Where All of L.A.’s Protected Bike Lanes Are L.A. currently has 11 protected bike facilities, totaling 19.4 lane miles

Los Angeles has protected bike lanes. Few and far between. But they are here. (Updated 12/20 – added Anaheim Street in Harbor City – updated totals)

For the uninitiated, protected bike lanes (sometimes called cycletracks) are European-style on-street bikeways that include some separation between bicycles and cars. Protected bikeways are safer than conventional bike lanes that put cyclists next to fast-moving cars. Conventional bike lanes tend to favor more confident, intrepid cyclists, while protected lanes are considered appropriate for everyone from “8 to 80” – essentially all ages.

L.A. opened its first parking-protected bike lanes in Northridge in 2015. Prior to then, city transportation engineers stuck to state and federal design standards that in effect prohibited these facilities, which are common in Europe and were beginning to take hold in several large North American cities.

The city’s first two-way protected facility opened this year.

The city of L.A. currently has just eleven protected bike facilities, totaling 10.4 center-line miles (or 19.4 lane miles – view spreadsheet.) These facilities are worthwhile, but they represent a drop in the bucket for a city the size of Los Angeles – and nowhere near approaching a protected network.

For comparison, New York City has about 126 lane-miles of protected bike lanes, and is currently installing about twenty new miles each year. San Francisco (about a tenth of the area of L.A.) has nineteen lane-miles and is expecting to install about twenty new miles over the next two years. San Jose built ten new lane-miles of protected bikeways last year. Chicago has roughly 25 center-line miles of protected bike lane. (Some additional city data at this SBSF post.)

Below is a list of all eleven L.A. City protected bikeways as of December 2019. Facilities are listed in alphabetical order.

2nd Street (tunnel)

0.4 miles: Hill Street to Figueroa Street in downtown Los Angeles (map, street view)

features: essentially one long block of two one-way protected bike lanes, protected by plastic bollards

implemented December 2013

notes: The Second Street tunnel protected bike lanes were L.A. City’s first protected bike lanes, though implemented without much city fanfare at the time. The lanes connect westward with a half mile of conventional bike lanes on Glendale Boulevard from Figueroa to Toluca Street. Circa late 2016 (apparently as part of U.S. Courthouse construction), the facility was partially extended eastward, with one block of westbound protected lane added on 2nd Street between Broadway and Hill Street.

coverage: SBLA December 2013

Anaheim Street (added 12/20)

Balboa Boulevard

1.1 miles: Woodley Avenue/Lisette Street to Balboa Road (connector to San Fernando Road) in Granada Hills (map, street view)

features: protected by plastic bollards

implemented circa June 2019

notes: The Balboa Boulevard bollard-protected bike lanes appear to serve mostly to narrow the street to transition between a seven-lane-wide segment that narrows to three lanes on the bridge over the 5 Freeway. The area is suburban, hilly, and not especially conducive to everyday bicycling.

coverage: mentioned SBLA July 2019

Figueroa Street (MyFigueroa)

2.6 miles: Exposition Boulevard to Wilshire Boulevard in downtown Los Angeles (map, street view)

features: MyFigueroa varies quite a bit. It is mostly parking-protected, with stretches of plastic-bollard-protected and unprotected buffered bike lanes. The facility has bike signals, green pavement, bus islands, and a northbound bus-only lane (from 22nd Street to 5th Street.) There are protected bike lanes on both sides of the street from Exposition to 11th Street (2.0 miles) and 0.6 miles of one-way northbound protected bike lane lane from 11th Street to Wilshire. MyFigueroa also features an additional half-mile of unprotected bike lanes extending from Exposition to Martin Luther King Boulevard

implemented August 2018

notes: The 5.5-mile “MyFigueroa” project was anticipated to be a shining example of a walkable downtown. The project faced legal challenges. After nearly a decade of legal and construction delays, a watered-down facility barely limped across the finish line, only to be hampered by design flaws and scofflaw drivers.

coverage: SBLA August 2018

Los Angeles Street

Main Street (couplet with Spring Street)

Monterey Road

0.3 miles: Pullman Street to near Debs Park Road in Monterey Hills (map, street view)

features: plastic-bollard-protected pass road – part of a 1.8-mile mostly just buffered bike lane

implemented circa April 2017

notes: Protection is located in the hilly Monterey Road Pass, sometimes called the “upside down bridge.”

coverage: SBLA May 2017

Reseda Boulevard

Spring Street (couplet with Main Street)

Van Nuys Boulevard

0.8 miles: from Laurel Canyon Boulevard to San Fernando Road in Pacoima (map, street view)

features: parking-protected southbound lane only, with buffered bike lane northbound

implemented December 2016

notes: Implemented as part of the mayoral Great Streets Initiative under City Councilmember Felipe Fuentes

coverage: SBLA December 2016

Venice Boulevard

0.8 miles: Inglewood Boulevard to Beethoven Street in Mar Vista (map, street view)

features: parking-protected bike lanes, part of project that included new mid-block crossings, leading pedestrian intervals, and upgraded crosswalks

implemented May 2017

notes: Implemented as part of the mayoral Great Streets Initiative under City Councilmember Mike Bonin, Mar Vista’s protected lanes have been criticized by some. LADOT data confirmed that they have made the street significantly safer.

coverage: SBLA May 2017

That is all eleven.

(A handful of very short stretches have been omitted from the list. Those omissions include two one-block facilities [westbound 7th Street from Hope Street to Flower Street, and eastbound 3rd Street between Main Street and Spring Street] and bike lanes that have only a few bollards here and there – for example Venice Boulevard near Redondo Blvd. Together, all these omissions constitute less than half a lane-mile. There are more short unprotected stretches counted as protected in the facilities listed than the total of these omissions.)

In addition to these facilities in the city of L.A., there are another eight or nine additional protected bikeways in other L.A. County cities, including several in Long Beach, several in Santa Monica, one in Temple City, and one nearly completed in Claremont.