City Council Green-Lights Wilshire Bus Lanes

The Los Angeles City Council voted Tuesday to add bus-only rush-hour lanes along a  portion of Wilshire Boulevard from MacArthur Park, near downtown Los Angeles, to Centinela Avenue, on the eastern end of Santa Monica. 

A segment of the boulevard that runs through Westwood between Comstock and Selby avenues will not get the lanes, and neither will the part of Wilshire that runs through Beverly Hills.

The plan, which has been well received by public transit advocacy groups and environmentalists, will widen the street by narrowing the sidewalk. However, some West L.A. area residents are against the plan, claiming that the lanes will cause gridlock if segmented.

This bus lane impacts us directly," said Marilyn Krell, president of the Brentwood Residents Association, citing her concerns that the segmented lanes would create more traffic problems as buses would be forced to move back and forth from reserved lanes into ones for regular traffic . "We are against gridlock."

Santa Monica and Beverly Hills will not get the reserved lanes because those cities have not agreed to put them in. The original proposal also included the approximately 1-mile Westwood stretch and was described as option A or 8.8 miles, reflecting the length of the route. A third proposal, known as A-2, ended the lanes at the eastern edge of Beverly Hills, creating a 5.4 mile segment.

Residents from Westwood and Brentwood as well as members of numerous bicycling and transit advocacy groups came to the meeting Tuesday to recommend their preferred proposal, with Westwood residents preferring the 7.7 mile or A-1 proposal that ultimately passed. Brentwood residents favored the 5.4 mile option, while transit advocates wanted the full 8.8 mile plan.

Councilman Bill Rosendahl, who represents Pacific Palisades and Brentwood, spoke earnestly against the 7.7 plan, insisting that Beverly Hills and Santa Monica needed to participate in the plan for it to work.

"That is really bad politics if they can't get ... Beverly Hills to play ball with us," he said, laying the blame for most of the traffic problems in his district on the residents of Santa Monica.

Rosendahl was the lone no vote against the 7.7 mile plan. He urged the MTA board to consider the full 8.8 mile plan. Following the meeting, Rosendahl called for West L.A. residents to join forces in support of a streamlined bus-only lane system for the region.

"I happen to believe that bus only lanes are a solution to the gridlock in my district," he said. "I also believe this bus only lane, broken into segments, will do more harm than good.