BEVERLY HILLS—On December 6, at 1 p.m. the city of Beverly Hills will be hosting a meeting for the community to discuss the Complete Street plan. The meeting will take place over the Zoom app and overall meeting will be foreseen by Dr. Sukhsimranjit Singh, Director of the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution at Pepperdine University Caruso School of Law.
The complete street plan will support safety, convenience, and environmentally friendly transit.
The Beverly Hills Complete Street Plan wants to focus on embracing alternative modes of transportation throughout the city. The plan will prioritize recommended and ongoing projects to implement in the city’s first six years after plan adoption. Within the plan there will be four sub groups, a bicycle action plan, pedestrian action plan, transit action plan, and motor vehicle action plan.
“Through implementation of the Complete Streets Plan, the city aims to transform Beverly Hills from and auto dominated community to one that addresses all modes of travel, reduces vehicle trips on streets, and can truly be considered a word class bicycling city. The plan identifies a vision of transportation network, guided by multi- modal goals and policies,” states the Beverly Hills Complete Streets Plan (draft).
The city of Beverly Hills is located in West Central Los Angeles which is prone to traffic between downtown Los Angeles and Santa Monica. In 2017, the census recorded 5.7 square miles and roughly 35,000 residents were recorded. With Beverly Hills being a tourist destination, the number easily jumps between 150,000-200,000 due to employment opportunities and tourism.
Beverly Hills has one of the highest densities of population and employment within Los Angeles County, the city contributes to mass volumes of car, bus, and pedestrians within the local streets.
The vision for the plan, “Streets define communities; those that support walking and bicycling facilitate social interaction, improved public health, increased tourism, better access, and a more efficient transportation system, which increases the number of people that can travel on our streets without increasing congestion. Through implementation of the Complete Streets Plan, the City aims to transform Beverly Hills from an auto-dominated community to one that embraces all modes of travel, reduces vehicle trips on our streets, and can be truly considered a world class bicycling city. This plan envisions a future where students can bike to school, families can take transit to their destinations, people of all ages can walk to neighborhood amenities, and the Beverly Hills community is a model for other jurisdictions,” states the Beverly Hills Complete Streets Plan (draft).
The plan focuses to preserve the safety and health of the present and future generations. Local streets have seen capacitated limits, as well as longer travel times.
“The plan presents the community’s priorities in achieving this vision so that residents, employees, and visitors of Beverly Hills will have more car-free options for getting where they need to go. The vision of this plan is ambitious and transformative, while recommending changes that are realistic to pursue over its lifetime through a detailed action plan,” states in the Beverly Hills Complete Streets Plan (draft).
At the beginning of the planning process the city held a work shop open to the community were a survey was given asking for the communities opinion on the structure and development of the Complete Street Plan.
- Enhance safety for roadway users of all ages and abilities
- Improve the overall quality of life in Beverly Hills
- Improve traffic flow for all roadway users
- Improve the environmental health and sustainability of Beverly Hills
- Increase and diversify transportation choices
- Emphasize equitable travel options that legitimize all modes
There is no definite meaning of a complete street, as a design approach that considers the integration of people, planning, the design itself, construction, operation, and maintenance of the transportation networks.
Complete Streets and the tools they employ have shown proof of a positive economic system, environmental, along with public health and safety factors.
“Complete Streets provide greater access to businesses, improve transportation options, increase physical activity, create new space for planting and street trees, and holistically improve community livability,” said the draft.
By adopting the Complete Street Plan, the plan has the opportunity to be eligible for the funding with a grant.
“The types of improvements recommended in the Complete Streets Plan will (1) bring the City up to current mobility standards and best practices, such as by providing a comfortable on-street bicycling environment, and (2) prepare the City for emerging transportation trends. Recommendations include basic infrastructure not currently provided in Beverly Hills, infrastructure to enhance current facilities, and programs and policies to support mobility,” expressed the draft.
For more information and community zoom call detail more information on the Beverly Hills Complete Street Plan can be found at www.beverlyhills.org/completestreets website.
