Bike lanes will increase access on Lake Avenue
Safe, protected bicycle lanes can be added to North Lake Ave, while keeping 98% of available parking. We know, because we counted ourselves.
Pasadena Complete Streets Coalition (CSC) is advocating for safe, protected bike/mobility lanes for N. Lake Ave. Pasadena city staff have responded that they were prevented from including protected bike lanes in the current draft, citing a concern from a 2015 report by consultants. Specifically, the concern is that removing 45 parking spaces along the study corridor would create “severe parking demand and traffic increase.”
We believe adding protected bike/mobility lanes and improved landscaping would create a more beautiful N. Lake Ave that would benefit both businesses along the corridor and residents. We wanted to investigate concerns related to parking, to better understand if removing this small number of parking spaces could really create a big impact.
On March 14, 2021, Pasadena CSC volunteers conducted an audit of available parking along N. Lake Ave, from Mountain St. to the 210 freeway. Our results are below, and details are collected in our source data.
Adding Bike Lanes Preserves 98% of Parking
All Properties Include Off-street Parking Lots
The images below show parking on N. Lake Ave highlighted in red. The vast majority of parking is located in off-street parking lots, so bicycle/mobility lanes may be safely added while preserving parking availability. Click an image to expand.
Pasadena city provided these concerns over parking on N. Lake Ave:
“a large number of local businesses along the study corridor do not provide off-street parking to customers and rely on on-street parking. There are approximately 45 on-street parking spaces along the study corridor. A protected bicycle lane would require the removal of approximately 25 on-street parking spaces …. The loss of on-street parking along North Lake Avenue will lead customers to utilize side streets such as Villa, Earlham, or Santa Barbara, to access local businesses, leading to severe parking demand and traffic increase on adjacent residential streets.
In order to maximize the mobility benefits and have a connected network, the protected bicycle lane would need to be extended beyond the study corridor creating similar impacts along Lake Avenue and the adjacent residential neighborhoods.
Author’s note: Pasadena City has since updated this text on their web page, adjusting the number of parking spots required from 25 to 45. We have updated statistics in this blog to reflect this change.
We found protected bike lanes can be added AND preserve parking:
Nearly all available parking - 97.6% - would be retained after adding safe, protected bicycle lanes.
The slight, 2.4% reduction in parking needed for bicycle lanes would have NO impacts on neighborhood traffic.
Every property on N. Lake Avenue includes an off-street parking lot. About half of businesses have 100% of their available parking in off-street parking lots.
Adding bicycle lanes would actually improve access to businesses, since parking a bike takes 10X less space than a car. On N. Lake Ave in particular, there are over 20 restaurants and cafes that would be a treat for residents to enjoy by bike, scooter, or walking. Repeated studies show adding bicycle lanes is good for business.
We agree that the protected bicycle lanes should be extended further than the limits of the N. Lake study corridor to be part of a connected network. The North Lake Avenue bicycle lanes should continue a few extra blocks south to Union Street, where a 2-way protected bike lane is scheduled for construction this year.
There are NO on-street parking spots on Lake Ave south of the 210 freeway, between I-210 and Union Street. This means extending the protected bicycle lanes south of the 210 freeway to connect with the planned Union Street protected bike lane, could be done with no impacts to parking.
Connecting to Old Pasadena
Pasadena plans to construct a protected bicycle lane on Union Street this year. This creates an opportunity to connect residents of Northwest Pasadena with Old Pasadena, PCC, and Caltech on a network of protected bicycle/mobility lanes, including Lake Ave, Union Street, and Cordova Street. Our parking survey found that there are NO on-street parking spaces between the I-210 freeway and Union street. This is great news! It means the N. Lake Ave protected bicycle lanes may be extended to connect to the Union Street cycle track without ANY additional impacts to parking. Making this connection would allow residents near N. Lake Ave. to safely ride to Old Pasadena in about 12 minutes, as well as Playhouse Village, PCC, Caltech, and the Metro. We believe this would encourage folks to shop, eat, and enjoy the beautiful Old Pasadena business district on bikes and scooters, and create a whole new class of healthy, family-friendly recreation activities in Pasadena.
Currently, project staff cite plans for so-called “bicycle boulevards”, mixing bike traffic and cars on neighborhood roads, as the planned approach to connect Northwest Pasadena to the network of protected bicycle lanes. We support the creation of bicycle boulevards, but they are not enough. The bicycle boulevards fail to emphasize an important Metro connection, and fail to connect the businesses along N. Lake Ave to the bicycle network. Moreover, studies show that people are far more likely to make use of protected bicycle lanes that are separated from traffic, compared to unprotected bicycle lanes. We also note these bicycle boulevards were proposed over 6 years ago - and to date - none of them have been built. We encourage the city to both move forward with the bicycle boulevards and connect Northwest Pasadena to restaurants, metro, and shopping with protected bicycle lanes on North Lake Avenue.
A video about protected bike lanes
Please support a better Lake Avenue
Use the “Take Action!” button to have your voice count - right now!
