Residents have more than a few ideas about how to improve Lincoln Boulevard: relieve gridlock, clean up weeds and trash, and make it safer.
They also say there are too many auto dealerships and shops and not enough restaurants and coffee shops, according to new survey results released this week by the Lincoln Boulevard Task Force, a grassroots citizens group that wants to make the thoroughfare "safe, clean, beautiful, and green."
"Until conducting the surveys, we had little data to guide our efforts," the task force's chairman, Roger Swanson, said in a statement.
Swanson said the task force deployed walking teams that contacted 100 percent of the businesses and most residents from 11th Street to 6th Street and from the 10 Freeway to the Venice border about taking the survey. They received responses from 638 residents, 91 percent of whom live south of the freeway.
Other priorities identified by the residents? Graffiti and homelessness.
"Much of what the data shows was common knowledge: Lincoln is a congested roadway that appears to be neglected and over-represented by auto serving business," the chairman said.
More apartments and shops are likely to crop up along the busy boulevard in the next decade, most of them north of the freeway. The city is weighing at least eight applications to build mixed-use developments on Lincoln between Santa Monica Boulevard and the 10 Freeway. (See map here.)
Among the proposed developments is the "Lincoln Boulveard Collection," four apartment buildings that would be built near the former Wertz Antique Mart with a combined total of 421 unites.
According to the survey, 64 percent of residents want to see the city limit building heights to three stories. Less than 40 percent want more units restricted to tenants with low incomes.
"The community voiced their opinions and we are listening," Swanson said.
Click here to view the survey results.
SEE ALSO:
City Delays Adding Bus-Only Lanes on Lincoln Boulevard
Developer Buys Antique Mall for Reported $11 Million
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The key word is development. Whatever justifies development--like more bike lanes to supposedly eliminate traffic--will be used. The claim will be made that residents wanted the things that justify development, when really, 4% of traffic uses bikes, for instance, so I don't believe 58% of the respondents wanted bike lanes. That part is undoubtedly just untrue. Whatever the residents actually said that justifies development, combined with what the unverifiable report claims they said that justifies development, will be used. Everything else will be ignored.
Other volunteers have been painting murals on the some of the businesses along that section of Lincoln. It has nothing to do with Wertz Antique Market (mentioned in the article), which is north of the freeway. OPA and FOSP emailed the online survey to their members, and volunteers flyered businesses along Lincoln as well as homes between 6th and 11th Streets to encourage the broadest possible participation in the survey and find out what residents really want. Since the survey was written, the city has indicated that it will not be implementing "bus only" lanes on that stretch of LIncoln during rush hour, so the issue of bikes using the bus lanes is now moot. I'll be interested to see your reaction after you've read the results of the entire survey.