Alert your calf muscles: It's almost time for The Big Parade, one of the most exciting walks in LA, happening May 2 and 3. Our own steering committee member Dan Koeppel has been coordinating this annual adventure since 2008 which travels up and down over 80 public stairways in its 35-mile route from downtown to Griffith Park.

A big part of this year's Big Parade will also be creating awareness around the fact that public stairways are public streets. Advocates will be talking about how to open stairways that have been closed over the years, and how to launch efforts to maintain staircases forgotten by the city.

Check out The Big Parade on Facebook for detailed information about routes and how to join for a few minutes or a few miles. There's also a prologue walk May 1—and yes, some hardy souls do indeed complete all three days! See you out there!

By Marc Caswell - Pedestrian advocate and transportation policy expert. Download 311 at lacity.org/myLA311 

From our 2014 report Footnotes: A Report On the State of Walking in LA. Donate to get a printed copy. Special thanks to Melendréz for funding the printing of our 2015 Footnotes report. Read more from Footnotes.

311 is a walker’s best friend

While Los Angeles Walks continues to push for large-scale changes across the City, we need you to help make sure the City is aware of needed repairs and improvements in your neighborhood. The City of L.A. has launched 311—a one-stop customer service program where residents can let the City know what they need, and we want to make sure better walking infrastructure is a top issue.

To get started, you can dial “311” on your phone or go to lacity.org/myLA311. If you have a smartphone, you can download the MyLA311 app.

So, what walking improvements can you request with 311? 

After several years of litigation the City of Los Angeles agreed to fix the city’s broken sidewalks and ensure accessibility and safety for all. This legal agreement represents the largest disability payout in the country. The settlement calls for a citywide sidewalk repair plan and spending over $1 billion in funds to fix and improve sidewalks throughout the city (see LA Times and Legal Aid Society coverage and analysis).

Next steps include developing a work plan and prioritization of efforts. Right now the City has over $27 million in approved budgeted funds to get started on this work this year. The source of transportation funds for this work beyond the initial $27 million has not yet been identified. The city is also creating a position to monitor the work and will draft reports on its progress twice yearly.

Sign up for the second annual Finish The Ride on Sunday, April 19th, to either ride, run, walk, or roll, to help raise awareness of the safety issues faced by vulnerable road users on L.A. and California roads.

Take 10% off the registration price and help support LA Walks by using promo code SUPPORTLAWALKS while registering. In addition to getting a discount, you'll help LA Walks with 10% of the registration fees collected under the LA Walks promo going to LA Walks!

Get more information on Finish The Ride:

Visit the Finish The Ride registration page.

From our 2014 report Footnotes: A Report On the State of Walking in LA. Donate to get a printed copy. Special thanks to Melendréz for funding the printing of our 2015 Footnotes report. 

Los Angeles City Council file Number 87-2261 S4, dated December 18th, 1987

My, how far L.A. walkers have come—or have we?

"In the City of Radials, it's nothing short of radical" claimed LA Times writer Patt Morrison in 1987 after the "Pedestrian Bill of Rights" was first declared by two councilmen. 27 years later, we’re still fighting for many of these basic pedestrian rights.

Improving streets is an ongoing process between many partners. It is important that we do not miss the mark on safe street designs. Strong policies and leaders will help us realize the rights granted to all walkers in Los Angeles decades ago.

Los Angeles City Council file Number 87-2261, dated December 18th, 1987

MOVE that Council adopts the following statements as the “pedestrian Bill of Rights” for Los Angeles

The People of Los Angeles have the right to:

1. Safe roads and safe places to cross the street
2. Pedestrian-oriented building facades, trees, flower stands, trash cans, awnings, etc.
3. Safe and comfortable bus stops and public
4. Transit stations
5. Appealing use of landscaping and available
6. Open space
7. Full notification of all street widening that impinge on public open space and sidewalks
8. Access to streets and buildings for disabled people
9. Clean surroundings, requiring removal of graffiti and advertisements from public property
10. Have needs of pedestrians considered as heavily as the needs of drivers
11. Public works of Art

FURTHER MOVE that City departments use this pedestrian Bill of rights of Way to evaluate the needs in future decisions.

On Sunday March 22, Los Angeles Walks will walk the CicLAvia route – this time in the Valley! – starting at North Hollywood Red Line Station at 10am. Look for the Los Angeles Walks banner and our Executive Director Deborah's bright dress to find our group. Walk with us!

Find your way along the route with the CicLAvia Neighborhood Guide to discover the foundations of today's vibrance, secrets, and smells in the San Fernando Valley.

Amuse your friends, family, and self with LOADS of activities throughout the route. Pop up cycle tracks, nature walks, jazz groups, climbing walls, we honestly couldn't list it all here. See the Activities Along the Route section on CicLAvia's page for a very full list of how to fill your Sunday. And just so that you know absolutely everything about what you can get into this weekend - CicLAValley provided the Mother of All Valley CicLAvia Guides.

Perceive the Valley guided by a shifting musical landscape as geo-sonic harmonies come through your headphones. Walk With Me app offers fiction fused with reality while natural, musical, and vocal sounds superimpose the live noise of the surrounding area.

Have a good week and hope to walk with you Sunday!

From our 2014 report Footnotes: A Report On the State of Walking in LA. Donate to get a printed copy. Special thanks to Melendréz for funding the printing of our 2015 Footnotes report. 

Map researched and designed by Rosten Woo – an artist, designer, writer, and educator in Los Angeles. 

Safe streets bring positivity to our communities. Currently, 20-25% of all trips taken are on foot or bicycle, but they account for 39% of fatalities and only 1% of funding. Take a look at some of the most dangerous streets in our city and help us build the solutions for a SAFE city.

Map: The Worst Intersections for Pedestrians - LAist

Mapping LA's Most Dangerous Intersections for Pedestrians - Curbed LA 

D.J. Waldie is the author of Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir and Where We Are Now: Notes from Los Angeles among other books. His essays on the politics and history of Los Angeles appear weekly at KCET.org. Portions of these pieces, in a substantially different form, were originally posted to KCET.

Place. The other day while walking to mass, I crossed the cement apron that leads out of the alley behind the houses on Clark Avenue. I’ve crossed the alley from the time I was a boy and through the 32 years I walked to work following my father’s death.

But this time, a sheet of water—probably leaking from a backyard hose—spilled across the concrete.

For the first time, I noticed that inscribed in the concrete were names, but almost worn smooth. Children had written awkwardly, haphazardly in the wet concrete but with respect for each other. Their names didn’t overlap.

The loose water had brought out the faint letters.

I’m not inattentive. The qualities of the everyday interest me. Yet here were persistent marks of lives that had neighbored mine for years and which I had never seen, would never have seen except for the contingencies of that moment.

I stopped.

Valerie Watson is the Assistant Pedestrian Coordinator for the City of Los Angeles. For more information on People St visit peoplest.lacity.org or e-mail [email protected]

Bring plazas, parklets, and bicycle corrals to life in your neighborhood through this new citywide program

Are you interested in ways to make your neighborhood better for people walking, bicycling and taking transit? Is the street you spend time on challenged by narrow sidewalks, fast-moving vehicles, or a lack of nice places to linger, meet a friend, read a book, check your email, have a coffee, sit with your charming canine companion, or people watch?

We ultimately want to bring permanent physical changes to our streets that address mobility, quality of life and public space accessibility issues within our communities. Typically, we think about our local government and elected officials initiating big projects to create public space opportunities, like neighborhood parks with grass and trees, or streetscape plans and road diets with physical infrastructure. However, these types of projects can sometimes take years—even decades—to come to fruition. The funding required is nothing to sneeze at, involving hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions, of dollars. At the same time, neighbors don’t always agree on improvements like sidewalk bump-outs or cycletracks for bike riders. Pouring concrete is permanent, and we all know people sometimes don’t like change.