At the Culver City Council meeting of April 24th the council voted 3-2 to return two lanes to multi vehicle use, while creating a shared bike and bus lane.

This is good news, sort of. It means that we should see two multi vehicle lanes returned to most of the downtown and arts district corridor!

Unfortunately, combining the busses and bikes into a shared lane is not exactly what we were hoping for. However we should see some improvement in traffic flow for all vehicles during peak hours once the lanes are reopened. They also consented to revisit the traffic lights. As we all know, the current sequences and timing of the lights is not at all optimized.

If you look at the image from their own survey you can see that 68% opposed the reduction of traffic in both directions, 64% oppose the dedicated bus lanes, and only 43% supported the combined bus/bike lane. However this was the compromise they agreed upon for now.

And this will be revisited by the council in about two years.

As far as the actual meeting; it was about 7 hours long. There was a large group of organized, aggressive and uncompromising supporters of the project who were hurling insults, threats (even the threat of a lawsuit) and scare mongering at the council, as well as heckling other participants. Ironically the majority of that group were not Culver City residents. It was a real circus at times.

There were also representatives of local businesses and residents who gave sincere, eye opening and fact based accounts of the negative effects of the project.

Three of the council members made fair and informed comments and explained the way they were voting. One also voiced his dismissal of the threats and insults coming from some speakers.

One comment by supporters that kept coming up, was that the project "only causes the drive to be an average of 2 minutes longer". This is a misleading statement, and anyone who's ever driven during peak hours knows that the drive time can be well over 20 minutes longer. That statistic is based on measuring drive times throughout the day and night, including when there is no traffic at all, which is how they were able to come up with that "2 minute average". This stat doesn't address the reality or help those of us that have to sit in the slowest parts of the traffic 2 or more times a day. An example of how some skew and interpret statistics to support an incorrect narrative.

Thanks again for your support on this! We hope people continue to sign this petition, and we will continue to work with the city and residents to improve our quality of life while making Culver City a more accessible and livable place!

For those keeping track, the vote was 3 Yes: O’Brien, Vera, Eriksson and 2 No: Puza, McMorrin, to return most of the lanes to all vehicles, and do the shared bike/bus lane