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Measure HLA is stuck. The ballot measure LA voters passed 2½ years ago said the city must install planned bike lanes when repaving. But the city stopped repaving, and new bike lane projects have slowed to a trickle. Exactly one HLA-compliant project has been installed. What comes next?

The problem is costs stacked on costs. City Council required bike lanes to only be installed on good pavement. Repaving adds $1M/mile. The Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) says when repaving, curb ramps have to be fixed. Another $600k/mile.

The workaround: Large Asphalt Repair (LAR), a long patch the city calls maintenance - no need to fix curb ramps. Put LAR under the bike lanes, leave the rest of the asphalt untouched, and install the bike lanes cheaply. I was outraged by these patches at first. Now I think they’re an important tool.

But HLA defeats the workaround. It’s triggered by "any paving project or other modification" at least ⅛ mile long. The bike lane itself is a modification. And if a street is in a pedestrian district (2/3 of potential bike lanes in Central LA), that means fixing curb ramps - the ADA all over again.

So what now? The ADA and HLA have raised costs, but they’re here to stay. I asked people on the city and advocacy sides how to get repaving and the Mobility Plan moving again. Click to read what they told me.

I would just add to your 3rd recommendation (which I support): repeal no-new-bikeways-except-where-pavement-is-good. LADOT already breaks this law - or I should say selectively enforces this law mainly to shoot down bike safety projects

Examples of streets where LADOT added bikeways on streets where the city PCI showed were failing pavement: sharrows added to Century Blvd in 2024, added bike lane on San Vicente in 2025.

Has anyone done a thorough investigation into the costs? Also has anyone done design reviews? Not to say anything would sway an antagonistic admin but there seem to be real issues even when the work is being done. I’m watching 1 crew do all the intersections on Los Feliz BLVD…

At its fastest it’s about a week to dig up and about a week to put in ADA infra and the ADA infra is absolutely poorly designed. Plus 4 long blocks away ea intersection on Santa Monica for multiple blocks has been dug up for at least a month inconveniencing everyone indefinitely.