Carfree Boulevards. Could It Work Here?

From the Carfree USA blog we found an idea in a L.A. Times article for a carfree Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles (Carfree Wilshire Boulevard through Los Angeles?, July 23, 2007). They'd ban all the autos, create bus lanes along the length for frequent stops (the rail is underground for longer haul trips), and install bike lanes. Voila! It's just an idea, but interesting. The picture here of Los Angeles certainly looks a bit like the R-B Corridor in Arlington. Don't we have some similar rail corridors in this region where we could try it out? It's fun to imagine...

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Chris Hamilton is the Commuter Services Chief for Arlington County, manager of CommuterPageBlog and a biking/Metro commuter from Rosemont in Alexandria

Comments

[Commuter182]

Many of the advocates for "choices" and different modes in transportation just seem to want to restrict or eliminate choice when that choice happens to be private automobiles. Do they even see their own hypocrisy?

Making Wilshire Blvd or other wide streets like it car free makes no sense from a transportation standpoint. There's plenty of room for all means of ground transportation there and banning cars just wastes usable road space and capacity.
Bike lanes are only about 1/4 the width of a typical car lane, or they can mark off portions of wide sidewalks to be bike lanes. Not much extra space needed there. During rush-hour, they can designate the 2 right most lanes to be HOV,bus, motorcycle,moped, etc. lanes to help counter congestion.
Express buses can be run at those times for faster trips with few stops.
If rail comes, it should be underground or on elevated tracks, and not affect the aforementioned lanes.
If the budget doesn't permit that, they can still settle for light rail/streetcars that share the HOV lanes with cars.
Simply put, there aren't, and there won't be, THAT MANY buses or bikes out there that we would need to dedicate the entire boulevard to them, to the exclusion of private cars. And since when have the presence of cars along a busy avenue prevented people from walking on the sidewalk, cycling in the bike lane, or riding the bus, if they happen to choose the latter options?