Walkers, Bikes & Trolleys Take Center Stage

by Gary Toebben

Since its release in 1982, the Missing Person’s song "Walking in L.A.,” with its refrain "Nobody walks in L.A.," perfectly captured the City of Los Angeles’ affection for the automobile. Today, the song has become an anachronism rather than an anthem as L.A. moves towards a multimodal future. That future was on full display this past week with another successful CicLAvia event and plans to connect the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and The Grove with a street trolley.

On Sunday, more than 100,000 Angelenos turned out for CicLAvia 2013. The streets were cleared of cars so that residents from all over the Southland could bike, walk, run or even roller skate through downtown Los Angeles. The event was about more than just healthier modes of transportation. CicLAvia celebrates that intrinsic desire for people to connect with one another in our great city. It’s amazing what you can discover about a neighborhood and our fellow residents when you’re not speeding by at 40 miles per hour inside your vehicle.

Across town near the Miracle Mile, developer and civic leader Rick Caruso has partnered with the LACMA to study the feasibility of extending The Grove’s trolley line south to Wilshire and Fairfax. Beyond a tourist experience, such a connection could also provide an important north-south transit option once the Metro Purple Line subway stop opens in a few years. That study should be completed by Thanksgiving.

CicLAvia and Caruso’s trolley proposal both exemplify a bold, but logical vision for the future of Los Angeles. Congestion continues to be one of the greatest challenges impacting our quality of life with no single solution. That’s why it’s so important to actively promote alternatives, like bikes and neighborhood trolleys, together with mass transit and street repair.

There will always be naysayers who view CicLAvia or a neighborhood street trolley as incompatible with a 21st century Los Angeles. To the contrary, these are the exactly the kind of locally sourced solutions that can improve our mobility, health and sense of community. We should celebrate and encourage this type of bold thinking, and test it all out to see what fits best for each neighborhood.

The next time you hear “Walking in L.A.,” take a moment to reflect on how far Los Angeles has evolved since the smog filled days of 1982. The trend towards bikes and street trolleys reminds me of another 1980s classic, ”Back to the Future,” which just may be one approach to the traffic solution and community building we’ve been looking for all this time.

And that's The Business Perspective.