It’s time to vote for your choice for the 2015 Streetsie award: Business of the Year.

Voting starts today and will close on Thursday, January 5, 2017 at noon. Reader voting accounts for one half of the scoring this year, with one quarter going to SBLA staff voting, and another quarter going to the SBLA steering committee vote. Last year we had a lot of apparent robo-votes coming in in large quantities from a few IP addresses, so we now have some back-end safeguards to try to separate human votes from suspicious repetitive votes.

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Be sure to vote in all six streetsie categories.

Sarah Auerswald – Mar Vista Chamber of Commerce president and founder Sarah Auerswald has been pushing Great Streets from a business-friendly angle. She has used her position with the chamber to actively campaign for the Venice Great Street program in Mike Bonin’s Westside City Council District, expected to include the Westside’s first protected bikeway in early 2017. The chamber’s annual “Make It Mar Vista” small business Saturday has featured walking tours and pop-up protected bike lanes.

Bicycle Transit Systems – The company contracted to implement, operate and expand Metro Bike Share is Bicycle Transit Systems. BTS runs bike-share systems in Philadelphia, Las Vegas, Oklahoma City, and, since July 2016, in downtown Los Angeles. BTS successfully operates L.A. County’s largest bike-share system – around 1000 bikes at around 60 docking stations throughout downtown. The system will be expanding to Pasadena, Venice, San Pedro and Wilmington next year.

Metro rail building contractors: Skanska/Traylor/Shea,  Skanska/Traylor/Hatch Mott Macdonald, and Walsh and Shea – SBLA was thinking about pitting Metro’s rail building contractors against eachother, but there is some overlap, so they are lumped together as they all dig, tunnel and build the rail lines that will stitch together the region. Metro’s Crenshaw/LAX line is being built by Walsh and Shea. The Regional Connector subway is being built by Skanska/Traylor/Hatch Mott Macdonald. The Purple Line subway extension is being constructed by Skanska/Traylor/Shea.