A Plan To Connect all Los Angeles Beaches With Bike And Walking Paths.
A Plan To Connect all Los Angeles Beaches With Bike And Walking Paths.
[Note to reader. This is where it started. I wrote this and sent it to the LA Times and after they didn’t publish it, I taught myself how to watercolor and started drawing it, and then my unveiling at the electric lodge theatre and today after the fires it seems that this should come into the existence]
Date: November 28, 2022
On a busy weekend day with a good swell in the Pacific Ocean more than 10,000 surfers will be in the water throughout the day between Santa Monica Pier and County Line, where Malibu ends and Ventura begins. That’s 20,000 car trips on PCH just for surfers. Beachgoers, hikers, visitors and residents will add thousands more automobile trips. So many vehicles travel on PCH during a busy weekend that a 30 mile drive can take 2 hours. There is no other way to get to to these beaches except by automobile and it’s time for that to change.
We see the world with our eyes and not with our imagination. By seeing the world as it is, it’s hard to imagine how it can be.
Almost 100 years ago, when Los Angeles was a young growing city, urban leaders commissioned the landscape architecture firm of Olmstad Brothers (Central Park Manhattan, Prospect Park Brooklyn, Mount Royal Park Montreal and others) and Bartholomew and Associates to plan a park system for the residents of the first automobile city.
Their visionary plan for LA titled “Parks Playgrounds and Beaches For The Los
Angeles Region” was published in 1930 and included preserving large areas of wilderness in Malibu connected by ribbons of linear parks to move between them. Their plan was presented as a necessity for the future health of the city and its residents. File under: Should have, would have, could have.
“Continued Prosperity will depend on on providing needed parks…In so far…as the people fail to show understand, courage and organizing ability necessary at this crisis, the growth of the Region will tend to strangle itself” —Fredrick Law Olmstead Jr. Parks Playgrounds and Beaches for Los Angeles Region (1930)
The Parkways planned for Los Angles were not the highways we know, they were designed “to produce interesting visual variety and to protect good views and scenery”. Los Angles used to resemble Eden and Eden lost its garden a while ago.
Instead of building parkways LA built highways. Instead of linear parks connecting open spaces we have the strip mall, the shopping mall, the geography of nowhere with more land dedicated to parking than to parks in Los Angeles.
The idea of a Parkway--a linear park to move between spaces is one that should be revisited. However, not just a Parkway for cars but also for cyclists and walkers, and a biodiversity corridor.
Imagine living in Los Angles and waking up to a pumping south swell and instead of putting your surfboard on the roof of your car you attach it to the rack on your electric bike and you are able to quietly, efficiently travel to any beach from San Pedro in Southern Los Angeles, to County Line in Malibu safely on a bike bike path separated from cars.
While you are at it also imagine a walking path separated from cars and bikes that you can walk safely from the Southern most beach of Los Angeles to Pt. Magu a little north of County line. Let’s also imagine that there are bathrooms at all these beaches as well as outdoor showers so that after you exit the ocean you can rinse off.
A version of this type of infrastructure exits in Santa Monica, Venice and Manhattan Beach. There is a bike path, albeit a dangerous one as it is not divided and thus not safe. There is a separate walking path bathrooms and outdoors showers. The bike and walking paths are extremely popular and the thought of being taken away--which is how we should imagine the whole coast--is unthinkable.
The beaches in Los Angeles would be connected to the beaches North in Ventura and Santa Barbara county, and to the beaches south in Orange and San Diego county until every beach in Southern California from Imperial Beach in San Diego County to Gaviota in Santa Barbara County is connected by both a walking a path, a cycling path showers and restrooms.
The inability to get to all the beaches in Los Angeles without a car is a planning error that needs to be rectified. Our built world is a crime scene we just don’t see it as that, because it is all we know. This is why what is being proposed is not just a good idea but a necessary idea.
The amount of cars and traffic on the coast negatively impacts not just human health from stress and crashes but also air and water quality marine and ornithological life. Having a walking path and cycling path will be beneficial for humans and will act as a biodiversity corridor. Milkweed and nectar rich plants can be planted along the path to help the Monarchs, other insects, birds and other animals. Additionally, the The Intertidal Zones can be restored and protected along its path so that after all these years the Santa Monica Bay can finally be healed.
Now that we have imagined this, the question is how do we make it happen? This needs funding for planning, visualization and organizing that is beyond the scope of an initial article introducing a vision with the ability to transform Southern California and positively impact millions of lives with the simple and necessary idea of re-connecting humans (and other animals) to the ocean, the source of life on earth by way of California beaches.
About the Author: Harris Hart Silver is a trained architect, surfer and open water swimmer. His urban activism led to vision Zero in NYC which has made NYC safer for millions of residents and visitors.