Join Us at Living Streets L.A.’s Pilot Project Meeting

Courtesy of the Urban Design Studio, Los Angeles Planning Department

Courtesy of the Urban Design Studio, Los Angeles Planning Department

From Living Streets L. A.:

Join L.A. City Planning Commission President Bill Roschen, Living Streets LA, Pacoima Beautiful, Niall Huffman, and ACCION Westlake, the new WestlakeCommunity Design Center to find out about creative pilot projects in the works to transform L.A.’s streets into people friendly places. Come share your ideas and get involved!

Bring Life to LA Streets!

Objective: To assist communities in transforming their vision of their streets – to temporarily reclaim zones of wasted, unused, and under-utilized street space. As pilots, temporary closures and greening initiatives and its success can be evaluated to assess short-term adjustments and determine if pilot closures can become long-term community investments. The time is ripe to create Living Streets in L.A….let’s work together to identify a few good streets whose current gray can be painted and peopled for healthier pedestrian, bicycling, recreational and commercial activity!

Mayoral Bike Summit

Metro Bike Valet via Mayor Villaraigosa's Flickr

Lauren and Max attended the Mayor’s Bike Summit yesterday, and got featured in the Daily News, along with Joe Linton of LACBC and Jessica Meaney of Safe Routes To Schools!  The story (by Troy Anderson) is here, and excerpted below.

After hearing from more than 100 cyclists on the future of biking in Los Angeles, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa pledged Monday to speed plans to boost bikeway miles in the city fourfold over the next five years.

Speaking at a bike summit, held a month after the mayor broke his elbow in a cycling accident in Venice, Villaraigosa said the number of bikeway miles in the city would grow by 200 a year until reaching 1,600 miles in 2015.

“It’s a little hairy – drivers don’t expect you – but it’s actually really good for your health … and really cheap,” said Joe Linton, co-founder of the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition.

Jessica Meaney, the California policy manager for the Safe Routes to School National Partnership, said the city’s roads are for everyone, including children, and “not just the incredibly brave.”

“There are schools in Los Angeles that have over 85 percent of children walking and bicycling to school,” Meaney said. “In fact, 12 percent of all trips here in Southern California are already being done with walking and bicycling, but we are investing less than one-half of a percent of our regional funds. We really need to change that.”

Pacoima resident Lauren Ahkiam, 28, said many city residents are concerned about their safety while riding bicycles because so many residential neighborhoods and schools are so close to industrial areas.

“For Pacoima, not only do we need (the city Department of Transportation’s) help, but also the Planning Department’s help to update the zoning in that area to make it a safer place,” Ahkiam said.

In addition to asking the MTA for additional funding, Villaraigosa said the city plans to use $19 million in Measure R funds to pay for the additional bikeway miles.

“I can guarantee you there will be resistance from business groups and homeowners along these streets,” the mayor said. “But what we need to build is a constituency that says, ‘Look, in a city as congested as this one … we want to move people away from passenger automobiles and one way to do that is to increase the use of bikes.”

It was good to see the Mayor, head of DOT Rita Robinson, and newly appointed Planning Director Michael LoGrande were all in the room to hear the comments and questions from over 100 attendees.  It was also great to see fellow allies like Jean Armbruster of LA County Department of Public Health’s PLACE initiative, Alexis Lantz of the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, Carlos Morales of LADOT Bicycles Services Division, and Nate Baird of Metro’s Bike Program.

We hope the momentum continues building, leading to improvements for the city’s cyclists and for the residents of Pacoima!   There’s more coverage at Metro’s blog “The Source“, BikingInLa (who also has coverage of a Latino cyclist killed by a driver in neighboring Canoga Park), LAWeekly’s blog, Streetsblog, and LAist.

Edward James Olmos Speaks Out for Clean Air

Olmos on AQMD

A Navigable LA River!

We here at PB have long been working on revitalizing the Pacoima Wash (a tributary of the LA River), making it into an open space resource for our community and environment.  As such, we were delighted to see this great article in the LA Times, following river advocates on a kayak ride of the LA River!  There’s some wonderful pictures; here’s two of our favorites:

Joe Linton kayaks the river

A fern grows on the banks

Environmental Justice Awards a Success!

The Gas Company and Marlene Grossman

Honorees and Lead Sponsors from the Southern California Gas Company (including PB Board member Joe Mosca, R) and PB Founder Marlene Grossman

We had a wonderful awards ceremony last night!  Thank you to everyone who joined us and helped celebrate to our honorees: our founder Marlene Grossman, State Senator Alex Padilla, and the Southern California Gas Company.  The incredible generosity of our supporters meant we actually went beyond our fundraising goal!

Enviornmental Justice Awards Honorees

State Senator Alex Padilla, our ED Nury Martinez, PB Board Chair Raul Bocanegra, Marlene Grossman, PB Board VP Wendy Mitchell, State Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes

Heartfelt thanks to our sponsors: the Southern California Gas Company, Wells Fargo, the Salisbury Construction Corporation, Hewlett Packard, and so many others.  As always, we couldn’t have done it without the dedication of our Board Members, particularly Raul Bocanegra and Wendy Mitchell.  Thank you additionally the beautiful Bokado for their hospitality and delicious tapas.  Visit our Events page to see a full list of sponsors, and our Flickr page for more pictures (including some beautiful ones by Cooper Bates).

Enviornmental Justice Awards

Some of our amazing community and staff members with Marlene and Nury (center)!

PB Youth, Tree People and Assemblymember Fuentes’s Office Partner for a Greener Community

Planting a Tree

Cleaning Up

Saturday, dozens of youth joined staff from Tree People and Assemblymember Felipe Fuentes’ office to green and clean-up Glenoaks Boulevard.  YUTEP hosted the community event, with San Fernando High School, Vaughn HS, Arleta HS, Sylmar HS, Polly HS and Maclay Middle School in attendance. This clean-up helped create a better looking environment for Pacoima and while we were at it, making it part of our end-of-the-school-year celebration.

The older youth did more of the heavy work; they gave the trees along Glenoaks Blvd. maintenance which consisted of pulling out the weeds, removing trash, adding mulch and watering the trees. The younger kids on the other hand, took charge and headed for the hill in Glenoaks near Osborne Street. They took large plastic bags and picked up trash for 2-3 hours, which gives us an idea of how bad the hill was. May we mention that even though the students played a big role in doing this we also had parents, teachers, community members, and other volunteers lending us a helping hand?  Tree People collaborated with the Hollywood Beautification Team and the LADWP’s Trees for a Green LA Program (more info here) to donate free shade trees to participants and community residents.

To reward the youth for their hard work throughout the entire school year along with their cooperation in the community event and in their environmental school clubs, we celebrated with food provided by Lenchitas Restaurant while listening to a local band named the Rocken-Rollers, led by Andres Rodriguez.  Thankfully, it was a total success because the faces of our participants reflected accomplishment and pride.

We thank every single person that attended; students, teachers, parents, community members, organizations, establishments and so on. And a special thanks to Tree People, Graffiti Busters, Felipe Fuentes, Starbucks, Lenchitas and Vallarta for their contribution in making this event possible.  And check out our Flickr page for more pictures!

- Post by Daniela Esparza, PB Youth

Participants at Saturday's Event

  

Team Fuentes and Tree People staff

Happy Anniversary!

Lauren and Marlene

Two of our staff, Lauren Ahkiam and Marlene Ramos, have now been here for one year!

Lauren has been doing research and policy analysis for PB, and is now transitioning to be the initiative coordinator for the RENEW Complete Streets Vision Project.

Marlene is the lead organizer for PB and has been refining the strategic next steps and structure for PB.

Happy Anniversary, Lauren and Marlene!

Fox Park and PLACE Bridge Improvements Charrettes

Imelda and Youth at Charrette

We had two very successful charrettes yesterday at San Fernando High School! Dozens of students attended, as well as many adult residents, to give their input on a new pocket park and improvements to a local overpass.

Fox Park is a planned pocket park project led by the LA Neighborhood Land Trust for a piece of vacant land near San Fernando High School.  The idea for this land to be converted to a pocket park originated out of a PB Summer Youth Institute, so it’s been thrilling and rewarding to see it move forward!  Students and community residents gave great ideas of what they’d like to see, including recreational space for young children.  Thanks so much to Alina Bokde (left) from the LANLT for spearheading this effort!

The second half of the night was spent discussing possible improvements to two pathways often used by San Fernando HS students: a pedestrian bridge connecting San Fernando HS with Ritchie Valens Park, and the pedestrian tunnel running under the 118 freeway at Haddon Street.  Jan Dryer, a landscape architect at Mia Lehrer and Associates, and led the session and got great responses from the youth about how they’d like to see these pathways improved.

Check out our Flickr page for a lot more pictures of the event, or this LA Creek Freak post for more background!

Diesel Truck Drivers’ Forum

Truck Drivers' Forum

This winter,we hosted a forum for over 30 local diesel truck drivers to let them know about new and existing California Air Resources Board regulations and available SoCal Air Quality Management District funds to retrofit or purchase new vehicles.  Connecting drivers to this information is key in the fight to reduce diesel pollution in our communities.  If you are a truck driver seeking more information about regulations and funds, visit ARB’s Truck Stop website (in Spanish here).

Pacoima and Sun Valley residents face higher-than-average levels of pollutants related to diesel exhaust, leading to high levels of respiratory disease.  Diesel pollutants also lead to cancer and heart disease.  For more information on the negative health effects of diesel pollution, start here.

Welcome!

We have been working in our community since 1996, but this is our first blog post!  Stay tuned to find out more about what we’re doing, reading, or discussing…