After years of struggling to make a DNA change when it comes to how people move through Beverly Hills, the City Council is close to weighing in on the forthcoming Complete Streets Plan.
As a penultimate step before the Council votes on the plan, likely at the first City Council meeting of 2020, a community Town Hall is tentativley slated to take place Dec. 3 during the evening at the Municipal Gallery inside City Hall. City staff is currently working to finalize the details.
“[The plan] really identifies a vision for a transportation network that considers goals and policies for all modes of travel,” Director of Community Development Susan Healy Keene said of the 170-page Complete Streets Plan and supplementary 16-page action plan. “I think it will help inform transportation policies as we move forward, particularly as we’re going to have two subway stops here.”
By taking a “complete streets” approach that includes a comprehensive analysis of pedestrian, bicycle and street networks, and emerging transportation modes and technologies (such as automated vehicles) in anticipation of the arrival of the City’s two subway stops Wilshire/La Cienega in 2023 and Wilshire/Rodeo in 2025 Beverly Hills leaders intend to harness the opportunity of change to create a better, safer City.
“Through implementation of the Complete Streets Plan, the City aims to transform Beverly Hills from an autodominated 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,” the current plan states.
Once adopted, a variety of transportation planning projects aim to bring the City up to current best practices, help prepare for emerging technologies, prioritize first/ last mile improvements to the Metro Purple Line stations, and increase grant funding eligibility.
“I think the plan has all the right language and all the right things,” said local cycling enthusiast Mark Elliot at this month’s Beverly Hills City Council / Traffic and Parking Commission liaison meeting. “I think it’s a really solid stepping off plan.”
As a result of meaningful changes since the plan’s last iteration in Spring, the liaison decided to have a Town Hall to further engage residents before bringing the plan to the full City Council.
Following the upcoming Town Hall, Keene said that City staff would be making changes to the plan before bringing it forward to City Council for approval.
Keene said she expected it would take five years to implement the entire plan.
