Yesterday, I saw a promotional spot on ABC for the evening news that promised help people that are upset about automobile parking restrictions on their local streets.  Needless to say, I was excited.  This was an easy story.  Get some angry residents complaining about parking, a nice car-culture report from a television reporter.  Bam!  Instant Streetsblog story.

But then I actually watched the story and it turned out to be more complicated than that.  Turns out the example street from their story, "James M. Woods" in the Downtown has recently undergone something similar to a road diet.  LADOT designed a project, completed by Bureau of Street Services, that actually took the former four-lane configuration for Woods and turned the road into a two-lane road with a turning lane in the middle.  With the reduced capacity for the street, the residents wanted the promised rush hour street parking restrictions lifted.

Woah!  Way to bury the lead.  LADOT reduced the through traffic capacity on a local road because the street traffic didn’t justify four travel lanes?  Just paint a couple of bike lanes and I’d think I was living in Burbank.