Pedestrian Safety Boosted On Fountain Avenue

HOLLYWOOD, CA — Fountain Avenue may be best known as a favored cross-town alternative to major boulevards — but the street's narrow nature also makes it a popular pedestrian route, too.

The city recently added a new pedestrian crossing beacon on Fountain Avenue at Lyman Place in the walkable East Hollywood neighborhood near Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, Children's Hospital Los Angeles and the Vermont/Sunset Metro stop.

The beacon — which allows pedestrians to push a button that flashes lights at oncoming drivers, warning them to yield — was activated Friday by the Bureau of Engineering and Department of Transportation, according to Councilman Hugo Soto-Martínez.

The small project comes as officials are gearing up for a much larger one in the neighborhood.

Called Access to Hollywood, the project calls for a varying degree of removing travel lanes, installing bike lanes and removing parking from the stretch of Hollywood Boulevard between Lyman Place in East Hollywood/Los Feliz and Van Ness Avenue 1.6 miles west near the 101 Freeway.

Farther west on the boulevard, officials plan to transform the Hollywood Walk of Fame area with wider sidewalks and other improvements.

"From simple improvements like this to improve visibility and safety for pedestrians, to ambitious projects like Access to Hollywood – we need to make our streets safer for families and workers navigating through the city," Soto-Martínez wrote in his newsletter this week.