City of Los Angeles Needs to Decide What is More Important. Jobs - or Symbolism?

For two years the City has been - so far unsuccessfully - tried to paint the Spring Street Bike Lane - green - only to have it almost instantly start to peel into an unsightly mess.  It is also slippery when it rains or gets wet.  But the biggest problem is that it has added one more obstacle for the film industry to deal with at a time that Los Angeles has lost the a majority of its hour TV shows to New York and other cities - for the first time every - and New York and Vancouver' creative industries are booming as jobs that once were in LA - are moving to those two cities.

And this is just one of the dozens of reasons why the City of Los Angeles continues to have over 12% unemployment while the film,TV, post-production, music scoring and now the visual affects & animation industries continue to move to Vancouver and New York.  At some point the City needs to ask - why is symbolism more important than jobs?

photo courtesy of Hayley Fox

Here is part of the recent Blogdowntown post by Hayley Fox on the subject:

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — Downtown councilman José Huizar has started the ball rolling to have the peeling paint along the Spring Street bike lane re-painted once again.

The six-foot wide path that runs down Spring Street is painted a distinctive green to help increase driver awareness of cyclists and improve overall street safety. The bike lane was first painted back in 2011 as part of a pilot program, but has had to be re-painted and touched up multiple times since.

Transportation officials said that variables such as sun exposure and roadway composition caused the paint to splotch and rub-off the road completely, and they have since been experimenting with different paint types and "infill materials" to avoid this issue in the future.

Huizar introduced a motion last week that asks the L.A. Department of Public Transportation (LADOT) to repaint the lane once again, citing its notable effects on the community despite its deterioration.

The motion states: "The Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition's annual bicycle counts recorded a dramatic increase in the number of bicycles following installation of the green bike lane on Spring Street. Residents and local businesses support continued maintenance of the painted lane."

And although many locals are in favor of the green bike lane, the film industry is opposed to it.

The Source reports that many in Hollywood have said the lane makes film shoots in the area difficult because it is a distracting visual in the middle of a scene.

The rest of the story can be found here.