New Vermont Ave Bike Lanes in L.A. Harbor Gateway

Cyclist headed north on Vermont Avenue at Knox Street, utilizing the new Vermont Avenue bike lanes

The city of Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT) recently striped new bike lanes on Vermont Avenue. The new bike lanes extend 0.6 mile from Del Amo Boulevard to Knox Street in the L.A. City neighborhood of Harbor Gateway. 

According to a December 14th 2011  L.A. City Planning Department (DCP) and LADOT report on bike plan implementation (see the first page of attachment 2) (thanks Dennis Hindman for alerting me to the report in this comment) these Vermont Avenue lanes were installed on November 13th 2011. I wasn’t aware of this project when I did the overall list of lanes installed this year – at the bottom of this earlier post.

Vermont Avenue bike lanes - near Francisco Street

The lanes are on a stretch of Vermont Avenue that’s surrounded by the cities of Gardena, Torrance, Carson and some unincorporated L.A. County. The lanes are about a mile west of the soccer stadium at Cal State Dominguez Hills. Immediately south of Del Amo Blvd both sides of the street are unincorporated county. North of Knox the east side of the street is unincorporated county.

This part of the city of Los Angeles has been known as the “shoestring.” It’s a thin north-south strip (about a quarter mile wide and 5+ miles long) that connects the central city to the harbor,  The city annexed this strip about a hundred years ago, so L.A. can stake its claim to the commercial hub at the harbor (read that history here.)

The half-mile stretch is almost all industrial. It’s mostly tilt-up buildings, surrounded by plenty of car parking. The street is relatively wide. As far as I can tell, the bike lanes were added without altering any of the existing striping. It’s a good example of the sort of “low-hanging fruit” facilities that cost very little and can be implemented very quickly.

On a friday afternoon, the few cyclists I spotted there appeared to be working class Latinos, presumably commuting home from work. This one preferred the sidewalk:

Sidewalk cyclist next to the new Vermont Avenue bike lanes

These lanes are not in the city’s 5-Year Implementation plan, but they are in the 2010 Bicycle Plan.