This morning, Los Angeles City Councilmember Kevin de León kicked off construction on downtown Los Angeles’ long-anticipated Seventh Street improvements.

Seventh Street has long been a relatively highly bicycled route in and and out of downtown Los Angeles, as other alternative streets are hillier and/or more full of car traffic entering and exiting freeway offramps. A little over a decade ago, Cyclists campaigned heavily for bike lanes on Seventh Street. The city Transportation Department (LADOT) added conventional bike lanes on the Koreatown and Westlake/MacArthur Park portions of Seventh in 2011. At that time, the portion of Seventh west of Figueroa Street had the first bike lanes in downtown Los Angeles. In 2013, LADOT extended Seventh Street’s painted bike lanes eastward through much of downtown.

In 2018, the city added protection on a block-long stretch. In May 2020, the city did a quick-build upgrade, adding soft-hit posts to protect the bike lanes between Figueroa Street and Main Street.

Today, construction work began on permanent Seventh Street streetscape improvements; find project details at LADOT or city Bureau of Engineering. The $18.7 million project extends one mile from San Pedro Street to Figueroa Street. The improvements include curb-protected bike lanes (including new bike lanes between Main and San Pedro in Skid Row), as well as pedestrian/cyclist-scale lighting, bus islands, and new trees.

Construction will begin at San Pedro Street and continue westward.