Arroyo Seco Bike Path Moving Forward Slowly

The edge of this L.A. City Sanitation Yard will become a bike path and walk trail along the Arroyo Seco. (Photo: Bing Maps)

As announced here, last Thursday, the county of Los Angeles Public Works Department held a public meeting on its plans for adding more bike path along the Arroyo Seco. Creek Freek covered the plans for this bike path earlier and that background information is still applicable. It’s going to take a while, but the project is moving forward. Additional details after the jump.

At Thursday’s meeting, there was quite a bit of good news. This oft-stalled bikeway project is moving forward with a slightly better scope. As of February 2010, the bikeway (with walkway) was slated for the east bank of the Arroyo from San Fernando Road to Avenue 26. The county had proposed ending the path at a single access point on the downstream (more-or-less south) side of Avenue 26. At the request of community advocates, they are now planning to extend the project under the bridge and also include an access point on the upstream side of the bridge. This is a relatively inexpensive addition to the project as there’s already room for bicycles to pass beneath the bridge, with no expensive grade-separation work. It’s also important because Avenue 26 sees quite a bit of car traffic, much of it getting on and off the ramps to 5 and 110 Freeways. Bike path entrances on both sides of the street will be much safer for cyclists; it allows them to connect with the path without crossing the street or riding on the sidewalk.

The county investigated extending the path to the Cypress Avenue pedestrian bridge (commonly called “the guantlet”) but decided that it would be too expensive under the current project budget.

Additional good news is that, under the leadership of Councilmember Ed Reyes (kudos to his deputy Jill Sourial for doing the legwork on this), the county and the city are working together to allow the path project to take a 30-foot wide strip of land away from the existing L.A. City Bureau of Sanitation yard at San Fernando Road. There are still a few details to work out regarding adjusting the yard’s driveway, but it appears that the city is willing to allow a 30-foot swath of existing concrete transfer center (currently not in use) to become trails and creek greenway.

The county also announced that they had secured a maintenance committment from the Los Angeles Conservation Corps.

The bad news is that the estimated date for construction to begin will be 2013. If all the work goes smoothly, perhaps we can get this date moved up a bit.