Eyes On the Street: Safer Striping At Silver Lake Blvd And Temple St

By Joe Linton
Dec 7, 2015

New striping and bollards makes the Silver Lake Boulevard at Temple Street a bit more livable. All photos: Joe Linton — New striping and bollards make the Silver Lake Boulevard at Temple Street a bit more livable. All photos: Joe Linton

Kudos to L.A. City Transportation Department’s (LADOT) for implementing another small livability and safety improvement. Last weekend, I came across a new striping configuration located at the intersection of Silver Lake Boulevard and Temple Street. These streets cross but do not quite intersect as Temple Street goes above on a 1934 grade-separation bridge, originally intended to reduce congestion on Silver Lake Blvd.

The area is immediately south of the 101 Freeway, so it suffers from the blight that tends to surround L.A. freeways: pollution, noise, speeding, homelessness. Drivers speed on their way on and off the freeway. Homeless people often occupy the neglected spaces.

It is not a heavy pedestrian usage area, but people do walk there, especially with an adjacent charter school, Camino Nuevo High School, recently opened. The Rampart Village Neighborhood Council worked with City Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell to spruce up the space, adding the modest Historic Filipinotown Western Gateway project last year.

Drivers going east on Silver Lake tend to accelerate up the on-ramp type connector road, then whip around the corner onto eastbound Temple. This makes me look out when I frequently bicycle east staying on Silver Lake, watching out for cars merging onto Temple across my path. With the recent improvements, drivers must slow down a bit, and make nearly a full-on right turn to get on to Temple. The pedestrian crossing distance is reduced.

LADOT’s bollards there are already bruised, apparently inattentive drivers are still speeding dangerously.

xxx — The view eastbound on Silver Lake Boulevard post-improvements. Drivers slow down to make the right turn onto the ramp street up to Temple Street.

xxx — Google street view showing the configuration before improvements.

xxxx — View of Silver Lake improvements west toward Virgil Avenue.

xxx — View east today on Temple Street at the “on-ramp” from Silver Lake Boulevard. Drivers still whip around this no-stop turn, though the pedestrian crossing distance has been shortened.

xxx — View east from Temple Street down to Silver Lake Boulevard

The welcome new configuration is somewhat reminiscent of other recent improvements in Silver Lake and Echo Park. Are readers seeing other similar modest improvements in other L.A. neighborhoods? I suspect that they may be more common in older, less fully-gridded areas of the city. Are there intersections that would benefit from these types of treatments? Use the comments to let us know where – and we will share the list with LADOT.