Wilshire Boulevard

For the last two months, Green Truck mobile catering services would park on Wilshire Boulevard along Los Angeles' Miracle Mile and serve handmade organic fare to the neighborhood's lunch crowd. "It was wonderful," said Bobby Allen, general manger of the Culver City-based company. "We had a line of people every day." But last week, the lines disappeared after police officers swooped in and forced Green Truck and several other mobile food vendors parked in the mid-Wilshire area to move on. Some drivers said they were cited for minimal violations such as parking too close to the curb, or parking too far away.

In what government and arts officials are calling the most ambitious commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall outside of Germany, a symbolic re-creation of the wall that once separated East and West Berlin will be erected across Wilshire Boulevard in November. The Wall Project, painted by professional and amateur artists, will close Sunday afternoon traffic on one of the city's busiest thoroughfares for three hours on Nov. 8 beginning at 3 p.m. The project involves the Culver City's Wende Museum and Archive of the Cold War, the city of Los Angeles, the German Consulate General in Los Angeles and other partners, and will be officially announced Thursday.

Local transportation officials have come up with a list of about a dozen potential subway routes on the Westside, with most of the corridors following either Wilshire Boulevard or Santa Monica Boulevard -- or both. All of the routes, along with other mass transit options for the congested Westside, will be discussed at a series of public meetings that begin tonight.

The 22nd floor of the new Solair building, a residential, retail and transportation hub at Wilshire Boulevard and Western Avenue, is still just a concrete platform -- the building's official opening is months away. But from that high up, it's easy to see how the building stands at the crossroads of change along the storied boulevard.

The westbound Wilshire Boulevard onramp to the southbound 405 Freeway will be closed from 10 o'clock tonight to 6 a.m. Monday for construction. The work is part of a $50-million state construction project to extend the southbound carpool lane from Sunset Boulevard to the 10 Freeway.

It may be the ultimate Beverly Hills teardown. British developers paid $500 million Tuesday for the once-grand Robinsons-May department store in one of the priciest property sales ever in Southern California. The buyers said they would proceed with the previous owner's plans to raze the store at 9900 Wilshire Blvd. and build a condominium and retail complex designed by Richard Meier, architect of the Getty Center.

The City Council voted Wednesday to create a peak period bus lane on Wilshire Boulevard between downtown Los Angeles and Santa Monica. The $14-million project, which includes major street repairs, is not funded. Nor was a time frame set for implementing the plan. City officials hope to reduce gridlock in the heavily traveled corridor by making bus ridership more appealing to solo drivers.

The Metropolitan Transportation Agency board of directors on Thursday approved a $3.6-million feasibility study of the much-discussed extension of the Wilshire Boulevard subway. The study will look at alternate routes and preliminary engineering and environmental issues. It will take up to 18 months to complete.

A U.S. Senate committee Thursday voted to lift a longtime ban on subway construction under Wilshire Boulevard, bringing subway backers a step closer to having the ban permanently lifted. The Senate Appropriations Committee inserted language overturning the ban into its annual transportation, housing and urban development bill. The 22-year-old ban has blocked federal funding for subway construction along the Wilshire corridor because of safety concerns over methane gas.

Forget the "subway to the sea." It is a dramatic and radical idea to relieve traffic congestion on the Westside, but extending the Wilshire Boulevard Purple Line from its current terminus at Western Avenue to Santa Monica probably won't happen. An even more dramatic and radical idea -- and one that wouldn't cost $5 billion and take at least 10 years to complete -- would be to turn Wilshire Boulevard into a car-free, rapid-transit, bicycle-friendly transportation artery. How?