"When we reduce lanes, we see crashes drop," Severin Martinez, a planner with the Los Angeles Department of Transportation, said during an online presentation on the Sunset/Chavez Safety and Mobility Project. The Eastsider's coverage after that presentation, which its Silver Lake news index lists as updated September 2, 2026, described one plan running from Fountain Avenue at Sunset Junction to Alameda Street downtown. It would leave one car lane in each direction and add dedicated bus lanes and protected bike lanes.
That plan is really two projects. They split at Douglas Street in Echo Park. Everything east of that line has a budget, a design schedule and a construction year. Every block of Sunset Boulevard in Silver Lake sits west of it, in a phase with no funding, no design and no public outreach until 2027.
The line at Douglas Street
LADOT's Spring 2026 stakeholder presentation divides the corridor into two phases. Sunset East, Phase I, runs 1.5 miles from Alameda Street to Douglas Street. Sunset West, Phase II, covers the remaining 2.5 miles from Douglas Street to Fountain Avenue. Douglas sits inside Echo Park, so Phase II takes in western Echo Park as well as all of Silver Lake. That includes the stretch past Alvarado Street and Glendale Boulevard.
In that same presentation, LADOT put Phase I's implementation at 2026 to 2028, ahead of the Olympics. For Phase II it gave only "post-Olympics." The Eastsider reported the West section as unfunded and still in need of more outreach and design, with construction planned for 2030 to 2032. The longer segment, and the one running through Silver Lake, is on the slower track.
What the funded half is actually getting
Sunset East carries a $15 million price tag. The money comes from a $7 million Metro Active Transportation grant and $8 million in LADOT funds. LADOT's fact sheet for that segment lays out the design. It calls for one vehicle lane in each direction, full-time bus lanes and protected bike lanes, with street parking kept only on the south side. Between Douglas and Alameda, that means losing 72% of street parking, about 205 spaces, including every space on the north side.
Sources date the East schedule slightly differently. The Eastsider says the roadway work is expected to begin in 2027. The fact sheet says bus and bike lane construction begins in late 2027. Sidewalk and curb-ramp upgrades on that stretch are already underway. LADOT's weekly update for September 24, 2026, reported that more than 150 people came to Sunset East open houses in August. It said a second round of East outreach was underway, the project survey was still open and final design for the East segment would be done in spring 2027.
The 72% figure is the one most likely to travel west in conversation, and it should not. It describes Douglas to Alameda only. LADOT has not published a parking figure for any block in Silver Lake.
What Silver Lake's half has instead
West of Douglas, the project record is mostly a list of dates that keep moving later:
- May 19, 2026. According to minutes in the July 21, 2026 agenda of LADOT's Bicycle Advisory Committee, LADOT said it would postpone its Active Transportation Program grant application for Sunset West until ATP Cycle 9 in 2028.
- 2027. LADOT plans to begin public outreach for Sunset West.
- 2030 to 2032. The reported construction window for the West segment. In the Eastsider's September 2 report, that segment was still unfunded.
None of the material LADOT has released so far includes a cross-section for Sunset Junction, a lane plan at Silver Lake Boulevard or a parking count for any Silver Lake block. What it does include is the reason the corridor was chosen. The Spring 2026 presentation counts 87 collisions resulting in a fatality or severe injury along the full corridor from 2014 through 2025, roughly eight a year. Its intersection breakdown puts several of those in the unfunded half:
- Silverlake Boulevard: five severe-injury collisions
- Micheltorena Street: one fatal and two severe-injury collisions
- Maltman Avenue: one fatal collision
- Fountain Avenue: one severe-injury collision
Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez describes the project as running along the High-Injury Network, "just 6% of city streets that account for 70% of pedestrian fatalities and severe injuries." The intersections LADOT itself lists in Silver Lake are on the side of Douglas Street with no construction money.
Why the lanes are likely to arrive regardless
The Silver Lake segment's slow pace does not make it optional. Los Angeles voters approved Healthy Streets LA, known as Measure HLA, in March 2024. It requires the city to build the Mobility Plan 2035 network when it carries out qualifying street improvements. Streetsblog LA explained the trigger as any paving project or other change to the city's right-of-way of at least one-eighth of a mile. Such work must include the bus, bike and walking improvements the Mobility Plan already calls for. The measure passed with 65.50% of the vote.
Grant Bowlds, co-chair of the Silver Lake Neighborhood Council's Planning & Land Use Committee, pointed to Measure HLA when the Eastsider asked about the plan. The paper reported that, by his account, lane reductions may always have been in the cards. "This plan actually reduces travel time for many more people than it increases travel time for," Bowlds said. "Even if you don't ride the bus, a lot of your neighbors do." Colter Carlisle of the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council raised a different concern. He said a full-time dedicated bus lane could set off large-scale construction along the route under the state's recent SB79 law.
So in Silver Lake, the real open questions are about timing and design: what the lanes look like at Sunset Junction, where loading zones go, and how much curb parking survives. The 2027 outreach round is when those answers first get drafted.
The closest preview is two miles northwest
There is already a road diet like this one close to Silver Lake, on Hollywood Boulevard along the East Hollywood and Los Feliz border. There, traffic went down to one lane in each direction and protected bike lanes went in. The Eastsider's reporting on how it turned out is the most specific account available of what the change felt like at street level. Patrick Sharples, husband of Vintage Vortex owner Michelle Sharples, said the store's sales fell 25% after the change. Carlos Castillo, manager of George's Lighting Plus, said a five-minute drive to the 101 Freeway now took 22 minutes. The paper timed its own one-third-mile drive from Vermont Avenue to Virgil and Hillhurst at nearly seven minutes. The safety gains in that story came from early indications cited by a spokesman for Soto-Martinez, not from a published before-and-after crash study.
Carlisle, who watched that project from the East Hollywood council, said of the Sunset process: "I feel that the public was misled on this throughout the process." He said the city's spring survey did not explain the trade-offs or offer faster car travel as a priority to choose. The survey drew more than 3,400 responses. Of those, 92% favored protected bikeways, 74% said they would walk more with added shade and trees, and 63% said they would ride transit more if service were faster and more frequent. Local business owners put parking and loading zones at the top of their list.
Those responses covered the whole corridor, Silver Lake included. Silver Lake's design work has not started yet, so they amount to the only on-the-record input that exists for its blocks so far.
What actually changes on Sunset before 2030
For anyone who regularly drives, rides or walks Sunset through Silver Lake, the first change will come at the eastern end of the trip. Sunset East's bus and bike lane construction is scheduled for late 2027 between Douglas and Alameda. That reconfigured stretch, with parking on the south side only, is what a drive from Silver Lake toward downtown will run into. Metro's Line 2 is listed as running "Westwood - Exposition Park via Sunset Bl," though LADOT's materials do not say which bus routes the new lanes will serve. On the Silver Lake blocks themselves, from Sunset Junction to Douglas Street, nothing is scheduled to change until the 2027 outreach produces a first design. The 2028 grant cycle then decides whether there is money to build it.
For more on the streets around Sunset Junction, see our Silver Lake neighborhood guide, our look at where Silver Lake's newest restaurants came from and our car-light guide to neighboring Los Feliz.
If you own on or near Sunset Boulevard and want to know how a corridor plan with no design yet may come up when you sell or buy over the next few years, RSR Real Estate can go through the public record with you, block by block. Request a Private Consultation.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
