC" - Culver City has not changed it's transit system since I was a kid (90s). Buses actually run less frequently now. Not sure what you're talking about. 3) Why don't you move to a town or city that's car dependent rather than erase progress? Thanks for the offer but I already do - grew up, live, and work near downtown Culver City (an area which is car dependent). I bike in the area and take public transit more than you do (opinion but 99% likely). This project was not progress by any stretch.
As a Minnesotan who desperately wants to see more cities in America make corridors like this, I'm appalled these asshat car drivers want to kill such an objectively based and good project. I wish you all the best of luck in saving the bus and bike lane, show up and show out to City council to oppose removal!
agree with you, they’re just bootlickers of ford and GMI lol haha 😂, they just wanna occlude every project that isn’t convenient to their wallets and their friends ford and GMI economy.
Define "good" project. It created one of the worst bottlenecks in LA almost from scratch. Downtown businesses are unanimously against it because it's killing business. The bike lane is empty. The #1 bus runs every 20 min or less so the bus lane is empty 95% of the time. Pedestrians are confused by the system.
@@TonyRogers-gp1fl As someone who lives in Minnesota, there is no reason people in LA should not be biking even though you have that "perfect" weather. We still do this. We reduce streets from 4 lanes to 2 lanes with multimodal infrastructure. This video literally proves that traffic was still bad before this point and guess what? It won't change no matter how many lanes you throw at it. Genuinely, there is not enough space in Los Angeles for everyone to own their own car. Start getting out more, and guess what, those bike lanes and bus lanes are still moving more people per hour than could ever be done as space efficiently in cars. Make the bus more frequent and you'll see ridership
By Michael Venutolo-Mantovani. Published: Apr 28, 2023. Cycling Increased By 57% In One City After a Bike Lane Was Created. But Now It’s Being Removed. Culver City Council in Los Angeles voted 3-2 this week to take out bike lanes and reinstall vehicular traffic lanes just two years after the bike lanes were put in. A project called Move Culver City was launched in November 2021 with the aim of encouraging biking and walking through the 1.3-mile downtown corridor in the Culver City area. The project claimed traffic lanes along the Washington and Culver Boulevard strips, creating bike and bus lanes in their stead, reducing the lanes for vehicle traffic to one in either direction. The project was met with mixed opinions over the last few years. And while a report released this month by Move Culver City boasted a 57 percent increasing in cycling along the Washington and Culver Boulevard corridor over pre-pandemic levels, the Culver City Council voted 3-2 earlier this week to end the program, remove the bike lanes, and return the corridor to two lanes of vehicular traffic in each direction “wherever feasible.” The council’s slim margin seems to reflect the public opinion of locals as, according to a story in the Los Angeles Times, “a survey found that 58% of Culver City residents opposed continuing the program.” Once the traffic lanes are reinstated, area cyclists will have to share lanes with city busses. In a recent opinion piece in the LA Times, economic and political sociologist Yotala Oszkay Febres-Cordero argued that the rollback of the program would not just be a loss for those who use the bike lanes but also a “devastating setback for how Angelenos see the future of transportation in our region.”
Sounds like some people don't understand that a traffic lane can carry many more than 30 cars every ten minutes. Also, the #1 deosn't run every ten minutes. Not even close.
@@AmazingAwesomeAlaska yeah if traffic moves quickly. Which it doesn’t lol. Also some buses can carry 50+ people so the comparison isn’t as lopsided as you think.
I use this route regularly to between the expo station and downtown culver. The bike path isn’t perfect but it’s made this an easy and fun 5 minute scooter ride. The bus lane does seem underutilized and I rarely take it but, as the author mentions, the traffic is really only bad for a couple of peak hours. The traffic sewer of Venice Blvd runs parallel and gives this neighborhood more than enough car access.
Try it sometime! I used to scooter from Expo or the Arts District to downtown, until I realized how expensive and not worth it those apps were. A round trip on Bird was like the price of lunch. The first time I tried the bus, I was won over instantly, and never scootered again. It's $1 each way, and takes only a minute or two longer then scootering. Also, the shuttle van is free and fills in the gap between normal busses. I've never had to wait more than 10 minutes for a bus.
@@lej_explains totally. I used to take advantage of bird promos which were great last year. For a few months I had a subscription that was ~$20/month with the first 5 minutes of the rental free, so each ride was costing $0-1. The promos have become steadily less generous since January, so I now walk usually which is fine too.
I have lived in Los Angeles almost 40 years and the changes in Culver City are staggering, I absolutely love biking through this part of town and I do it four or five times a week. Car traffic seems to flow well through here in my opinion. What do we think the outcome will be in April?
I hope pressure forces them to keep the bus/bike lanes or (better) expand them, but all indications are that 3 / 5 are already swayed to down-grading the project into a bike only lane or “restoring” it back to original car lanes. This is based on multiple ex-councilor’s statements, these 3’s recent voting record against pedestrian streets, and public comments they’ve made during meetings.
"Car traffic seems to flow well through here." It's completely gridlocked for five to six hours a day. It's now one of the most famous bottlenecks in the city. Are you being serious?
@@TonyRogers-gp1fl get out of your car and fucking take the cheaper and faster transit option then. We have climate change cause of people insisting on gas guzzling cars everywhere. And did you miss the part where it was backed up on rush hour before anyway? The video shows traffic flowing on the street outside of rush hour
Not sure why this got recommended to me, but I must point out something: Pictures about situations when bus and bike lanes are empty, but general travel lane(s) are at a standstill are a common way to protest against bike/bus lanes. However, what those pictures actually show (especially in this kind of environment), is that there are 2 lanes where traffic is actually moving. It would be quite interesting to see passanger volumes for each lane or mode of travel, and the average speed of each travel mode (walking, cycling, car, bus) before and after building the bus lanes, during the rush hour and outside the rush hour. Combining travel time and passanger volume data should make quite a strong argument in favour/agains bus lanes.
Those bike lanes have 7x the capacity of the driving lanes. Those bus lanes have 5x the capacity of the driving lanes. For for the bus and bike lanes to look "full": they need to be moving 21,000 people per hour (compared to the car lane moving 1,500 people per hour). Edit: the magic keyword is "corridor capacity". Though the wikipedia article is entitled "Passengers per hour per direction"
@@jamesphillips2285 Yes, I know the capacity of each kind of lane, but that argument is not going to work if you have majority of council members strongly opposing the bike and bus lanes. They'll just look at the capacity numbers, and are quick to point out that if bus and bike lanes seem to be mostly empty, they are not operating at capacity. If you only compare theoretical capacity, you have to count in all the empty seats in cars as well. Also, theoretical capacity figures stated in Wikipedia do not really work in city traffic. Sure, you can get 1500 passenger cars per hour per lane on a highway, but cities have traffic lights, pedestrian crossings, stop signs, roundabouts and a lower speed limit, which all slow down cars. Anyway, the theoretical capacity means nothing, because the actual occupancy rate tends to be very different from the theoretical capacity. On average bikes have almost 100% occupancy, motorbikes a bit over 50%, vans and pickups do maybe around 40%, passenger cars have maybe 30%, and busses might be anywhere from near zero to over 100% (20-40% is probably a good estimate for most of the day, and 60-80% for rush hours). Don't get me wrong, I'm fully in favor of those bus lanes. I'd guess they actually carry 200-300 passengers during peak times (I think that place sees 5 busses per direction per hour at peak times), which is probably very similar as the actual throughput of a single car lane. The only difference is that cars are slow and stuck in traffic, while the bus is actually moving. I'm just trying to suggest an argument in favour of bus lanes, that is significantly more difficult to oppose (even for a car centric politician). I'd be more worried about the bike lanes, as I didn't see many people cycling in the video. That's probably because there is no (or very limited/disconnected) network of safe bike paths, but that's really difficult to explain to someone who thinks giving more space to cars is the only solution to traffic, even if it meant turning every single street into 401 freeway (Toronto)
You would think it makes sense to have all that data before deciding to spend a lot of money to get rid of them only to figure out you should have kept them.
@@scpatl4now max capacity and real numbers are two totaly diffrent things, a bus may have a max capcity of 30 riders but if only 4 people use it then it's not moving any one . The argument is we should encourage bus users but fails to take into acunt that the bus may not be going where 90% of people need to go or only a short way to their destination, or takes them on a longer path that requires them to transition to another bus , People fail to realize taking the bus takes longer than a car, even in traffic because you have to get off and switch busses so much. I Live near a light rail that cna take me to santa monica , but the two places i have to transition to get there make it so that a 1 hour trip driving turns into a 3 hour ordeal on bus/ light rail.
It looks like more cities across the U. S. are doing the dedicated bus lanes also. Atlanta Ga is getting in on it and I’ve seen it in Arlington Mass, New York City and even the small city of Richmond Virginia made their bus lanes all red painted. It’s an eye sore but it’s working. No one cared for it at first and it was confusing to some, but it seems to be catching on. I first saw these lanes in California a couple years back and now so many more cities are discovering this. Great video quality btw!
The Katy Freeway in Houston, TX, kept adding lanes to deal with traffic congestion and overcrowded cities. They're currently at 26 lanes and traffic is still shit. I don't understand the logic of adding more lanes if all of the cars are going to merge at the same place anyway.
Our country is so addicted to cars. It's sick. I feel lucky to live in NYC. I often take our local public transportation for granted. Thank you for making me appreciate what I have
I not sure what happens there but here at fremont California the city take a way one line to give it to the bicycles. You probably will see 2 bicycles by hour and afternoon pass 6pm nothing not one use that line . Sometimes you can be there for hours to see someone using the line. Here was a waste of taxes.
They are gonna repeal this, traffic won't improve, and the will lend up having drivers who complain they didn't fix anything, all they did was remove the paint and poles, and pedestrians that will complain that now they can't us the streets safely. Phasing out cars is the way to go, and that means telling drivers suck it.
I'm so glad you made this video! I'm not from LA (or USA for that matter), but I hope your council votes to keep the infrasturcture! It's such a nicely done corridor! incredible attenction to detail! it must stay!
@Phillip Banes Classic American comment. People from other countries that actually do live in livable cities are not allowed to have an opinion on the horrible urban planning of the US. Stay part of the problem.
Nice video LEJ! Culver City is developing at an interesting pace. Was disappointing when they removed the COVID-era pedestrianization of downtown. I believe Sony Pictures pressured the city on that issue considering their corporate presence. If I had a magic wand, I would permanently ban cars from Venice Blvd to Culver Blvd to Duquesne Ave to Hughes Ave. While I'm at it, I would also do something about the disjointed walking situation between downtown and Platform/Ivy Station/Arts District. It's absurd that two large car dealerships take up valuable urban space in such a location. Do all those things, sit back and watch that area blossom into the most vibrant 0.5 sq miles in all of LA County.
This is Red Car redux. Southern California (I grew up half a block from Electric Avenue in Seal Beach) had an extensive electric train network called the Red Car for over fifty years. The Pacific Electric Railway was created in 1901. There were 1,100 miles of track. It extended from Los Angeles and the nearby, surrounding cities to Santa Ana, Newport Beach, the San Fernando Valley, La Habra, Redlands, Riverside, Colton, and San Bernardino. Then came Big Auto who scrapped the entire system. In 1949, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California, Phillips Petroleum, GM, and Mack Trucks were convicted of conspiring to monopolize the sale of buses and related products to local transit companies. GM was fined $5,000. Smog, lung cancer, traffic jams and freeways replaced the Red Cars. People who don't learn the lessons of history are, unfortunately, condemned to repeat its tragedies. Defining selfishness and simple-minded stupidity as sensibility is straight out sorry insanity. Shame on the new Culver City City Council for repealing one tiny step forward in the effort to build a better world.
What nobody's talking about is how awful and unpleasant it will be to hang out and eat around the Culver Steps with cars flying at 65mph when they revert to treating Culver Blvd as a freeway.
Welp now I know what I'm doin on the 24th. My family has lived in and around Culver City for decades and I have a pretty strong love of the city. This project was one of the best things the city implemented IMO and made me think that pedestrian facilities and transit services in the city may change for the better. It is so incredibly disheartening to hear this revisionist and reactionary policies being implemented, even more so as someone who lived in the area and who continues to visit the area to see my folks.
@@thevillage38 I can bike, but I normally take the bus and/or train (try to take the train more since Culver City bus can be pretty unreliable even tho they are cleaner with nicer drivers). When I lived with them I would bike everywhere, doing anything from leisure, to getting groceries, to heading up to UCLA.
Tearing this out would be a travesty. Consider how much more space the ppl in the bikes & busses would take up if they were in cars. If ppl only did the fucking math.
I find it interesting that you are not showing a single statistic related to the number of people who take those busses vs the number of people who drive through the area? Why is that?
Crime in Culver City is 90% in the last 12 months. Business owners are complaining about all the armed robberies going on. You have a 1 in 23 chance of being a victim of a property crime in that city so be careful.
@@jazzfan7491 Neighborhood scout has crime stats for most u.s. cities and it was reported on local news channels like CBS Los angles, Fox 11, & NBC Los Angles.
Looking from the other side of the ocean, it's almost as if America's mentality changed from ' everyone will be able to have nice things ' to : 'If i can't have nice things, i make sure you can't have nice things either ! '
@@ramseymansford2246And what’s wrong with that? I don’t understand why most people have to have their lives fucked up just for the benefit of a few privileged and entitled hipsters - communism, the other side of the Ocean is full of it, indeed.
@@vali20vali20vali20 It is a "crab bucket" mentality that keeps EVERYONE down. As an example: I heard that after segregation was ended in the south (but lingering racism was still predominant): public pools were closed just to keep Black people from using them. So now everybody needs to build and maintain their own small private pool in their backyard.
@@vali20vali20vali20 Bikelanes & good public transport is ' Communism ? ' Anyway , i don't understand why halve a country have their lives 'fucked up ' , roads messed up, bridges rusting away and small towns falling apart because it's No risk all the rewards for the big companies, and fuck the rest.
@@vali20vali20vali20 people are having a hard time separating their politics from their actual self-interest. For most city residents having pedestrian-ftiendly streets is a huge benefit and something they enjoy. Its not about hipsters. It's about living in a place where you can actually walk out and not have to drive everywhere.
@@vessbakalov8958 No it's not. Either you've never lived in an urban area, or you see everything through hipster rose lenses. Taking away a car lane and giving it to a niche part of the population is burdening the majority to pander to a minority. And, he's right, this is only happening because the niche group happens to be hip right now. Forcing cars to idle in the road longer due to only having 1 lane isn't doing the environment any favors either. These types of lanes are absurd undemocratic pandering with almost no substantial benefits.
You need to try and organize the people who use this transportation to show up and show the council what the people want. Progress towards pedestrianization will keep getting setback by lobbies and nimbys if we don't show our numbers. Put up flyers in the busses and along the street
@@InsertGreatChannelName Writing to politicians does fuck all, because they don't actually read any of that. They just have their secretaries respond with form letters. You basically have to confront these people in person to even remotely get them to consider whatever you have to say. And even then, good luck - politicians only care about two things: making money and pandering to their existing voter base.
@@vali20vali20vali20 Not really. A bike lane has 7x the capacity of a driving lane for 1.3 passenger cars. So to look "full" the bike lane needs to move 12,000 people/hour, compared to only 1,500 people/hour for the car lane.
@@vali20vali20vali20 Not necessarily. A photo or video clip of the lanes being empty might have been taken during an off time for cyclists. You have to remember that traffic isn't constant at all times of the day. Another thing to consider is that you can fit thirty bikes in the space of five or six cars. So the lane might be empty because the people using it might already have made it to their destination, as the bike lane's capacity is naturally going to be far higher per square meter than the car lane.
When I moved to California back in 2021, I chose to live on Washington Blvd because I knew Culver City downtown will be awesome. Now I ride to the downtown every weekend and spend money there. If Move Culver City were torn down, I'm going to move out of Culver City, because downtown will soon be as desolate as every exit I cannot name on Expo line.
how much money do you spend on the weekend to support a business meaning , lease , electric , staff , HVAC and so on. just wondering . what do you purchase that can be transported on a bike or train
@@hermanrosario7045 Medium maybe $30. I usually don't shop there. Last year I bought $100 total? Kitchen utilities. Averaging that to 52 weeks is $2/w.
@@hermanrosario7045 I go to restaurants all the time on my bike, as well as get groceries from Trader Joe's on my big backpack. All in less than a 10-minute bike ride. Everyone should try it sometime.
@@AleHndz thanks i hear people say things but no detail. would be nice if someone did a video on what they do. how they enjoy traveling in the city and where they go.
Americans are car-centric. I grew up in LA and drove everywhere but hated it simply due to the traffic. On a bike I had freedom. In a car I felt constrained and trapped. Along with bike lanes, cities also need to mimic Japan for bicycle parking. A safe place to lock your bike is important especially near places you need to go to. How many bike racks are at LAX? Turns out there is a sole bike rack at terminal 1. How many are at Haneda (HND) airport? Since Haneda is out over the water a nearby rail station Tenkubashi, located at the end of the shorter runway, and less than 5 minutes by rail to either terminal, has plenty of bike racks (plural.)
The only way to solve the car crisis (and I have a car and LOVE MY CAR) is to have mixed neighborhoods for walking/biking/public transit/cars. So everyone can enjoy the community. You need a mix and you need to leave your car at home sometimes.
I wish the best of luck to all Culver City residents on keeping this more accessible infrastructure that lets people get through the city without a traffic jam.
@@TonyRogers-gp1fl You know, I don't live in Culver City, LA, or North America for that matter. Regardless, I am familiar with traffic jams and me, friends and family have found a way to reliably avoid them: take the bike. Adding back the lane will make jams somewhat less frequent (I guess), but will also kill TWO modes of transportation that get you through the middle of the city with less traffic and stress RELIABLY, right now and will do so in the foreseeable future. Building more lanes will not solve your pain. But your demands will bring back problems for those that found a better way. You will gain equality through degradation. How about you extend the network for bikes and buses as to make them a true alternative, and let people keep their car at home? Only that will quell traffic jams in the long term. Cars are bound to create traffic jams. You may not believe me, so I'll leave you with these three pictures: danielbowen.com/2012/09/19/road-space-photo/ I hope you will remember these in the future and youtube wont axe this comment for the link.
Thank you for making this awesome video explaining the current situation! We must save the bus & bikes lanes! More car lanes will help NO ONE!!! Also ps I spy me at the end ❤😂
@@Omegamanjr more car lanes induces more traffic increasing car journey times. It also increases the overwhelming amount of health implication associated with car driving, direct death and injury from cars, polluted air in neighbourhoods, and climate change. It helps no one.
@@Omegamanjr Check out the concept of "induced demand". More lanes=more car traffic and (most of the time) more congestion. Fewer lanes=less cars and more people on public transport and bikes, which actually can help those who still need to take the car.
Come to Australia where the bike lanes are just painted line on a road. A lot of car drivers use the bike lane as a extra car lane and abuse bike riders for using the lane. Maybe bike riders like car drivers should have to pay a yearly fee and need a licence to ride on public roads. With E Scooters now becoming so common the same could go for them. As a car drivers I pay a lot of money for the roads, why should bike riders get to use what I pay for for free. You would not let a homeless person just live in your house that you pay for.
Please make more of these videos. I watch a ton of channels with this type of content and think this is up there with the best of them. You can make an impact!
Thank you for making this video. I like culver city right now then I have in past. The gridlock in the past was horrible in the past when used to frequent the area for events. It feels amazing to commute around the city than it has in past. We like to call car centric and less development types NIMBYs plain and simple.
"Gridlock in the past was horrible." Washington Blvd. wasn't gridlocked before. Now it's gridlocked in every direction and even the surrounding streets are at a standstill (Venice, Clarington, Duquesne).
If they turn it back, that will be a big mistake, people walking, biking or goint with a buss is less car traffic, so much safer and also a better life environment for everybody. It is so safe also for kids, they can go out their house. I am from the Netherlands, and we all enjoy life.
I am in Canada, in a different cage dependant shitburb than Not Just Bikes grew up in, but still the same trash. NJB and Bicycle Dutch are such great tourism and immigration advertisers for Netherlands. However, I cannot afford to go. If I could afford to I would take at least a vacation and maybe consider immigration with my brother. We totally want to be fietsers , if the infrastructure was there. If I wanted children I definitely want to immigrate to Netherlands thanks to Not Just Bikes for orange pilling. Currently I drive a bus, heavy truck formally and hate driving. I consider becoming a truck and coach technician, but I might actually like to drive in the Netherlands due to NJB. I still would rather ride a bus to work and walk home (depending on distance, all the way) which I could do in my area if it was not garbage for people, or be a fietser both ways if the infrastructure was there, and not a cager. I sort of like classic American cars with manual transmission but also not to drive everyway and not in winter. Day to day I want to be a fietser. My city/shity is progressing but is not fast enough. It is better in some areas, which I cannot afford, but still too many cagers. CJ Hoyle is a youtuber in my area that narrates local bicycle infrastructure (has some US and Netherlands videos too) if you want to see any. It is still not up to Dutch standards. There are still dumb businesses opposing bus rapid transit in one area and another area they refuse cycle tracks on a massive 6 lane ugly stroad. At least a downtown 4 lane street with streetcars (trams), King Street East & West, was given transit priority in the previous decade against local businesses wishes. One business even had a middle finger sculpture. Ridership on that transit route 504 King increased and businesses had increased customers. There were more patio space as right lanes had bicycle parking, patios, planter boxes and curb extensions at the transit stops. 'King Pilot Project' for news reports when it was new. I recently saw a Forbes article from Jan 2020 that mentions my city and how businesses overestimate the amount of customers arrive by their dumb cages www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2020/01/13/birmingham-reveals-radical-ghent-style-plan-to-cut-car-addiction/?sh=15e28141760f "Retailers in many countries believe the majority of people travel to their stores by car. Study after study has shown this to be largely incorrect. When quizzed, retailers often overstate the numbers who they think drive; and understate modes such as walking, cycling and taking public transit. Removing cars from shopping streets often increases trade. For instance, a 2015 study of Queen Street West in Toronto’s Parkdale neighbourhood found that half of the local business owners estimated that more than 25% of their customers arrived by car. In fact, it was 4%. And the number for those who walked or cycled? 72%." Only thing I changed was fixing the spelling of neighbourhood. Also I was never polled by a business. Why believe so many customers arrive by cage without polling customers how they travel? Lastly hagelslag and stroopwafel, bless the Dutch.
Completely misleading. There is gridlock traffic Everday. You took a video from Sunday morning, as I live and work here, as a delivery driver, for years. The bus lane is not used, and the bike lane is somewhat nice, but a danger going over those cheap ADA-bus loading decks that are already falling apart. The bus and bike lane weave and combine at points, and all the plastic blight is confusing and a huge eye sore. They lack ideas, and have no clue how to make the city more efficient for multi-modal travel, but their crony's that make plastics and signs are super happy stealing taxes from the working poor.
I own a home in Culver City and wasn't aware of this. I went to the City Council website but don't see a meeting posted. Can you include a link for us to send comments?
Not mentioned yet - an extra lane may INCREASE traffic if it results in people choosing to drive on that road instead of another... In addition to the already mentioned extra cars on the road due to no bus/bike option I don't live in the area, but given the weather and the option for ebikes, I have no idea why more people don't bike in LA.
#1 Don't want to get hit by a car/bus #2 Too many homeless on the sidewalks/streets (danger Will Robinson),too far away from work (have you EVER looked at a map/size of the County of Las Angeles?) #3 Have you seen the people who ride the Metro and or bus? Didn't think so,if the smell doesn't kill you,they might
@@thevillage38 Yes LA is huge, though many people drive for short trips too. The whole county is built for cars and so that is likely why the other issues that you mention exist. It'll be interesting to see if the county can transition... Or if parts of the county can
I passed through here the other day and was surprised how much it has changed. And you're right, there was always traffic here, and the main reason is that intersection as you pointed out. I don't live in Culver City, I just pass through there and I guarantee you that most of the gridlock traffic is due to people trying to get from from one side of Washington blvd from the other. Traffic is forced onto Culver blvd and if this was remedied, nobody would complain about Culver bldv. If there was a way for people on Washington to completely bypass the Culver intersection by tunnel or something they would just pass through, but even that doesn't seem feasible. A lot of the traffic passing through there are people just passing through Washington, they don't live in Culver City and don't give a damn about your walkable downtown.
@@handsfortoothpicks im the traffic that's contributing to culver bldv's misery. i'm telling you what the problem is. it's entirely up to you how you solve it.
as a bicyclist.. bike lanes help me feel more safe riding down streets that have cars on them. when i share the road with cars while riding my bicycle.. it can get really scary when cars want to speed by me at 20 plus mile per hour faster than i am going.. and sometimes like to honk their horn just before the go by me to spook me even further.. this nearly has caused me to have an accident a number of times. I like to be on bike lanes, especially those that are protected by barriars to cars.
I get the feeling that you would love the cycle route from the village where i live to the nearby town (admittedly this is in a different country) For the majority of the route, the cycle path is separated from the road, athough there is one point where you have to cross over the road, and then go along a quiet road (i have walked the length of this route, some sections are split cyclist and pedestrian paths, pedestrians on one side, cyclists on the other, the only barrier being a line painted on the pavement, but from what I’ve seen, NO ONE follows the markings, I’ve seen pedestrians walking on the cyclist side, and cyclists on the pedestrian side, and there aren’t even any unofficial rules regarding the dividing line (its not even a case of keep left or keep right))
As an Uber driver I've hated the changes because the area is now extremely odd and off-putting for car traffic to flow through. It comes across as deliberately and unnecessarily confusing for seemingly little to no benefit when you're in a car. You do get the hang of it after 10-20 passes through, though. However, because when there's even moderate traffic, usually during the day, there's always going to be at least a few cars who are passing through it their 1st, 2nd or 3rd time, and those cars still confused are inevitably going to severely slow down everyone else who is more familiar since there is only one lane for cars in the core areas. This is why the reaction to the changes has been outrage and frustration. All my passengers seem to agree as well, since they are accustomed to using Uber or their own car in the area rather than biking or public transit. It can feel like everyone agrees about how stupid the changes have been when you're only surrounded by people who tend to use similar modes of transit. *HOWEVER* you do present the benefits very well here, and how it ultimately doesn't change much for cars besides some confusion when you're first getting used to it. Traffic flows there at a relatively similar rate as it did before these changes were made. Having also biked and used public transit all over LA, including Culver City, I can appreciate how this does benefit those modes, and also how walkable and enjoyable to walk it is in comparison to before. I think the core problem with the project is they didn't anticipate the backlash, and therefore didn't market it properly. They could have done several videos similar to yours before, during and after the project's completion and marketed them through every viable means to be picked up and shared by citizenry, and other channels and media outlets. This likely would have helped the project's public image and reception tremendously, as opposed to waiting until the negative feelings about it are putting the perception of it into a negativity tailspin where the only solution seems to be damage control and reversion. They also could have made some explainer videos using creative footage from drones about how to access and use the infrastructure based on what mode of transportation you're using. This could give people a crash course on how to navigate the changes before they're exposed to them in person.The project may still benefit from this if it can be saved. Lastly, and this is important, I do think if they're going to retain the project at or near it's current form, it would drastically benefit from 3 or 4 designated Uber/Lyft/taxi pickup and dropoff points, and encourage people to use those spots if they're using a taxi service. They could put up signs pointing people to them in those areas, and also enforceable signs at the actual spots for taxi services stating that they can only wait in the designated spots for 5 minutes and while actively having a ride booked for a customer at those locations. Just because they decided to prioritize bikes and public transit doesn't mean it has to be absolute hell for rideshare drivers and passengers. No, quite the contrary. And as it is now, it is indeed a nightmare. There's extremely core areas with dozens of restaurants around where people want to eat or drink and then taxi home where there's no safe and secluded-from-traffic areas to pull over to pickup or dropoff for many blocks. That part makes no sense whatsoever, and there's no reason at all that it *needs* to be this way to prioritize bikes, buses and pedestrians. They could have that priority while also making it great for ridesharing. Just my 2 cents coming from someone who holds what I'd argue is a very balanced perspective on the situation. I appreciate you making this video. Now I understand the benefits and how it is overall a good project worth keeping around and continuing to improve. Thanks!
I think this is the best response. The beset solution is the one that accommodates the needs of everyone involved. While I love the way this seems to work, I have been in areas like this before and it's a nightmare to navigate. There needs to be a balance.
There are rideshare pickup and dropoff points for both Uber and Lyft on almost every side street in downtown Culver City. They've been in place for 6 months now.
What people don't understand is that when they're sitting in their cars and see a full bus go by, there's more people in that bus than probably several blocks worth of the vehicle gridlock everyone else is stuck in. That's why the bus lane isn't congested and looks empty. If it was congested, that would mean their solution didn't go far enough and they'd need to remove even more space from vehicles to allow more bus service.
The bus lane looks empty because the #1 only runs three to four times an hour at best. Even less most times. Bus lanes are great when there are buses. Here there aren't any.
@@TonyRogers-gp1flSure, but you want to make sure that buses travel on time and as efficiently as possible to get people to use them rather than moving 2tons of steel per person, which is what the car alternative is.
Bus and bike riders need to start a social media campaign. Post pictures of walking, biking, taking the bus and buying stuff downtown. Post a picture of the bill. Let the bean counters fight the politicians.
So IOW exaggerate and fib by engaging in performance that is otherwise absent? and the minute it's over, you all go on to the next social media "challenge".
@@MegaEssin But it's not real when it's organized on Facebook as a concerted effort to give a false impression to officials that this stuff is getting more use than it really is, and it's patronizing (pun) to the local businesses that are only getting that business because of some activist cause, and not because these people actually are that active there. This situation needs real data to formulate a reasonable compromise or at least an adjustment to prevent these back-ups, which is an issue you cant just ignore because they are cars, and "cars are bad". The people in those cars could be local voters, and tick them off enough, and you will definitely get all of that torn out after the next election.
Wow... The people arguing for removing the bike and bus lanes should really learn basic city planning and infrastructure. If they did, they would not hold these opinions.
Please teach us. Us locals see a bike lane that is never used and a bus lane that has no buses in it. We also see businesses downtown being destroyed by this (no parking, no way to get deliveries, no passenger drop-offs, no way for delivery drivers to access business, and locals avoiding the area like the plague). All of this created by a planning department that got no public input and completely lied about the scope of the project. Help us, we want to learn more.
@@TonyRogers-gp1fl People have to understand that Urban Planners are now Indoctrinated by World Economic Forum and have a political agenda. They are smug, arrogant Millennials mostly, that want to make their mark and radically change things and they don't care if they destroy businesses or damage quality of life, they want radical "walkable city" projects to put in their portfolio for their own self-serving career.
@@rajdye4259 The petulance on behalf of planners is funny too. Whenever these projects turn into clusters and the public calls them out on it they act like five-year-olds. When LADOT was called out about their "facts" on the Mar Vista project you saw the planners get defensive, huff and puff, make faces, and just act like the peasants don't know what they're talking about. Someone asked how two lanes of traffic can move more cars than three lanes of traffic (one of their claims) and I thought the planning woman was going to cry because we just didn't get "it."
@@TonyRogers-gp1fl They are indoctrinated into this. I had a girlfriend that was getting her masters degree in Urban Planning. They are indoctrinated into actually finding ways to slow motorized traffic. They roll out the plans that serve some WEF or United Nations agenda in communities that they do not even live in or work in. Then they treat the actual residents and property owners like we are peasants. They have no stake in or ties to the community and just want this project for their portfolio and then they move on to the next city and the next UN/WEF backed project.
It's just straight-up dumb to remove the bike and bus lanes, as it will probably only make traffic worse again. How? Downs-Thomson Paradox. The paradox states that doing things like removing car lanes and adding bus lanes can actually *improve* traffic flow, because the level of traffic will be determined mostly by the time for the average end-to-end trip on public transit. If the bus or bike ride is way faster than driving a car, lot of people in the area will simply switch to taking the bus or riding a bike. And data shows that both these modes of transit are vastly more efficient than cars, which are by far the least space-efficient way to move people within a city.
Please get out there to that council meeting and get your voices heard! Fight to keep those bus lanes and bike lanes open. You can make a difference! Good luck, Peace, Sal 💪🏻
3:03 these idiots would only like it if there was a bus waiting in traffic too. They almost need to have a fake cardboard cut out of a bus full of people there so people think they’re not the only ones waiting 😂 TAKE THE BUS and you can use the fast lane
I'm absolutely sick of drivers thinking they're entitled to something just because they own a larger vehicle than everyone else. Something that only exists in the fantasy land they somehow sem to live in despite always being stuck in traffic.
absolutely, here the same [Australia], because they paid road tax they claim they have the rights of the road. They are just sad lazy overweight, overtitles people.
Hey Lej!!! I'm trying to sign up to speak at the council meeting and I am going to flyer the crap out of the area and try to mobilize all my coworkers since I work there. But - I want to prep the best speech possible and I'm also having trouble finding the meeting to even sign up to talk in the first place. Do you have an email I can contact and we can talk more? Please put it in the about page on your channel and respond here. Thanks!!!
I had to share with my local (San Diego) NextDoor.. we spend endless hours griping and moaning pro-and-anti bike lanes..Its been a very divisive issue since it’s been removing thousands of parking spaces and been inconvenient for drivers.
