Health & Fitness
Patch Blog: The Glendale Boulevard Corridor
The Metro and the City of Los Angeles need to design a better plan for the Glendale Freeway Terminus. The objective should not be to speed traffic but to slow it.
Urban planner Carlos Hernandez pointed out, in Edendale: Undoing Community Design (A 2011 Cal State Northridge project), that the built environment in Los Angeles often isolates us from each other. The 2 freeway itself isolates people from each other while surrounding the neighborhoods with noise and pollution; and the exit from the 2 is dangerous, un-walkable, and has pretty much killed the commercial district along the Glendale Boulevard Corridor.
The Corridor is an important part of the history of Los Angeles. . . The earlier name for that stretch was Allessandro, . It was the cradle of L.A.'s film industry.
The 2004 Echo Park and Silver Lake community plan mentions a need to find a long term solution to the congestion on the corridor, (Page I-9), also recommends it as a commercial and Artcraft Overlay Zone (Page III-1) , and recommends finding a grant to enhance the Glendale Freeway Terminus Project. (Page III-22).
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The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) introduced a hybrid plan, Plan F, to create the SR2/Glendale Freeway Terminus Improvement Plan for this corridor (Plans A through E are discussed in the California Department of Transportation and Metro document, State Route 2 Freeway Terminus Plan.), which does little to enhance the area.
The Echo Park Community Action Committee opposes Metro's Alternative Plan F for a number of cogent reasons. Activist Diane Edwardson calls Alternative F – F for failure.
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The city's objective is to speed traffic along the corridor. Slower traffic, not faster traffic, should be the city's goal. Faster traffic will result in worse blight. Fast traffic rushes right by local businesses already, and it is dangerous for pedestrians.
There should be native plant landscaping, and there should be walkable paths. The spaces between buildings should become community farms. Those old buildings that can be saved should be, and their coats of paint and stucco should be removed to reveal the early twentieth century facades. The marker that notes that film comedy began in Southern California should not be hidden within the Public Storage building but should be out for everyone to see. The city should create a small museum on the corridor to allow pedestrians to discover the stories of the Red Car and the early movie studios. There should be a theater showing films shot in Echo Park and Silver Lake. The city council should spend less time on pushing through automobiles and more time on making the city more liveable.
