Image: Complete Streets/Flickr
The Santa Monica City Council has voted to permit bicycles and electric mobility devices in a number of the city’s transit-only bus lanes.
The city’s Municipal Code doesn’t currently allow bicycles or devices like electric scooters into bus or other transit-only lanes. However, the city council can provide the Director of Transportation with the authority to designate transit-only lanes that qualify as permissible for bicycles and electronic mobility devices.
City staff has recommended that this section of the Municipal Code – 3.12.675 – also be amended “to give the Director the authority to designate additional transit-only lanes across the city, allowing the city to respond flexibly to changes in transit demand, potentially in response to upcoming regional mega-events,” as stated in a staff report. This is in reference to the 2026 World Cup and 2028 Olympic Games.
Currently, four of the five existing transit-only lanes in the city qualify:
Peak-time only southbound lane on Lincoln Boulevard between Pico
Boulevard and Ozone Street (Monday to Friday, 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.)
Peak-time only northbound lane on Lincoln Boulevard between the south City limit and Grant Street (Monday to Friday, 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m.)
All-day eastbound lane on Santa Monica Boulevard between Ocean Avenue and 4th Court
All-day westbound lane on Broadway between Ocean Avenue and 5th Street
The one transit-only corridor that does not meet specifications as established by the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) is Santa Monica Blvd, eastbound, between 4th St. and 4th Ct. There is a much higher volume of bus traffic on this stretch of the corridor to qualify the lane for bikes and electronic devices.
The city intends to start with Broadway between Ocean Avenue and 5th Street, study its effectiveness, and then roll out to the other corridors. There is a strong argument that allowing cyclists and scooter riders to share transit-only lanes with buses will increase safety and riding comfort. City staff state that these lanes have lower traffic volumes, would allow for easier turning movements, and are currently trafficked by trained bus coach drivers conscious of the location of nearby cyclists and scooter riders. As it currently stands, a cyclist is asked to ride in bike lanes side-by-side with vehicle traffic and make wider, longer right turns from the street around transit-only lanes.
The City of Los Angeles implemented a similar effort with success, creating new shared bus-bike lanes on Wilshire and Sunset Boulevards in 2015. In conjunction with L.A. Metro and transportation planning firm Fehr & Peers, they studied the lanes over two years. What they found was that crashes involving cyclists declined by 10% and 30%, respectively, despite the number of cyclists increasing in both corridors.
Big Blue Bus (BBB) Motor Coach Operators have already received training on and have experience with shared bus-bike lanes, as such lanes already exist within BBB’s service area in the City of Los Angeles and Culver City. But with this new change to the Municipal Code, training will need to be conducted to further train coach operators not to try and overtake cyclists, and outreach to cyclists will need to take place to train them not to try and pass or overtake buses.
The financial impacts of the change – paying for the installation of bike-bus signage, pavement markings, and wayfinding signage – will be funded through the Department of Transportation Mobility Division’s existing operating budget.
Mayor Pro Tem Caroline Torosis asked staff if the changes would be communicated in multiple languages and encouraged robust signage to ensure tourists would be aware of their rights to use these lanes. She also inquired about metrics being collected that would enable the city to see who is using the transit-only lanes, stating a desire for data to be more publicly available.
Councilmember Jesse Zwick, citing all of the positive evidence from other cities that have made this change, asked, “Why are we restudying this on five square blocks when we could just do this on all of our bus lanes?”
City staff acknowledged it as a fair question and affirmed that opening up the transit-only lanes to bikes and other mobility devices is a “broadly effective technique.” But they also said that starting slower and beginning with the corridor on Broadway between Ocean Avenue and 5th Street would allow them to “get their feet wet” before continuing with the process in the other three corridors. Zwick argued they should just make the amendment apply to all bus lanes now.
Councilmembers Natalya Zernitskaya and Barry Snell agreed with Zwick that the roll-out should include all bus lanes at once. Zernitskaya also wanted assurances that granting the Director of Transportation administrative approval for additional corridors didn’t mean they could also remove corridors from being all-inclusive.
She also proposed an amendment that would remove the term “shared” in reference to rented scooters and e-bikes to allow for mobility devices that are owned by some users.
A substitute motion by Zwick to roll out the program to all four qualifying transit corridors failed, 4-3, with Zwick, Snell, and Zernitskaya voting yes. Mayor Lana Negrete was joined by Torosis and Councilmembers Dan Hall and Ellis Raskin in voting no.
The original motion, which was the staff’s recommendation to start with the Broadway corridor before rolling out to the others, passed 5-2, with Zernitskaya and Zwick voting no. Zernitskaya explained she’s all for the concept, but really thinks it’s better and more consistent to roll out the program to all corridors now.
Zwick agreed, saying, “The physics in Santa Monica are the same as L.A. We know it’s safer already. We don’t need to study this.”
