That's Right, Los Angeles Is Giving Up Car Lanes for Pedestrians

Los Angeles has a great deal of walkability despite its car-centric reputation, but much of it remains hidden to the public. In the city's historic Broadway corridor, at least, that secret is about to come out. The city council recently voted to fund an initial redevelopment of Broadway into a legitimate pedestrian plaza — reducing six lanes of road down to three in the process.

The plan to "bring back" Broadway has been going on for about five years, but it really started to take shape in late 2009 with the public release of a street redesign. The first phase of this "Broadway Streetscape Master Plan" [PDF] is a makeshift and very cost-effective ($1.8 million) conversion modeled on the pedestrian parcels implemented in New York City. The second phase, yet to be funded, is where the heavy transformations would occur: