After hearing some great news of bike lanes coming to South LA, Mission Hills will soon be receiving three miles worth as Sepulveda Blvd. will be adding on.

This stretch goes from Nordoff to Rinaldi and will reduce traffic lanes from three to two.

My quick thoughts:

• With north / south connections lacking in the valley, this gives much needed access to Rinaldi which has bike lanes in its entirety framing the northern edge of suburbia.
• This helps ease the access problem to CSUN as more people can get to the lanes on Devonshire.
• I’m pretty happy that Brand Blvd. is part of this connection too, as getting to the NE Valley and the City of San Fernando has been one of the biggest issues in the 818 I raise.

Sepulveda & Brand

• Sepulveda is part on the Vision Zero High Injury Network all the way from Burbank to Brand. That’s eight miles. Yikes!
• The complaints you’re going to hear most are probably from those making the evening commute to Santa Clarita Valley. With the 210, 5, 170 & 118 funneling near this region, there’s a lot of traffic trying to filter through the northern tip of Sylmar. Is it really our problem to sacrifice lives to subsidize the commutes of others?
• This is another project that is moving forward from the temporarily vacated Council District 7. Monica Rodriguez starts her term on July 1st.
• A history note: Sepulveda is already a wide street, but it’s even wider for the majority of these improvements. The Pacific Red Car used to roll on this street as it turned off of Parthenia before it veered northeast up Brand Blvd. Those were the days.

Pacific Red Car on Sepulveda & Devonshire back in the day.

 

It’s about time the valley got some bike lanes.

With six Council Districts represented here, it’s about time we see some progress in 2017.