On Tuesday, members of the Northeast L.A. community and staff from LACBC headquarters came together for a follow-up to December’s meeting.
Based on feedback from the group after the last gathering, we really wanted to get together and hear from the community on what they wanted. We started the meeting with a brief recap of the last conversation then really opened the floor and did something we haven’t always been good at: we listened.
A rich discussion followed and the group kept coming back to last March’s L.A. Great Streets and LADOT hosted FIGJAM, which transformed Figueroa Street into a safer, more active neighborhood street with pop-up green buffered bike lanes, colored sidewalks, public art, and music. There, LADOT presented plans to make Figueroa safer as part of the Vision Zero pledge to improve streets on the High Injury Network, and Councilmember Cedillo pledged “to make Figueroa the safest street in the city.”
The group in attendance really came together around the idea of inviting the folks responsible for FIGJAM back to a Neighborhood Council meeting and getting an update. The group also noted that with the recent release of the Vision Zero Action Plan, this is a great opportunity to ask questions about how Vision Zero impacts the community.
The group also discussed the upcoming March election. No one was interested in organizing a specific event, but hoped LACBC could send out updates on upcoming events like the candidate forum at Sonia Sotomayor Learning Academies in Glassell Park on Thursday, February 16th. This will be an opportunity to pose the questions that matter to your community.
Thanks to everyone that came out. To join the Northeast LA Neighborhood Bike Ambassador Group and receive local updates, sign up here. We’ll be following up with attendees and the neighborhood councils and getting them connected to contacts at city agencies to help facilitate what they envision for their meeting. We’ll keep you posted and hope to see you the next time we’re all together in NELA.