LOS ANGELES — Growing up in the tight-knit community of Eagle Rock, Nadine Levyfield is used to walking everywhere.
“I walk to go eat or get take out. My yoga studio is right over here,” she said while pointing to Colorado Boulevard, a main thoroughfare in the community.
Levyfield recently marched to the Eagle Rock City Hall with purpose — to protest a road diet tied to a project the Los Angeles Metro is working on to make room for a new Bus Rapid Transit line connecting North Hollywood to Pasadena. Part of the line passes through Eagle Rock and officials are considering two options on a one-mile stretch of Colorado Boulevard.
Metro spokesperson Brian Haas says one option would convert a lane of traffic into one for rapid buses only and all other cars and vehicles would use the other existing lane. Levyfield worries this will cause congestion on the boulevard and cause traffic to spill into surrounding residential streets.
“My greatest fear is that someone who is walking their dog or kids who are playing on Hills Drive, that there is going to be fatalities because people are really angry, they are stuck in traffic and they just race on through to a parallel side street,” she said.
Another option creates a new lane for rapid buses, which may reduce street parking and take out some existing medians. Longtime business owner Bob De Velasco is worried this will impact customers getting to his commercial printing store, which is still recovering from the pandemic.
“I think it’s a little premature for them to just go ahead and do without conducting a 'cone study,' a cone study to show everyone how this is going to work,” he said. “If it works, then hey, we will welcome it. If it doesn’t work, then let’s try and figure out something else.”
De Velasco added that this type of study proposes setting up cones along Colorado Boulevard to mimic the proposed lane changes and look at the impact on traffic.
Haas says the transit agency is looking for ways to study that using real-world examples and will hold more public hearings in the community before making a final decision on the lane configuration. He says the overall goal of this project is to tackle congestion in Los Angeles by getting more people out of their cars and into public transportation.
“The roads are built out. We have a lot of cars and so one of our jobs is to find other ways to reduce traffic and make it easier for people to get around, get access to opportunity, jobs, medical appointments during a pandemic, vaccinations,” Haas said. “One of the ways for us to do that is improving mass transit.”
Haas noted that Metro plans to finish an environmental impact report over the next six months, start road work next year and have it done by 2024.
Eagle Rock resident and chair of the California Transportation Commission Hilary Norton believes it will improve road safety in the area and encourage people to walk and use the bus.
“I live right on the boulevard, as close as you can get, there is a bus stop right there,” she said, pointing to her residence off Colorado Boulevard. “I support this because I really think that the more that we’re moving, the better,” she said. “The more we limit the left turns so we don’t have abrupt ways in which people are stopping, which has caused accidents. The more that people have very clear pedestrian crosswalks and slow down, the safer this corridor will be as well.”
In the meantime, Levyfield says she’ll continue to voice her concerns to Metro and local elected leaders.
"We want what is safe. We want what is inclusive and accessible for transit riders but we also just want a due process to understand."