West Hollywood Carnaval 2010; photo by Joshua Barash via Flickr
Avoid West Hollywood this afternoon and evening at all costs — unless you specifically want to be there for the amazing West Hollywood Halloween Carnaval. As always on Halloween, it will be a crazy place with fantastic costumes and incredible traffic during the parade, as well as afterward. City officials are expecting 400,000 people to flock Santa Monica Boulevard for the annual event, which will begin at 6 p.m. and last until 11 p.m. or when everyone is too tired to continue.
Metro will be detouring a number of bus lines: 2, 4, 10, 105, 305, 704 and 705. So allow extra time and expect delays if you’re heading toward or through West Hollywood. More bus detour details are here.
To make way for Carnaval, a few West Hollywood streets will be closed
for most of the day. Streets will reopen at 6 a.m. Tuesday.
— San Vicente Boulevard between Melrose Avenue and Santa Monica will be
closed all day today.
— Santa Monica between Doheny Drive and La Cienega Boulevard, including
all side streets, will be closed at noon.
— Robertson Boulevard between Melrose and Santa Monica will close at noon.
— San Vicente between Cynthia Street and Santa Monica will close at noon.
— The La Peer Drive eastbound turn lane onto Santa Monica will close at
noon.
— Almont Drive and La Peer Drive will be closed from Santa Monica to
Melrose at noon.
— Santa Monica between La Cienega Boulevard and Holloway Drive/Croft
Avenue will close at 4 p.m.
— La Cienega between Sunset Boulevard and Santa Monica will close at 4
p.m.
— Sunset east- and west-bound turn lanes onto La Cienega will close
at 4 p.m.
For more Carnaval details go to the WeHo website.
Categories: Service Alerts
Another example of why West Hollywood needs metrorail.
Every year, we ask for some sort of transit solution to WeHo for Halloween. Every year, Metro fails to provide.
The one time I did try, the buses were all packed, and the last two buses didn’t arrive at all, leaving me stranded.
You could run a shuttle service from Hollywood & Highland. Reserve a lane for buses on one of the dead-end side streets, and the buses should make the trip quickly. Since demand will be very high and with a quick trip you can cycle the buses back to H&H very quickly, you can serve many riders with relatively few buses, and you can recover lots of money at the farebox.
I’m sure the drivers would be grateful for a few extra hours of work, partygoers would be able to skip the worst part of the evening (traffic and parking), we’d save a ton of gas; why wasn’t this done years ago?
Why didn’t Metro run for frequent buses? I tried to take the 2 to get closer to the action, but the buses were so full the bus drivers were not stopping at any stops. I was at Sunset/Highland. Then, I got on the 2 on the Sunset Strip at 1 AM and it was crammed over capacity in two stops. There were enough riders to make 5 min/rush hour frequencies feasible. Later, the 656 did not stop at all posted stops, taking me to the Valley when I wanted to get off in Hollywood.
super easy commute for me, rode my bike. nice having some of the streets closed too
[…] How Bad Was Traffic Near WeHo? So Bad It Was Like Metro Was Trying to Improve the 101 (The Source) […]
Just think how great it will be to someday take Metrorail to/from West Hollywood for Halloween (and Pride Weekend and New Year’s Eve) directly.
I hope I live long enough to see that day.