People Streets

photos by Patrick Miller

Spring Street Pilot Parklets / Metro Call for Projects / People St Kit of Parts

Lyric joined the Complete Streets Working Group to collaboratively design, plan and build support for Los Angeles' pilot parklets -- the urban friendly curbside interventions born in San Francisco. Parklets were initial tests that would re-purpose metered parking spaces to create mini-parks with seating, planting, and communal spaces open to the public. They functionally extended the sidewalk to enrich the vibrant street life already present. The intention was to foster future investment in pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure in the neighborhood. Lyric interviewed San Francisco city officials and toured the many successful parklets that had been implemented in the bay area in order to understand how the model might fit in with Los Angeles streetscapes.

Since the first pilot parklets were installed on Spring Street, LADOT rolled out an official People St program that reflected LA’s groundswell of support for developing “livable streets”, i.e. streets created for people that enhance physical and mental health by creating safer, more active options outside of the automobile. Lyric helped secure $500,000 through a grant application to roll out Parklets and Plazas throughout Los Angeles. The strategy to implement at least one project in each of the 15 Council Districts based on a ranking methodology that considered social equity measures like population density and park acreage per capita, Metro ridership, collision data, and supporting adjacent uses.

The pilot parklets proved that DTLA was ready to embrace more infrastructurally intensive People St designs such as parking-protected bicycle lanes which create a safer buffer between slow moving sidewalk pedestrians, faster moving cyclists, stationary parked cars/buffer zones, and vehicular traffic. At the 2018 NACTO conference in Los Angeles, Siobhán co-led a walkabout through the open space arcades, air-rights gardens, plazas and streets with the newly implemented protected cycletracks. Lyric looks forward to seeing more grassroots efforts citywide that will lead to a thoughtful expansion of this program, building more mobility choices for everyone.